More-igami

March 21, 2016
From collecting snow globes to inventing palindromes, unusual passions and interests abound among humans young and old. The hero of Kleber’s debut, a brown-skinned boy named Joey, is obsessed with all things folded. When readers first see him, he’s staring dreamily at a neatly folded taco; he also loves maps and the accordion, and he even sleeps in a folding bed (one that doesn’t like to stay unfolded, not that Joey appears to mind). After a Japanese student’s mother introduces origami to Joey’s class, he dives headlong into practicing, using whatever he can get his hands on—homework, his sister’s sheet music, and money from his mother’s purse. With the family fed up, Joey heads to his favorite Mexican restaurant, where the table napkins give him an idea. Smart design decisions—including a square trim size, origami-patterned end pages, and subtle fold marks that divide Karas’s (A Poem in Your Pocket) images into vignettes—create a graceful visual underpinning to the theme, and an origami project is included for readers. It’s a quiet but effective reminder of the value of practice. Ages 4–8. Illustrator’s agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.