Written by Mac Barnett, Illustrated by Jon Klassen
Triangle, who lives in a triangle house in a triangle neighborhood, walks across a world of shapes and non-shapes, to pull a sneaky trick on Square. Square lives in a square house in a square neighborhood. Not to be outdone, Square chases Triangle back to his house for payback. “But who will have the last laugh—Triangle playing his sneaky trick or Square who gets him back?” Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s latest book is the beginning of a new trilogy. Using minimal text and dark color illustrations, there is not much going on from page to page. But what there is will delight children with its odd and quirky fun and keep them reading to the end. This book has so much imagination and just what you can expect from the brilliant minds of Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.
Review by Renee Larsen, Hillside Elementary Media Center
Rating: ★★★★★ (5 stars)
Interest Level: Grades K-3
Triangle
Written by Mac Barnett, Illustrated by Jon Klassen
Candlewick Press
48 pages
Release Date: March 14, 2017
A review copy was provided by the publisher.
Thanks for your review.
I did not enjoy this book. I can see that kids would enjoy this but I didn’t like the way that it portrayed mean spirited fun.
I bought this book without really thinking about it just because I love the other Klassen and Barnett books so much. Flipping through it my son loved the artwork and shape-centered world of this book, and then once it turned into a story about tricks and teasing he hated it. My daughter, on the other hand, wasn’t much interested in looking at this book at first until it turned out to be about tricks and teasing, at which point she thought it was funny and really liked it. And thus the varied responses reveal the occasionally problematic dynamic between my two children. Neither of them have ever asked to see it or read it again, though, and it did leave a little bit of a bitter taste. I’m really curious to see how it is resolved in the next stories, but I’m not sure that my kids are.