"Flora and the Flamingo" is a Caldecott Honor and it's easy to see why. The pictures are exquisite, which comes from Molly Idle's past of being an artist first and then doing picture books. With it's wordless feature, the pictures do a great job of telling the story of a friendship that developed between and little girl and a flamingo. I must say, although the artistic is so beautiful to me, I didn't really find much of an interest to this story. Don't get me wrong, this is a cute story, but I have seen other wordless picture books that really have the reader using their mind to interpret what is going on rather than just looking at great artwork. This is a very fun and cute wordless flip book about a young girl imitating a flamingo. It starts off show the girl trying to get into the yoga-like positions of the flamingo as they both surreptitiously peek at each other. Eventually, the young girl fails at a position and tumbles over, and the flamingo laughs at her and makes her sad. The flamingo feels bad about it so he goes to help her up, and they start dancing together and mirroring each other, and they are friends! A theme in this book is friendship, and I think that you could plan a lesson around the qualities that go into a good friendship, and how it feels when people aren't nice and what children can do when things like that happen.
What do You think about FLORA Y El Flamenco (2013)?
Wordless. Pretty illustrations--not my favorite, but still cute.
—safiya123
That flamingo was such a jerk at first, but she redeemed herself.
—Jacki
