Donna Diamond

Entirely wonderful short MG fiction. Every animal-loving preteen ought to have this book to hand. From the strong beginning with Balto's story, through the mysterious White Mustang and the three lost whales and Sugar the cat who finds her family after they leave her behind- all these very short, very accessible true stories are wonderful. George knows just how to hook her audience.

'The Shadow' is a wordless picture book by Donna Diamond. Such an interesting book. When it comes to wordless books, the author/illustrator has to rely on invoking emotions from the reader(viewer for wordless?) The story focuses on a little girl returning home alone. From the very start you see a dark shadow with glowing yellow eyes. In every page spread the threatening shadow is attached to the girl. After the girl is finished drawing she see her shadow and becomes frightened! Every time show more she moves the shadow with glowing eyes follows her. It taunts her by mimicking everything the girl does. Fed up, the girl becomes frustrated with the dark shadow scaring her and fixes the bright light bulb on a wall in her room. The dark shadow is no more. The story is very well done with its artwork. Every page spread has a sort of fish eye lens look as the view point seems as if their is an eerie spectator following the girls life. With no other characters being around you get a lonely feeling reading the story. I began to become scared with the book opened. The shadow is very scary to look in its eyes. When the girl realizes how scary the shadow looks and places her arms up, the shadow mimics her fingers, but distorting them into claws to add a fearsome look to it. The detail in the story beyond these to characters is interesting as well. The girl is seen drawing scary creatures before she discovers the scar looking shadow.This tells me these were thoughts on her mind and took form as the scary shadow. This continues in the story as you can see two dolls sitting on the girl's shelf in her room start smiling and are seen cheering as the conquers her fears of being afraid of her shadow. An amazingly illustrated story by Diamond in its art, story, tone and moral. show less

Speaks to every child's fear of shadows. Without words using beautiful, dark hued pictures, this book tells the story of a little girl seemingly unaware of her shadow creeping up behind her. She turns to confront the scary shadow, makes it submit, and goes to sleep in peace. The last page shows the shadow looking menacing under the bed again. I could do without the last page. Great to read before bedtime!

This is a book about a little girl who feels that she is being followed by a scary shadow. Often the shadow simply looks as if it is hers but sometimes it really does look menacing. She continues to be followed by this shadow until she turns on a bright light and it disappears. She is now able to fall asleep and while she is sleeping we see the menacing shape again under her bed.
This is a cute story and fun to interpret on our own since it does not have words. The illustrations are very well show more done and the little girl's facial expression are fantastic. I like the way the image is a little distorted. It makes the picture look surreal and creepy, almost like a dream. All of these aspects convey a sense of mystery. I think it would be interesting to let children make up their own story to these images and see what they come up with. show less