There Is a Tribe of Kids is coffee table, kid book, art greatness for all

There Is a Tribe of Kids by Lane Smith feels like it’s too good to be a children’s book. I don’t mean that in a snooty way. The book has art whose quality and depth looks like something adults would see at an art gallery that’s doing an animal exhibition.  Each page has art that is curious, gentle and full of detail for any age reader. Combine that with the written words, the actual story part of There Is a Tribe of Kids and you’ve got a classic book that your kids will remember reading when they have kids in 20 or so years.

The book starts out simply enough with a child hugging a mountain goat. However the mountain goat starts to climb the mountain with some of his friends and leaves the kid alone. The little girl sees a penguin where we learn that ‘there was a colony of penguins.’

She then goes on to meet a pod of whales, a crash of rhinos and a turn of turtles and many other packs of animals. The book takes you through these introductions until the end where she meets a tribe of kids who are pretending to animals and playing near a huge tree. That’s the book. I refer to the title character as a girl, but they could also be a boy. In most of the illustrations they’re wearing a green top, but in these below they’re not. The character is very ‘Calliou’ in that sense, except oh so much better.

Its narrative brevity is perfectly reflected in its art. There Is a Tribe of Kids is as close to a coffee table or art book for children that I’ve seen in years.  There isn’t much for kids to read in this book but the art is top notch and serves as a silent narrator. When the art is this good a book doesn’t need words to hammer you on the head to tell you where it’s going.

Every scene is playful, fun, solemn or whatever emotion Lane Smith is trying to convey. Most of the book is happy-go-lucky, but at her core she wants to be with other kids. There Is a Tribe of Kids is a picture book, but also aims to be much more. Parents can look at the animal classifications and say that their kids are learning something-and that’s true.

But the greatest takeaway from There Is a Tribe of Kids is that this is fun. It’s just a fun, loose, happy book that kids will love to read-or have it read to them. Adults will enjoy looking over the illustrations and filling in the void of the dialogue. 6 year olds will be able to tell what the character is going through, but younger kids might need prompts to explain her emotions.