Little Blue

Little Blue, a girl with blue hair and a blue-and-white china-pattern dress, surprises Will when he meets her in the forest. He’s dressed like a British schoolchild, but Little Blue is different, not quite human—and she’s lost. Will and Little Blue set out to find her home. As she wistfully describes its features (“My home has a blue river twinkling under willows. I miss my river”) they appear in rough blue crayon in the air behind her. From the outset, Chapman (Kaito’s Cloth ) makes it evident that their search is a voyage of the imagination; Will shrinks to Little Blue’s size as they balance on mushrooms and climb the delicate branches of blossoming trees. When they return to the cottage where Will lives with his grandmother, Little Blue is revealed to be the girl on the missing piece of a treasured china plate broken “at a picnic long ago,” and the details from Little Blue’s descriptions adorn the plate in all their glory. Chapman’s intricate, dew-dappled flowers recall turn-of-the-century illustration; it’s an invitation to indulge in a flight back to another time. Ages 3–5. (Sept.)