In the Half Room
by Carson Ellis; illus. by the author
Primary    Candlewick    32 pp.    g
10/20    978-1-5362-1456-7    $16.99

In a series of images that depict halves, Ellis ushers readers into a delightfully surreal setting. With pleasing rhymes (“Half a window / Half a door / Half a rug on half a floor”), the bizarre illustrations show a world of bisections. A woman, split exactly in half, sits on half a chair near half a table with, across the room, half a cat on half a rug. When the woman’s other half knocks on the door and enters the room, the two halves unite, making the woman whole again with an exceptionally child-friendly “SHOOOOOP.” While the woman rejoices outdoors, reveling under the light of half a moon, the cat’s other half enters the home, but instead of uniting, they engage in a half-cat fight. The page-turns are compelling, as one takes in the visually beguiling world of the halves, and the earth-toned illustrations include bright pops of pink (half a vase filled with flower halves) and yellow (the half-moon and stars that twinkle next to it). It’s a genuinely offbeat story embracing absurdity, and cat lovers everywhere will easily accept the asocial cat-halves refusing to “shoop” and merely falling asleep next to each other. A wholly entertaining tale.

From the September/October 2020 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.