Monsieur Pierre
Clever illustrative touches and an adventurous main character make this a fun story about the pleasures of friendship.
In Anne Dana’s delightful picture book Monsieur Pierre, a small orange octopus with a mustache sees the sights in Paris and California.
Monsieur Pierre Poulpe, taken from the ocean as a baby octopus, finds himself living in a Paris fountain. He sets off from there, with the goal of making a friend in the big city, and sees the river Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Montmartre; he does not, however, find a friend. Back at the fountain again, he meets two tourists, children who offer to take him back home to California with them. Pierre trades in his beret for a baseball cap and embraces the California lifestyle, enjoying a seaweed smoothie, a yoga class, beach activities, and the local sights.
The book’s text is simple and effective, with cute observations from Monsieur Pierre’s point of view, like his thoughts on the Mona Lisa: “Pierre tried making silly faces at the lady. The lady kept smiling but didn’t make silly faces back at Pierre.”
The hand-drawn illustrations in Monsieur Pierre, rendered in ink and watercolor pencils, appear raw and rough at times, with the occasional asymmetrical line showing through. But where in some books this would be a negative, here the “natural” illustrations work, seeming to flow organically with the story as Monsieur Pierre moves from one locale to the next.
Dana does an excellent job with the layout of the pages, with eye-catching angles and lots of neat touches, like Monsieur Pierre taking his picture with a selfie stick and insertions of Monsieur Pierre and the children into real photographs of famous sights around California. The details and colors of Paris are especially well done, and young children will enjoy spotting the Mademoiselles Poissons—the fish from Monsieur Pierre’s home fountain—as they appear in the page backgrounds.
Monsieur Pierre is a fun introduction for young children—to Paris, and to the pleasures of sharing an experience with friends.
Reviewed by
Peter Dabbene
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
