Walter Was Worried-By: Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Walter Was Worried introduced eight different characters and expressed each characters feeling about an upcoming storm (thunder, rain, snow, sun, wind, etc.) There really wasn't a plot or setting and the reader was unable to tell if the characters were related in someway, such as friends or family. There was no dialogue between the characters to get any hints. The book opened with "Walter was worried when..." The word "worried" was emphasized by different colors and fonts of text. On the opposite page there was a face of Walter and the facial parts like the eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows, were made up of the letters "worried" to create the facial expression. I thought it was very clever. From far away you can't tell the face is created with the letters, it just looks like a face, but looking closely, the reader can see the letters. The "D" was the lips, the "O" and "E" were the eyes, the "R"'s were the eye brows, the "I" was the nose, and the "W" was a wrinkle on the face. Each characters face was created like that, but by using a different feeling. Another creative idea was that each characters name began with the same letter as the feeling, like Priscilla was Puzzled. The illustrations were very simple but filled the whole page and were very colorful. It would be a very good book to read to young children because it is very interactive. The kids can talk about their feelings, play a little "I Spy" on each page to find the letters, and also talk about weather/season.