cover image The Character in the Book

The Character in the Book

Kaethe Zemach. HarperCollins, $15.95 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-06-205060-1

A wisp of a story occasions exuberant art in this sprightly offering from the daughter of Harve and Margot Zemach. As a Character in a Book, the eponymous protagonist enjoys ""a nice life on the smooth, white pages."" When his aunt invites him to come over to her book for a visit, he discovers that the only way out of his book is to go forward--and so across the pages he goes, via a variety of movements and modes of transportation, only to bid the reader farewell on the penultimate page, before he ""jump[s] right out"" on the very last spread. More a conceit than a full-fledged story, the text would satiate few readers if taken on its own. The illustrations, however, confer a robust vitality. Colorfully clad from his whimsical blue toque to his striped hose and lace-up shoes, the loose-jointed Character could easily have emerged as a jester from a classic storybook. Appropriately, his every appearance here suggests motion: Zemach captures him in just the right posture or attitude to intimate the action her text indicates, be it ""skipping and hopping and running"" (he appears three times, forming an arc across the spread), or ""whirling and twirling and spinning"" (he appears four times, in various phases of performing a cartwheel). The ample white ground becomes a canvas for the reader's own imagination, which will be almost certainly piqued. Ages 2-up. (Feb.)