Come Play With Me
by Margaret Hiller
Illus. Kinuko Craft
1975
As you may have noticed from previous entries, I'm a total sucker for good illustrations, and Kinuko Craft is one of my favorite illustrators. I first saw her work as a little kid in the book Come Play With Me, which features simple rhymes for beginning readers. The poems are perfectly nice, but it's the pictures that really make the language come alive. A verse about a ball going up and down is much more interesting when it's being bounced by an elf at twilight; a poem about a boy playing with his father is made magical when you see that the father and son are centaurs; a game of hide-and-seek is positively idyllic when set in an arcadian landscape. New readers will take pride in reading the simple words, and pre-readers (and parents!) will have their imaginations sparked by the beautiful images. May be difficult to find, but it's worth the look.
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