What About Me?

Spare collage work and Sufi wisdom tell the tale of a boy in search of knowledge. Three-time Caldecott winner Ed Young (Lon Po Po) returns here with a simple, cyclical story about giving, receiving, and unexpected rewards.

The boy (in a red, marbled robe and cute blue construction-paper shoes) hopes to gain knowledge from the wispy-bearded Grand Master, who appears to almost float as he assumes a sort of yogic Baked Potato Pose. But the master needs a carpet first, so the boy goes in search of the carpetmaker. The carpetmaker barks at the boy, "What about me? I need thread for weaving my carpets." Of course, the spinner woman needs goat hair to make thread, and the goatkeeper needs a pen for his goats in exchange for the hair. Naturally, the carpenter who makes pens for goats needs a wife... and so on and so on, until the boy finally finds a way to meet everyone's needs--including his own.

The flecked, stationery-style backgrounds look unnecessarily static here, but fortunately Young's energetic figures compensate with vibrant momentum. And What About Me? gets especially fun as the boy races to reach his final goal, and each colorful cut-out appears to jump onto the next page. (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes