Anything Is Possible

A dreamer of a sheep wants to build a flying machine to get a bird’s-eye view of the world. “They can choose how they look at things: from far away, from up close, or from somewhere in between,” she thinks. Her friend, a wolf, is skeptical (“You spend too much time watching the birds in the sky”), but he can’t resist the sheep’s can-do attitude, even after two initial prototypes fail in major ways. Trevisan pictures their collaboration in spare, editorial-style collaged images on crisp white space; much of the fun comes from seeing the contrast between the streamlined wolf and sheep and other visual elements made from elaborately decorated paper (the long tail of their first contraption is densely scribbled with mathematical equations). Even the cropping of the images is witty and stylish: one spread conveys a crash by showing bits of the two passengers, a wheel, and a wing falling beyond the pages’ margins. Unfortunately, the minimal text is literal and leaden, so while the message about persistence comes through, readers get little insight into the nature of this improbable friendship. Ages 4–7. (Aug.)