Willems, Mo. Are You Big?  Specific House, 2024.  978-1-454-94818-6. Unpaged. $17.99. Grades PreK-1.

On a quick glance of its cover and slim trim size, this picture book seems to be just another story about a growing child.  After a couple of pages, it is obvious that this is no ordinary tale about getting bigger.  Instead, Willems has created a brilliant concept book that discusses the relative size of mostly inanimate objects. It begins with the narrator asking a child, drawn as a stick figure,  “Are you big?” On the next page, a hot air balloon walks into view and the point is wordlessly made that the balloon is bigger. The question is repeated as the next thing appears. The balloon is compared to a cloud, the cloud to a storm, the storm to Australia, and so on until it ends the exercise with a galaxy cluster. For each comparative pair, the previous objects (and child) are arranged in a row at the bottom of the page, drawn to show their size relative to the new larger entity. On the final pages, the story reverts back to the child, who seems reassured about his/her size when an ant emerges. In his usual cartoon style, Willems has managed to personify the non-living subjects. The “characters” all have legs, mouths and eyes, which are depicted quite cleverly on Earth. The author includes a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer that the objects are not drawn to scale and provides a chart comparing their relative size differences in words- “An average kid is 430 times taller than an ant.”

THOUGHTS: The latest offering from Mo Willems is a BIG winner and an engaging read aloud. Children will eagerly anticipate and greet each new comparison with a BIG Whoa! This is an absolute must-have for all elementary collections. In fact, librarians may want to buy multiple copies and place one in nonfiction and one with Mo’s other fictional picture books.

153.752 Cognition and Memory
Perception of Space