THE GIRL WHO LOST HER SMILE

Czernecki’s stylized art, all clean, simple lines and saturated colors, creates a strong visual impact, but the muddy accompanying story will leave readers utterly confused. The sun shines and the stars sparkle at young Jehan’s smile, until one gray day she misplaces it. Her father and other residents of Baghdad bring in fire breathers and sword swallowers, then artists from distant Italy and China, all to no avail. Finally a wise hoopoe bird flies off to search the world for someone who can bring her smile back, and returns with a youth who sets her to scraping a blank wall. The wall begins to glow: “. . . its beauty had always been there. It had just been waiting for her to uncover it. Jehan began to smile.” Oh, of course. Alrawi bases this on a passage from Sufi mystic Rumi’s Mathnawi, but perhaps something was lost in the translation. (Picture book. 6-8)