FLORA AND THE FLAMINGO- Molly Idle

Between preparing for the beginning of the school year, teaching two classes (and responding to 30+ final projects), and getting a son off to college, my blogging has been woefully lacking as of late. Actually, so has my reading, as I have spent every spare minute reading final projects. On Saturday, though, I couldn't stand it any more and I headed to the library, where I found a new wordless picture book.

FLORA AND THE FLAMINGO  by Molly Idle is the story of a graceful dancing flamingo, and Flora, a little girl, clad in a yellow bathing cap, pink bathing suit, and gigantic flippers, who is, well, not so graceful, at least not at the beginning of the book. On every page, the flamingo assumes a new and graceful dancing pose. And Flora, well, Flora tries to assume the same pose. At first, the flamingo does her best to ignore Flora. But then the inevitable happens, and the two become friends.

This is one of those absolutely perfect picture books. So perfect, in fact, that I kept thinking, as I was reading it, "Is this the next Caldecott?" The image of movement and dance, and the lines in the pictures made me keep looking and looking and looking, even though I'm not usually all that patient with wordless picture books. And there are even a few bonus lift the flap pages for the kinesthetic learners in the crowd.

This would be a perfect book to introduce the idea of characters changing over time. It's simple enough that kindergarteners could understand it, and complex enough that fifth graders would love it. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide which of my little reading friends is getting FLORA for Christmas…