Silli's Sheep

June 29, 2020
Silli, a small gray-haired gentleman with a bright red nose, eager eyes, and a can-do attitude, lives a solitary but happy life in a mountain meadow: “All day he frolicked in the sunshine, while at night he needed nothing but moonbeams for a bed,” writes Stone (Knot Cannot). But a chilly wind foretells colder days ahead, and Silli’s convinced he needs a woolly warm sweater; in one of Thomas’s (Hug It Out!) consistently effervescent ink, gouache, and colored pencil vignettes, Silli imagines himself covered in soft, fluffy wool. True to his name, however, Silli goes looking for wool in all the wrong places, pinning his hopes on five huge sheep-shaped rocks to be his yarn source. Silli’s efforts can be amusing (“Follow me, sheep!” he says to a rock, holding out “handfuls of hay”), but his confusion about sheep’s attributes may baffle readers, since he clearly knows what the mammal looks and feels like (his inspiration comes from realistically sheep-shaped clouds). And though the ending finds him cozy and warm in a windbreak created from the rocks, skewing toward a gentle, absurd tickle, readers may find the inadvertency of the solution more exasperating than amusing. Ages 3–7. Author’s agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Agency. Illustrator’s agent: Kirsten Hall, Catbird Productions.

July 1, 2020

PreS-Gr 2-When the wind blows, Silli searches his overstuffed sack for a solution, attempting to use an umbrella, tennis racket, and book to hold off the chilly breeze. When fluffy and distinctly sheep-shaped clouds float by, he is inspired to search out a sheep to make himself a wool sweater. His confidence pays off when he spots five unusual sheep on a hill, and persistently and hilariously rounds them up to shear their shockingly "hard as stone" wool. All's well in the end when Silli figures out the best strategy for using his impossible sheep to protect himself from the wind. Thomas and Stone create many comedic beats, with the illustrations moving the story briskly forward while granting the text a carefully crafted terseness. The delightfully comic illustrations add the perfect amount of whimsy to this charming noodlehead story. Preschoolers will howl when Silli, unable to find a sheepdog, acts out the role himself. VERDICT All readers will be charmed by the earnest Silli's perseverance, in a tale that celebrates nonsense while skillfully keeping children in the know. Recommended for most collections.-Amanda Foulk, Sacramento P.L.

Copyright 2020 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2020
Preschool-G Don Quixote tilted at windmills; Silli clips rocks for wool. In this mistaken-identity romp, a stringy-haired man named Silli, who lives in an Icelandic mix of hills and rocks, feels a cold wind blowing, and he needs something warm to keep him warm. Searching through a capacious sack, he throws out items like a saw, an umbrella, a unicycle, a TV set?but nothing fits the bill. Then Silli gets an idea: he'll shear some sheep's wool and knit a sweater from it. Readers will realize that Silli is constantly wrong as he looks for sheep up a tree and in a rabbit burrow before finally seeing what he thinks are sheep on a hillside?but are actually sheep-shaped rocks. After his attempts to shear rocks breaks his tools, Silli finally gets warm by arranging the rocks around him. Thomas' ink, gouache, and colored-pencil illustrations capture the craggy landscape and rounded hills in a winsome way. A nice takeoff on a problem-solution story, with the hero ultimately (though wrongly) succeeding.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2020
When a cold wind starts blowing in the mountains, a (nearsighted) man named Silli sets out to round up some sheep, hoping to gather wool for a sweater. The boulderlike "sheep" he finds are immovable, however, so Silli carries them down the mountain ("They were very heavy"). Problems (and clues) ensue -- "Their wool was as hard as stone" -- but Silli improvises and finds a way to work with what he's got. The deadpan text is accompanied by illustrations that show how silly Silli's predicament is.

(Copyright 2020 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

Starred review from May 15, 2020
Silli is a lovable fool who lives in an alpine meadow and solves his problems in the most unlikely ways. The rosy-cheeked fellow is completely content to sleep next to his large sack of belongings, with "nothing but moonbeams for a bed"--until the wind blows. Then, "Silli felt...chilly." The cartoon caricatures have a childlike feel; they portray a white, wispy-haired man with a long, oval face, a prominent, red nose, and a mobile expression. Having decided to search for sheep (so he can make yarn and knit a sweater), he spots five likely candidates on a neighboring mountain. Readers will immediately realize that they are rock formations, but there is much humor in Silli's attempts to get them to follow him, including his imitation of a sheepdog. After carrying each one home, he breaks his shears trying to trim the "wool" and unsuccessfully tries to soften it with conditioner. He eventually--inadvertently--does create a wind barrier. As it starts to snow, and Silli drifts off dreaming of a cow so he can make hot chocolate, an actual sheep peers in at him. Stone's narrative has the cadences and pacing of a classic tale, and she knows just where to leave room for Thomas to fill in his own comical touches. The result is a rollicking good time. A fresh and funny story of a good-natured soul who marches--with perseverance and gusto--to his own drummer. (Picture book. 4-7)

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