Round, it’s all around us and that’s the point of the book

What is art? It’s a challenging term to define but you know it when you see it. Round is an illustrated book that confused me at first. The irony of a very simple illustrated book making me scratch my head was not lost by my inner critic. From the get-go, Round is beautiful and has gorgeous illustrations of various things found in nature that are well, round. However, much like art doesn’t have just one definition, round can also have several shades of its shape.

Things can be arched, oval, orbed, egg-shaped, curled, or many other types of lines that aren’t straight. Those lines are also all over nature.

Initially, we thought the crux of Round was a way to soft-pedal kids into learning about the Fibonacci Sequence. My inner science geek is screaming for an illustrated book or some kid-friendly way to make kids curious, as well as, really explaining to adults in a simple way that formula. Round does not do that.

After reading the front jacket to the book I read that Round simply invites kids to look around and take note of everything that is circular. It points out that not everything round is a perfect circle, thus the added and highly detailed new vocabulary. When you read Round to your audience, it’s important to keep this in mind before you sit down. Otherwise, the book will be a very quick read and leave you and your young audience wondering what they just experienced.

The illustrations have an organic, measured, happy feel. Kids will certainly enjoy looking at the book, and some of them might figure out that there’s a common theme in the book. That theme is that many things around us to some degree, are round. It’s those specificities that make the book work.

The text in the book is sparse, with only two words on each page. For example, on one two-page spread, we see some lightning bugs that are opposite a waxing crescent moon. The bugs are glowing round and the moon is growing round. I do love how ‘growing round’ lets young readers or those adults who get the moon phases mixed up, know that it’s getting bigger.

The pages are magnetic and draw in young readers, but they’ll need guidance in order to enjoy the book as much as they can. Much like other things that appear too simple, they can be, if you only look at their face value. Think about it just a bit more and you’ll discover how much it could be. In this case, it’s a simple book called Round that invites kids to learn detailed adjectives and apply them to the outside world around them.

Round is written by Jennifer Ward with illustrations by Lisa Congdon and available on Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

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