What Goes Around Comes Around

I’ve just been working my way through a cart of new books to be added to the Doucette Library’s collection and really enjoyed, Little Blue Chair by Cary Fagan, illustrated by Madeline Kloepper.

It’s a wonderful example of a circular story that leaves the reader feeling content that everything has a time and place and things will end up as they should.

So, there’s a little boy named Boo with a little blue chair that is very much part everything he does in a day – sitting for reading and eating both inside and out, playing and even sleeping.  But when he out grows his chair, his mother places the chair on the curb with a note to offering it to someone else.

We follow the chair’s journey to various homes, having varying purposes and living with several people who make use of the chair.  It has a very rich and varied life, if chairs have lives, from the exotic to the mundane, traveling over land, sea and air, ‘working’ in a carnival, as a seat for riding an elephant, a bird feeder, a plant stand and a child’s chair.

But, circumstances allow for the chair to serendipitously arrive at the door of a man named Boo who thinks this chair looks kind of familiar.

The illustrations have a simple, old-fashion feel to it with a muted palette of colours. The book conveys a more practical sensibility rather than nostalgic about the ever changing purpose of this particular chair. It's a good thing that this chair changes hands and remains useful rather than being discarded or kept to become clutter.

This would make a great read aloud for grades Kindergarten to grade 2 or 3.