After 2017’s Caldecott Honor–winning They All Saw a Cat and 2021’s Inside Cat, Brendan Wenzel continues his exploration of perspective, again with a cat taking center stage. The book begins rhythmically: “Two together headed home. Cat and dog. Bell and Bone. For a moment. For a day.”  Bell wears a bell; Bone carries a bone. I love this simple honoring of a child’s perspective, a visual clarification of who is who. Wenzel depicts this duo in spot illustrations arranged across static backgrounds that cover full spreads, like actors moving across a stage. The spot illustrations also function like panels in a comic, bolstering the sense of movement, and these two are moving.  

The backgrounds are initially faded, almost as if they’re being seen through a screen. Bell and Bone are more prominent, but in the initial spreads, they’re in blurry lines and soft earth tones. The first pop of strong color we see is the blue in the upper right corner of the first spread, water in the stream where Bone and Bell pause to look at their reflections. This is where we begin to know these characters. Bone sees himself in flat brown acrylic brush strokes. Bell sees himself in scratchy, multi-hued pencils. This moment establishes both how these characters see themselves and how they see the world, a concept Wenzel develops more fully with each page turn. 

As the book goes along, the objects and creatures Bell and Bone interact with are depicted in the media and style in which they see themselves. So when Bone cowers from a bee, that bee is in acrylics. When Bell spies a dragonfly, it’s in pencils. Some images, like a bird they see at the same time, are done half in one style and half in the other. Spread by spread, Wenzel fills out more of the page with each of the duo’s perspectives until the styles blend and the pages are in full, vibrant jewel tones. Two together. The more we understand these characters, the more robust their world appears to us. 

If you haven’t seen this book, then what I’m writing might sound kooky. This book is a little kooky. But I also know this book is special because I keep checking out a library copy, bringing it home, reading it multiple times, returning it, and then checking it out again a week later. I’ve been doing this since July. (Lest you think I’m abusing my library privileges, I check out copies from different libraries each time. I’m not a monster.) I don’t have any child test subjects at home, but one of my colleagues reports that she read Two Together over and over with her three-year-old when she brought it home. When a book compels rereading, I wonder why. 

A discussion of this book at my library provided me with some insight, because some of my colleagues hate it. They called it chaotic, and listening to them talk about it, I came to understand that part of what makes me keep hauling Two Together home is a central tension between the snappy phrases of text and the images that look dashed-off but buzz with wild, kinetic detail anchored in strong, controlled composition. The text says, “speed up,” but the illustrations are very much saying, “slow down and pay attention, partner.” This tension might be pleasing to a certain type of (obsessive) reader (writer raises hand), and it may be less pleasing to another (what’s the opposite of obsessive?) reader. This is the difference, I think, between someone who wants to read a book to feel calm and another person who wants to read a book and leap straight from that to maybe running a marathon or building a house or setting the world on fire.  

I know how I see myself. 

Most award-winning books spark polarized reactions, and that’s because books win awards for successfully realizing strong points of view, as Wenzel has done here, and no point-of-view is for everyone. Regardless, if I were still doing weekly storytimes, this book would be in heavy rotation, even if it befuddles some people. This was very much my relationship with I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen when it came out years ago. I kept reading it in storytimes, and some people clearly loved it, while others stared at me blankly, and I just kept reading it. That book, like this one, develops a theme largely through images, through careful composition and a distinctive style that force the reader to slow down and pay attention. I Want My Hat Back didn’t earn any Caldecott recognition (though Klassen’s cleaned up since then), and perhaps Two Together won’t, either, but I, for one, would love to see this distinguished book win or honor on January 27. 

[Read The Horn Book Magazine review of Two Together]