cover image Smitten

Smitten

David Gordon, . . S&S/Atheneum, $15.99 (32pp) ISBN 978-1-4169-2440-1

Gordon's (Hansel and Diesel ) story of a stray sock and a lost mitten that meet in the big city and discover they're the perfect match has oodles of promise—along with a clever portmanteau title. The slickly imagined digital pictures have the familiar appeal of Pixar features (Gordon has worked on some of that studio's most popular movies), and the artist is especially good at infusing the metropolitan environments with drama, as scenes in a Laundromat or a subway tunnel show. In ingenious tests of Sock and Mitten's relationship, Sock shrinks in the wash, and Mitten gets unraveled by a speeding subway train. The text, however, often explains what's already clear from the pictures (“They made their way out to the sidewalk. Sock was so tiny that he fell behind”) or adds detail that doesn't advance the plot. As adroitly sketched out as the concept is, it still reads more like a premise than a full treatment. Ages 4-8. (Dec.)