When Creature Met Creature

Agard and Kitamura (The Rainmaker Danced) reteam to explore the role of language in experience—a heady-sounding theme conveyed in deeply affecting words and images. Creature-Of-No-Words, drawn with scribbly orange lines, perceives life as waves of emotion: when delighted, “He’d simply flap his arms/ like the wings of the birds/ and carry on gazing at the sea.” On a freezing night in front of a cozy cave fire, “It was enough just to feel snug./ O to feel that warming glow.” And when he’s distressed, “from his lips would come/ a deep-down belly groan.” Creature-Of-Words, smaller and scrawled red, communicates via formalized language (in the sea, she shouts “HAPPY! HAPPY!”; “AH! FIRE!” she says on a snowy day). When she happens upon Creature-Of-No-Words and hears him groan, she offers “HUG! HUG!” In a tender moment, Creature-Of-No-Words experiences spoken comfort and utters his first word. From then on, the two live together “in a house where words also lived,” and sometimes enjoy silence, too, “stroking each other’s fur” beside an outdoor fire. Conveying two modes of communication, the creators portray how sensation and language dovetail, and how two beings can complement each other nearly perfectly. Ages 4–9. (May)