Are You Big? is picture book laughs for ages three through seven

Elementary school-aged kids know Mo. Mo Willems’ picture books have a way of gleefully speaking to those young students. His style is immediate and can make them smile as they relax, make them think just a little bit, or it can do both. Are you Big? is Mo Willems at his thinking and relaxing best. At its smartest it’s a book about relative proportionality and thinking about the bigger picture that might contain variables that are outside of your influence. As its happiest and simplest, it’s a silly book with anthropomorphic weather systems, land masses and planets cavorting about a picture book that will do what books like this should do, make em smile.

The other day I had a child in a high school class ask, “Teacher Trey, is that person smart?” Obviously I knew that this was a trap. The two might’ve been friends, but as it was my first time engaging with this particular group I chose the more approachable and academic response. “Smart is relative, isn’t it? They’re certainly more intelligent then when they were in elementary school. Their standard of entertainment is more advanced, they no longer watch Cocomelon or Ladybug and Ca Noir for their free time. But as smart as they are now, they will positively get smarter than they are now, if they chose to, and we all want to be smarter, don’t we? So let’s get on with the work that our teacher assigned us.” Long, thorough responses like that are fun to give to high school students because it quickly establishes that you expect more from them and allows those with a more verbose vocabulary to see critical thinking in action.

Are you Big?, much like the student who asked about being ‘smart’, is relative. Right out of the gate when you open the book’s cover the action starts as we meet a geometric block figure with stick appendages asking “are you big?” Boom, turn the cover and the figure is happily asking you that. Turn the page and you see a hot air balloon on one of the two pages and the statement “a hot air balloon is big”, while standing next to the kid. The next page has a cloud that’s dramatically bigger than the balloon. The moon, Earth, Sun and other celestial bodies come in next with each one dwarfing the one before it.

One of the final pages of the book is a close-up of the kid’s face reinforcing the question of size by asking “so, are you big?” It’s on the final page of the book that an ant is seen next to the kid answering that question by saying, “you are to me.” It’s all relative, isn’t it? This is the simple, observational kind of learning that’s fun and doesn’t even feel educational. The book spends its entirety having the boy feel small and increasingly insignificant, only for it to end with him being the biggest thing in the area.

All of this means nothing unless the book is entertaining or fun and it is both of those things. As the objects get larger, like the Star Pollux, which is almost 600 times larger than our sun, you might worry that these terms would be difficult for crawlers and pre-k readers to fathom. The text is very simple and doesn’t define anything, it uses brief statements to make its point. For those older kids or their parents who want more specifics about the size and scale that information is on the back cover.

It’s here where you can read complex sentences on the size and scale of everything that you read about in the book. The kids that are more curious will really enjoy reading or listening to a slightly more detailed look into how small we really are. There’s also a disclaimer pointing out that the illustrations are just representations and that the text has a more realistic view on the disparity. This is where the big brain kids will stop for a moment and think. They might ask a question, but they’ll probably just look at the page, think to themselves and allow adults to offer comparisons.

The size differences will also open kids up to realizing that it doesn’t matter how big, small or tall you are. It’s all relative and you have something unique and powerful within you to offer up. OK, kids might not initially get that deep when they engage with Are You Big?, but those older people who are reading the book can allude to it. This is a book that’s as smart as you want it to be, but whose entertainment is big and obvious for all. It also opens up an obvious choice for a follow-up called Are You Small?, that takes a minute look at the STEM particles around us.

Are You Big? is by New York Times bestselling aughor Mo Willems and A Specific House, an imprint of  Union Square & Co., a subsidiary of Sterling Publishing.

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