One Piece of String

by Marthe Jocelyn (Artist)

Overview

One piece of string comes untied from a parcel and changes into a spider's web, a ropy updo, a layer of snow on a birdhouse roof, and other surprises.

Illustrated using Jocelyn's delightful paper collage, this wordless board book invites little ones to follow along and discover that each spread is made up of one single piece! This is a book that will inspire the youngest readers to see their own expanding worlds as a collection of interconnected shapes and colors.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459813205
Publisher:	Orca Book Publishers
Publication date:	10/17/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	24
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	3 Months to 2 Years

About the Author

Marthe Jocelyn is the award-winning author and illustrator of over thirty-five books for babies, kids and teens. Her illustrated books have been shortlisted for both the Governor General's Literary Award and the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award. In 2009 she was the recipient of the prestigious Vicky Metcalf Award for her body of work.

Editorial Reviews

"Jocelyn's collages are alive with colour and textures, and they invite their young viewers to not just find the string or button but to linger on the pages' details. Though the books' board book format suggests a preschool audience, art teachers in schools might wish to acquire them to use as exemplars for divergent artistic thinking. Highly Recommended." Reviewed with One Red Button.

CM Magazine

"What fun! Text is not required for these two clever board books…Wouldn't young children, as they begin to investigate their surroundings, be fascinated by the transformation of these supposedly ordinary objects? Imaginations will come to life! The diversity of colours, shapes and textures in Marthe Jocelyn's inventive paper-colage illustrations, artfully photographed by Ian Crysler, will prove to be irresistible to those thrive on viewing their surroundings in new and exciting ways."

Canadian Children's Book News

"Jocelyn's paper collage illustrations are beautifully textured and colourful, incorporating pattern and silhouette to great effect…It also expertly supports visual development in babies, facilitating focus, tracking abilities and colour recognition as they take in all the details contained in Jocelyn's illustrations. One Red Button and One Piece of String are delightful books that lay the groundwork for children to blossom into thorough and thoughtful readers as they develop."

Resource Links

09/01/2017
PreS-Gr 3—Don't let the format of these wordless books fool you—their uses extend beyond what might typically be considered toddler-only territory. In String, viewers follow a thin, white cotton cord from spread to spread. In the first image, it secures a parcel wrapped in crinkled brown paper, becoming next a clothesline, then an outline of a rabbit, a head of curly hair, and a bowl of spaghetti, until the final picture where a small child in silhouette is perched on a swing of string against a purple sky. The subject item in Button must be discovered in pictures depicting a parked fire engine, a ladybug, an apple tree, a traffic light, and so on as it rolls from scene to scene. In style, the collage artwork is reminiscent of Nancy Elizabeth Wallace's Apples, Apples, Apples! and The Kindness Quilt, featuring brightly colored paper cutouts against bold background colors or patterns. Both animals and objects in Jocelyn's delightful books will be familiar to most young children, and her illustrations, with their amusing details, lend themselves to repeated viewing. With these titles, some string, glue, and buckets of large buttons and crayons, educators and parents will have some ready-made art activities (supervised, of course) for mini-makers—and their older siblings. VERDICT Quirky and fun, these books are natural lead-ins to art projects.—Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal

School Library Journal

2017-12-03
A piece of string can be many things in this cleverly illustrated wordless board book.When a piece of string is removed from a brown paper package, it takes on new roles, both predictable and surprising. Whether as a clothesline, a rabbit, or a bowl of spaghetti, the string twists and turns its way into a series of visually stimulating, child-friendly pictures. The absence of text in the book gives children and their caregivers the opportunity to invent stories about each page after they have identified the at-times-elusive string. Jocelyn's (Sam Sorts, 2017) ingenious collage-style illustrations effectively combine patterns and strong, bold blocks of color into highly textured results. The inclusion of a picture of a woman of color (with tightly curled hair made by the string) is a welcome addition to a genre that does not often stray from white, straight-haired characters. Unlike One Red Button (2017), which uses a similar conceit with a red button, the string can be challenging for very young readers to find, as when it forms the eyes of an owl or a bolt of lightning.Overall, this is a fun and thought-provoking book by a talented illustrator with a knack for wordless storytelling. (Board book. 2-4)

Kirkus Reviews