A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: IT’S JUST SO LITTLE BY BRENDA FAATZ AND PETER TRIMARCO

Life for a child is magnified in so many ways that everything can just seem so … It is filling in the varieties of “so” that challenges a children’s author to be creative, something Brenda Faatz and Peter Trimarco seem able to do with so much fun and action and imagination in their children’s books about Lizzy, the red-headed girl, this time with It’s Just So Little. To capture the young person’s reading interest, it is necessary to do so much more than simply provide cute pictures, cute rhymes, or a cute storyline. The true talent, and one at which the authors/illustrator excel, is in presenting a collage of intrigue made up of words, events, thoughts, and activities, all the while managing to connect them into a singularly coherent tapestry. Too much to ask? Apparently not.

What Brenda Faatz and Peter Trimarco do is intricate and highly thoughtful. As gaily colorful and bursting with energy as is It’s Just So Little – the illustrations are truly amazing – if one takes the time to study them at leisure, he sees an impeccably replicated version of a young child’s emotional and maturational reality. In this case, young Lizzy is already growing older. Things are changing … just so quickly. She is given life-changing news about a new birth, and her world becomes the perfect metaphor for all that she must consider. The authors remind us that children are not the simple creatures they often appear to be. Their interior worlds are magnified; everything takes on greater meaning, becomes a greater challenge, becomes so … much … more. It is the interweaving of so many elements that makes this book stand out. A single read or two will simply not suffice. There is just too much here to love.