Slight of text but ingenious of art and paper engineering, this iteration of the familiar hand rhyme creates a storyline and a humming urban neighborhood in six pop-up spreads.
Depicted as a brown-skinned, overalls-clad child with extra sets of arms and legs, the tiny spider is barely noticeable at the outset as he strolls along past a pop-up apartment house and a storefront—each of which offers engrossing glimpses through a doorway and windows of a busy, mixed population of people and bugs. Subsequent openings pull up the requisite drain spout, then bring out puffy clouds (with faces) dispensing a flurry of raindrops (ditto), leading to the washout, a big sun rising up and, at last, the spider’s delayed arrival at a homey rooftop web. Egielski fills every square millimeter with bright colors and crisp, often-fanciful detail—some of the buildings in his streetscape are constructed from jars and kitchen appliances—and plays with scale by adding, in some scenes, full-sized leaves or human pedestrians. The visual rhythms are enhanced by pieces large and small that rise or slide sequentially into place as the spreads widen.
Like the song itself, this terrific miniepic bears, and demands, repeating. (Pop-up/nursery rhyme. 4-7)