TENNYSON’S BIG SECRET

In Benjamin’s picture book, a boy reveals a secret talent in a guessing game.

Tennyson is a fair-skinned boy with brown eyes, brown hair, “and a button nose. Cute, isn’t he?”Tennyson has a magical power that the narrator encourages readers to guess. First, the narrator suggests Tennyson can pull an elephant from a magician’s hat. That’s not the right answer—but can Tennyson paint beautifully, ride his hobby horse faster than racehorses, or drum louder than a rock star? The narrator suggests that Tennyson could be a soccer wiz, build a skyscraper from blocks, or bounce on a ball to the moon. But none of these is quite right…until the narrator reveals the big secret on the final page. Benjamin uses accessible vocabulary words to encourage emergent readers to follow along. Trimarco’s humorous mixed-media illustrations, each featuring a cartoon Tennyson and a blue-gray cat against a painted background, explain Briticisms in the text (such as saying footballinstead of soccer). In each image, the cat reacts to each question, sometimes quite humorously; Tennyson’s activities are also comical, such as when he plays a drum set with bare feet, using his toes to hold a mallet. Although some readers might argue that Tennyson could not do some of the “impossible” things described, they’ll find the ending squeezes them just right.

An imagination sparker for the very young.