CIRCLE ROUND

A circle grows larger and more inclusive.

Children—diverse in gender, skin tone, ethnicity, hairstyle and color, and physical ability—meet while playing, initially separately, in the park. What unites them is engagement with round things: toys (ball, balloons, Frisbees, hula hoops); playground equipment; wheeled items (bike, wheelchair); and other circular objects (bubbles, cookies). The group expands in size and fun. After the kids clasp hands to form a literal circle, one child observes that a newcomer (with a dog) has just arrived. Guess who completes the friendship ring? This ode to kindness and a welcoming spirit is cheerful and textually minimal, focusing on number words one to 10, active verbs, and the words circle or circles in boldfaced larger type. Lively ink illustrations feature smiling children enjoying one another’s company and also, notably, being mutually helpful. One child uses a wheelchair and is fairly actively engaged in play; another wears hearing aids; a third, eyeglasses. Unfortunately, some illustrations suffer from a lack of clarity. On the first spread, captioned “One circle,” for instance, the verso shows a basketball, the recto, a bike. Kids would likely describe the bike’s wheels as round, therefore rightly claiming the spread includes three circles; the subsequent spread features the basketball and bike with the caption “Two circles”—but, arguably, again three circles. And so on. These interpretations may lead to conversation or frustration.

Though well meaning, this circle is a bit broken.