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Sparky! | March 11, 2015

By Jenny Offill, illustrated by Chris Appelhans (Schwartz & Wade/Random House Children’s Books, March 2014)

When her mother tells her she can only have a pet so long as it doesn’t need to be walked or bathed or fed, a young girl finds the perfect loophole in a pet sloth, Sparky. With simple, smart writing and an abundance of wit, Jenny Offill describes the adventures of a girl and her sloth – well, the main character has adventures anyway. Sparky is more or less a passive, rarely conscious companion. Chris Appelhans was nominated for Illustrator of the Year in this year’s Children’s Choice Book Awards, and it’s not hard to see why. Appelhans imbues the page with a muted, earthy, water-colored-and-charcoaled personality. Sparky is rendered particularly well with a simple, blank expression reminiscent of Oliver Jeffer’s This Moose Belongs to Me. If you could only read one picture book this year, that would be a strange limitation. However, you won’t find many books that will make you smile quite as readily as Sparky!

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