Bye Bye Big!

Staccato text and striking cut-paper-and-paint spreads create and sustain dialed-up energy throughout this story of predators turned prey. “There was a big big frog!” it begins, the words splashed across the page in block letters. “And a little little mosquito.” On the left, the frog glances sidelong at the purple insect to the right. The frog’s long tongue extends toward the mosquito after a page turn: “Big! Little. Big! Little. Bye Bye Mosquito!” A lemon-yellow snake eats the frog (which is now “little little” by comparison), a blue crane eats the snake, and so on; they’re all dispatched with the same cheerful “bye bye!” The animals grow larger and larger; the final predator, a human male, snares a tiger in a net but meets his match in a tiny mosquito. All of the other creatures are miraculously released in the tumult as well. Even the youngest readers will take the point that power doesn’t always correlate to size. The words lend themselves to memorization, and Harvill’s saturated colors, textured paper, and bold forms have stop-sign impact. A promising candidate for raucous readalouds. Ages 3–6. (Nov.)