I think Tao Nyeu may rapidly be becoming my favorite children's book author/illustrator of all time. Looking through the book, my response was to gasp in wonder on more than one occasion. Aptly titled, beautiful. ( )

Wonder Bear, a wordless picture book, starts off with two children climbing a hill to plant a garden. One row is for watermelon and the other is for...a hat? The children fall asleep next to the garden and as they sleep a vine begins to grow full of magical flowers. Emerging from one of the flowers is Wonder Bear, wearing a hat. Ah-ha! Once the hat is removed, a group of monkeys jump out and entertain the children. Wonder Bear blows and sea creatures begin to fly through the air. This is a book that is sure to delight. Because there are no words, the story can be different every time, encouraging children's imaginations and storytelling. ( )

I stumbled across this at my local library's book sale and fell instantly in love with its gorgeous whimsy. A stunning debut. ( )

I don't get it.  Judging by friends' reviews on GR, they don't love it either.  I did love Squid and Octopus, though. ( )

I was really predisposed to love this book but I didn't. I'll admit though that there's a lot of creativity in both the content and the imagery. I usually like wordless stories but this time I wasn't touched. The illustration style is very bold, and I'm sure many will be drawn to it, but I neither cared for the drawings nor the color palette. It's strange, because individually I fancy the colors used, it just didn't work for me. The story could have had more drama or depth, but it's geared towards really young kids, so we're not the target audience. My five year old was however both amused and delighted, but he won't pick it up again. I could compare the style of this book to some of [a:Kevin Henkes'|193|Kevin Henkes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1257746190p2/193.jpg] stuff, he sometimes makes these odd choices with colors, such as in [b:My Garden|7149888|My Garden|Kevin Henkes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1268853281s/7149888.jpg|7415051], [b:A Good Day|317813|A Good Day|Kevin Henkes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347261741s/317813.jpg|308607], [b:Old Bear|3429644|Old Bear|Kevin Henkes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347664012s/3429644.jpg|3470539], [b:Little White Rabbit|8471012|Little White Rabbit|Kevin Henkes|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1348532050s/8471012.jpg|13335679]. Yet, I tend to think his books are brilliant, whereas in this one I didn't quite understand the choices made. Also, I'm not at all opposed to the pictures being more or less graphic, for instance I'm really fond of [b:Along a Long Road|9642660|Along a Long Road|Frank Viva|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344270931s/9642660.jpg|14530106] and [b:A Trip to the Bottom of the World with Mouse|13414820|A Trip to the Bottom of the World with Mouse|Frank Viva|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1333581515s/13414820.jpg|18714281]. Anyway, I'm using a lot of words to attempt to describe where this book went wrong with me. Why would I care? Because, I was so longing to like it. This said, I will be glad to read more books by this author to try to change my mind. So, happily moving on to [b:Bunny Days|7386860|Bunny Days|Tao Nyeu|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1356095700s/7386860.jpg|9245957] and [b:Squid and Octopus Friends for Always|13447325|Squid and Octopus Friends for Always|Tao Nyeu|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1335676245s/13447325.jpg|18963846] ... ( )