By Silvia Borando, Elisabetta Pica, Lorenzo Clerici

Published by Walker Books ISBN: 9781406363173

Review by Laura Flynn

When I first picked up The White Book I dismissed it as not the sort of book I was going to enjoy, or more importantly that my two and half year old daughter would enjoy.

However it is becoming a firm favourite of both of ours.

The book begins with a drawing of a little boy with a paint roller in his hand, my daughter Grace named him ‘Oscar’… after her best friend. He begins to paint the page in pink with the roller, and then over the next four pages six white birds appear on the coloured wall, then fly onto the white page before disappearing. The boy then paints a blue page with white fish who then does the same, but dives off the page again, leaving a sad faced ‘Oscar’.

The boy carries on using various colours on the wall that produce different animals that proceed to scare him, squash him, pick him up and try to eat his roller. Then he paints the last pages in orange before a dog jumps onto the White page next to him, but this time he doesn’t go away, he stays and plays with his new found friend, and the boy is very, very happy.

This book is a really good way to create conversation between the child and reader, and each person sees a different version of the story. Some people who have also read the book to Grace struggled with the fact there are no words to make it easy for them, but she soon gets them involved and explains the story, through her own eyes… the dog’s called ‘Jacob’ by the way, another one of her best friends!

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