The story to Paul and His Ukulele was, eh. I was thinking, “Okay, but now what?” Robert Broder made a quaint story of a fox named Paul, and the journey his takes to grow up. He meets many people along the way, enjoys dense woods, deserts, and more. Even when he sets up a shop and meets Clementine I was, okay, nice, but not my kind of ukulele tune.
When I realized the author is the same as Crow and Snow, I realized that they have a soft tone to their style of writing. There will not be a lot of action, but there is something about the characters that make you read about them. It just was not enough for me to holler “best book ever.”
It was Jenn Kocsmiersky’s illustrations that kept me going. They are sweet, simple, not simplistic. They are not overly crowded but detailed enough to move things onto the next page. The pages looks like a book about autumn with the colors not overly polished, but have some pop too them. They are cozy, classical looking images.
They also were not “best ever images” but they capture the eye, and you can read the story without the text. It just so happens that both text and art complement each other, combining to make a nice, quiet, read-aloud.
I liked that Paul has a ukulele and not a guitar, trumpet, or other traditional instrument. It might have been nice to learn more about ukuleles, but the story is not about the ukulele, but it is part of the journey Paul takes.