Praise
A child could get happily lost in the valley – the most beautiful place in the world - where the Twims live. Twims are little furry critters with long tails that look something like a chubby monkey and something like a small bear. They live in tree houses and enjoy many of the same occupations as humans but their lives are very peaceful, almost free of discord. The illustrations convey a magical world that anyone would want to live in full of love, beauty, fun and intrigue.
A mix of comical vignettes and broad vistas illustrate an account of the lives and misadventures of a clan of tiny Twims.
It must have been a challenge to translate: the oversized album, originally published in French in 1998, is narrated by Poochie-Blue—who introduces Sowhatty, Nothin'-Doin', and many like-named members of a teeming extended family as the book opens. He then takes readers on a tour of his hollow cliffside House Tree, the Forest of Lost Children, the Theater of Hissy Fits (where grievances can be acted out), and the cemetery gardens especially tailored for lovers of music or mountains, for haters, readers, or Twims just "waiting for the Goochnies to return." In between, he tells of the mushroomlike Goochnies' mysterious disappearance, of children who fell from the sky (actually from a passing windblown apartment house), of a Sad Giant's visit, and of weather and seasons in the idyllic seaside valley. Along with a labeled area map and a cutaway of the House Tree, Ponti alternates panels of Twims, who look like anthropomorphic lemmings (uniform in color but a little varied in features and dress), in action with immersive, full-page or larger land- and seascapes that seem to go on forever while offering multitudinous crags, glades and foreground features to investigate.
Like Poochie-Blue, visitors to the valley will be in no hurry to leave.
The sheer size of the pages encourage children to feel as though they could just tip forward and fall into the world before them... I don’t see a lot of books like this one. Which is to say, stories for a range of ages that serve the sole purpose of transporting you somewhere new... Awe-inspiring... A jaw-dropper made comfortable for the younger set. Worth discovering.