Mudkins by Stephen Gammell

It’s a dirty book of few words.  That is how I would describe Mudkins by Stephen Gammell. It is the story of an ordinary little girl playing in the rain who embarks on a magical adventure with a creature that is formed out of the mud.  The magical creature is a Mudkin, a cute little being with a baby face.  Only three pages in this book contain words and readers must draw their own conclusions about the plot from the illustrations.  Although the illustrations are a bit abstract and might be hard to decipher for some children, they are truly unique, beautiful, and seem to accurately portray a muddy mess.  My favorite part of the book was the dialog between the little girl and the Mudkin because the Mudkin’s portion of the conversation is just mud splotches.  I like this because, if read aloud, it leaves it open for the use of funny voices that children love so much.  Overall, the brightly splotched pages carry a certain freshness and energy to the reader that is very invigorating.  My only complaint about the book is that he left the main character nameless and did little to develop her character and get us readers attached to her.      
            For teachers, I think the focus with this book should be imagination, imagination, imagination!  The story is not as clear cut as other worldless books, so children will need adequate time with each page to form an opinion as to what is taking place.  That being said, because the story isn’t perfectly laid out for the reader, children’s imaginations can run wild with this story.  Also, because children and mud seem to go hand in hand, this books provides a great opportunity for kids to share or write about their own muddy stories.  
Year Published: 2011          Awards: