Shadow Book

Imaginative, fun and full of movement, but also and sadly, very much too convoluted and detailed for me (for I always like wordless picture books that are simple and uncluttered), Suzy Lee's Shadow actually somewhat strains my eyes and even my level of comprehension, as I tend to think in words, not images, and find too many visual images rather distracting and confusing. And while I can defnitely appreciate the little girl playing with shadows, making shadow puppets, having a whole and entire shadow puppet theatre so to speak, I would enjoy Shadow much more if there were either less visual detail presented or at least some accompanying text to guide the reader (or rather the viewer); and no, the "dinner is ready" blurb is not sufficient for me. Also, and perhaps even more of an issue is the fact that Shadow must be "read" on its side, and that just does not work for me, period, never has, and likely never will. And furthermore, while both Suzy Lee's Wave and Mirror would and do work well for basic level language learning (and I have in fact and indeed used especially Wave repeatedly and successfully for elementary German language activities, such as verb drills, counting activities and the like), the overabundance of images, as well as the upside-down manner in which Shadow has been conceptualised and printed, makes me hesitant to even consider the the latter (too much detail, especially for basic level exercises, and the layout is not all that user friendly either).