Author: Penny Matthews
Illustrator: Danny Snell
Publisher: Ominibus, A$26.99RRP
Publication date: 02/08/2010
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781862917972
For ages: 3 - 6
Type: Picture Book
About: Ah, the simplicity behind the concept of this story. Such a simple, honest tale (are they not the absolute best?), this adorable story about a little sloth will melt your heart.
Zizzy the sloth lives in a deep dark jungle. He doesn’t do much but hang upside down, eat and sleep sleep sleep. And nap. Walking on the ground is difficult, moving agonizingly slow… and adventuring? Almost impossible.
But when Zizzy spots a blue patch through the tree tops one day, he asks a parrot who tells him this patch of blue is the beginning of the rest of the world.
Totally intrigued, and with the bird’s help, Zizzy sets off on his very first adventure, tumbling and stumbling over the forest floor to the sea. The sight of a sloth sittng on the sand looking out to a vast blue ocean with a parrot on his head is not one you will soon forget.
Zizzy is entranced by the vision before him, but very soon, he wants to go home – back to his familiar life, to his everyday, to his own world. And when he returns, Zizzy is perfectly happy to keep on with his napping and dreaming – dreams in which he can go anywhere and be anything he wants to be.
The subtlety of this book is what makes it work so well. Children react so well to subtlety, and the final page in which we learn that Zizzy can be anything in his dreams is so breathtaking, children will be entranced (and adults may need to reach for a tissue).
The illustrations in Zizzy are truly spectacular, making it one of my favourite picture books this year. Rich, lucid, beautifully designed and utterly mood-setting, any author would be ecstatic to have Snell’s work interpreting their storyline.
Divine.
This book is available online
