A thick, black-and-white line drawing of a caterpillar gazing up at a butterfly is juxtaposed with the word "change." A lone slice of pizza sits in an open pizza box: "only." Three extraterrestrials grin out of a spaceship: "them." A leafy bit is lodged in between two teeth: "something." Illustrator, graphic designer and animator Christoph Niemann's (The Police Cloud; The Pet Dragon; Subway) playful, illustrated dictionary of 300-plus words challenges its readers to think about the nature of communication, both verbal and visual. He could be a global Pictionary champion, nailing his artistic representations of tricky words such as "both" (two feet sticking out of one pant leg) and "without" (a man in a suit with no pants).
Those who remember Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard's The Important Book know the delights of distilling words to their essence: "But the important thing about rain is that it is wet." What sits at the core of the words "change" or "only" or "them?" Some of the artist's depictions are straightforward, such as those for "car" and "tree," but Niemann also has fun with homonyms ("bowl" and "bowl"), facing pages that interact cleverly, and images like a fish riding a bicycle: "never." Words is a book for browsers, poets and storytellers; a possible guessing game; and an engaging launch pad for all sorts of wordplay. "Check." "It." "Out." --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness