Me Tall, You Small

by Lilli L'Arronge (Illustrator)

Overview

Me Tall, You Small is a series of playful vignettes in the daily life of a pair of weasels, parent and child. Whether they are having a bubble bath, kicking a soccer ball, or eating ice cream together, simple paired phrases showcase their loving—and amusingly realistic—relationship. After a fall: You boo-boo. Me bandage. At bedtime: Me tired. You wired.

Creative use of language with wordplay, onomatopoeia, and rhyme infuses this book with humor and surprise. Together with the text, expressive line-drawn artwork drives home the funny differences between life as a parent and a child. This silly, touching read-aloud will have both parties celebrating their role, whether tall or small.

LEVELING
Grade Range: Pre-K–3
Lexile: NP

COMMON CORE
L.K.1,1b,1f,2,2d,4,5,5b,5c,5d
SL.K.1,1b,2,3,4,5,6
W.K.3,5,6,8
RF.K.1,1a,1b,1c,2,2a,2b,2c,2e,3
RL.K.1,2,3,4,5,6,7,10
RF.K.3a,3b,3c,3d,4

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771471947
Publisher:	Owlkids Books
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	882,529
Product dimensions:	7.75(w) x 7.75(h) x (d)
Age Range:	2 - 5 Years

About the Author

Lilli L'Arronge writes and illustrates books for children and adults. Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese and English. In her spare time, Lilli does animation work for film and television. She lives in Münster, Germany.

Editorial Reviews

01/23/2017
German author-illustrator L’Arronge, whose doll-like animal characters and understated sight gags may remind readers of Patrick McDonnell’s work, offers an amusing overview of the parent-child dyad starring two weasels: “Me” is the parent/narrator, while “you” is the offspring. She begins with the eponymous, empirical observation—which also establishes the book’s playful, concise, and dialectic style—but quickly moves on to more interesting comparisons and contrasts, which play out in a range of distilled settings. The little weasel has its parent beat when it comes to energy reserves (“You whoop. Me droop,” says the big weasel, exhausted after giving the child an airplane swing) and ingenuity (the little weasel builds a precarious stack of objects to get to a deliberately out-of-reach cookie jar). But both animals like to get goofy in the kitchen and chomp on their sausage dinner at the table. Being winsome without being wince inducing is no easy task, and this playful, tender book may inspire real-life parent-child pairs to come up with some me-vs.-you comparisons of their own. Ages 2–5. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Transcends linguistic barriers to deftly capture the unique specificity of adult-child relationships... A winning book to read-aloud with all the small weasels in your life."

Resource Links

04/01/2017
Toddler-PreS—A poignant and gently humorous portrayal of a parent/child relationship, as depicted through the everyday activities of two long-tailed critters and narrated by the adult, or the "tall" one. Pithy contrasting phrases such as the titular "Me tall/You small" or "Me tired/You wired" set in a large font accompany stylized illustrations drawn with thick black outlines against mostly blank cream backgrounds. However, this is no simple opposites book, and L'Arronge cleverly inserts other descriptors, such as "Me goofy/You goofy too" and "Me smart/You smarter" to showcase other aspects of the bond. Though young readers might not easily recognize an old-fashioned telephone in one of the scenes, they, along with their grown-ups, will readily relate to the antics of the pair, from a tantrum at the supermarket ("You: Yes!/Me: No!") to a cozy cuddle at the playground ("You mine/Me yours"). VERDICT A wonderful selection for one-on-one sharing that will delight the tall and the small alike.—Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, formerly at Chappaqua Library, NY

School Library Journal

★ 2016-12-21
Readers tall and small will recognize themselves between the pages of this book.This sparsely worded picture book exudes the pleasure that emanates from the relationship between a caring adult and a child. Beginning with "Me tall / You small," the text progresses through other mostly rhyming descriptors, some of them nonsense (bop, bip; whoop, droop; tired, wired), that show the contrasts between an exceedingly energetic child and an adult who vacillates between matching exuberance and exhaustion. Readers will delight in the way the adult attends to the child, acts silly right along with the child, and gives kudos to the child for often being cooler or smarter than the adult. The anthropomorphic weasels walk upright, live like humans, and are androgynous enough for readers to interpret them as any gender. Some might even read the story as a friendship between a child and an older friend or caregiver rather than a parent. On the book's endpapers appear what look like drawings on a chalkboard of everyday items such as a brush, toothbrush, underwear, umbrella, chair, and other household and personal items that the characters might use on a typical day. Stylistically similar to Cliff Wright's Bear and Ball books and Olivia Dunrea's Gossie series, this sweet picture book, translated from German, will find eager fans among American readers. This book delights on many levels as it affirms the importance of young children's close relationships. (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews

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