Look
by Gabi Snyder; illus. by Samantha Cotterill
Preschool    Wiseman/Simon    48 pp.
4/24    9781665905404    $18.99
e-book ed.  9781665905411    $10.99

This companion to Snyder’s 2021 Listen encourages children to find visual patterns in our “VAST world.” In vivid three-dimensional scenes, Cotterill depicts a redheaded pair: a child, sketchbook in hand, and a pregnant parent. Snyder writes in a direct, second-person voice: “But what if you stop, LOOK around, and get a closer view?” When the world “feels like too much” or is hard to “make sense of,” look for patterns: stripes, repeating shapes, opportunities for repetitive movements (“Step, HOP, step, HOP”), zigzags, circles, checkerboards, polka dots, spots, and more. Cotterill fills her hand-built, mixed-media dioramas with patterns for viewers to find as the characters visit a farmers’ market, a dock, and a forest. She keeps the compositions busy; that’s the point. Once we find the patterns in her textured, bustling scenes, a sense of order grows from all the details. Snyder’s text is particularly evocative during the book’s close, noting that patterns connect us like “notes in a lullaby” as parent and child wrap themselves in a patterned quilt on the front porch. Back matter describes various types of patterns (fractal, branching, alternating, etc.) as well as a few activities related to making and locating patterns (the creation of sound patterns and taking “pattern walks”).

From the May/June 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.