How Beautiful

October 15, 2021
A little caterpillar explores the meaning of beautiful. "Happy on his leaf," a caterpillar spends his days eating, sleeping, and creeping about. He never questions anything until an Unknown Thing picks him up and tells him, "You're so beautiful." Mystified, the caterpillar wonders, "What does beautiful mean?" He asks a passing bear the meaning of beautiful, and the bear says the honeycomb in its paws is beautiful. Three squirrels tell him the leaves they're playing in are beautiful. A mouse sheltering under a mushroom thinks the mushroom's beautiful. A deer resting on an abandoned sofa finds it beautiful, and a mole finds its underground hole beautiful. A hypercritical blackbird who has strongly disagreed with each animal's opinion on what's beautiful finds an empty can beautiful. Discontent, sad, and discouraged by the different responses to his question, the caterpillar sits down at day's end with the other animals. Suddenly, they see something all can agree is beautiful. As the caterpillar pursues the abstract concept of beauty, the decorative illustrations themselves offer a striking example. Readers will need to examine the intricate, curvilinear drawings carefully to discover the little caterpillar and his forest cronies cleverly concealed by myriad twisting branches, leaves, vines, roots, and flowers executed in a bold palette of dark blues, reds, and yellows reminiscent of Eastern European folk art. Beauty's in the eye of the beholder in this unique tale. (Picture book. 4-8)

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Starred review from November 1, 2021
Preschool-Grade 2 *Starred Review* This stunningly illustrated picture book, first published in Italy in 2017 as Che bello!, shows the wonder in tiny, overlooked things. A baby-like caterpillar undertakes a quest to find out what is beautiful, when, by accident, a little girl sees him and pronounces him "beautiful"--a word the caterpillar has never heard before. In true fairy-tale fashion, the caterpillar asks a series of animals what they think is beautiful, and each of their answers is dismissed by a blackbird. For example, the bear thinks a honeycomb is beautiful, but the blackbird says, no, it's just tasty. Squirrels think the dry leaves they roll around in are beautiful, but the blackbird says no, they're just fun. As the blackbird discounts everything, Castrill�n's magnificent illustrations, hand-drawn in layers of graphite pencil, tell a different story. All kinds of flowers, vines, trees, and animals intertwine on the borders of each page, giving the effect of a medieval illuminated manuscript. A nice turn is given when the blackbird pounces on a shiny tin can, pronouncing it beautiful. By book's end, caterpillar and friends decide that the glowing moon is beautiful, but the reader knows, thanks to the artwork, that everything great and small they encountered along the way is filled with beauty.

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