Kirkus Reviews

Through a magical book, two faraway children meet. This wordless picture book picks up directly where The Red Book (2004) left off: the third illustration in this is almost identical to the last one in the previous, with a tiny smile added. This time, a black child wearing a blue hoodie and glasses is the finder of the titular red book. The child bikes home through city snow and climbs the stairs of a quirky, cupola-topped house. Opened, the red book's pages feature increasing close-ups that reveal a beige-skinned child in a fishing boat afloat off a faraway island. That child pulls in a similar red book from the sea and opens it to see the bespectacled city kid back at home. They're looking at each other! Wordlessly, they form a mutual fondness. The kid in the boat finds an ingenious way to cross the world to their new friend—not through the book (it's not that kind of magic) but, delightfully, towed by a pelican. There's sadness and doubt during a brief period when the kids can't see each other, and then there's joy. Lehman's illustrations are structured like comic panels, varying in size and shape and surrounded by white space; in watercolor, gouache, and ink she shows figures and landscapes with gentle textures and neat black outlines. A peaceful, wordless adventure that, as the final frames hint, will continue after it's closed. (Picture book. 3-5)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

The Red Book, Lehman-s Caldecott Honor-winning wordless picture book, imagined a red volume that connected two children across a great distance. On the final page of that story, a child on a bicycle finds the red book. Lehman-s sequel starts at that moment. The boy races home with his treasure and opens it to a page with a map of islands; an image of a girl in a dinghy comes into view, as through a telescope. She has a red book, too; two consecutive images show them holding their books up delightedly with the image of the other child displayed in a kind of hall-of-mirrors moment. The girl sets out to meet the boy, and both drop their books on the way in their haste. One copy is picked up by the girl who starred in the first story. Is it an endless loop? Who will find the books next? Lehman gives readers the satisfaction of learning more about the original story while leaving them with more to ponder. Together, the two volumes form a pleasing and perplexing Möbius strip of a story. Ages 4-7. (Nov.)

Starred Review ALA Booklist (Sun Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

Starred Review Any list of best picture books would not be committing heresy to include Lehman's The Red Book (2004), a wordless tour de force that lyrically illustrates the empathy-inducing and transportive powers of books. This also wordless sequel begins with the final pages of that book, as an African American boy on a bicycle finds the fallen red book in a gray winter city. Climbing to his favorite hiding spot, he opens it and connects with another child who's found a companion red book while rowing near a tropical island. Anticipation and joy build as Lehman brings the kids together in her warm, embracing illustrations, whose deceptive simplicity plays inventively with page and picture borders and whose complicated hues bring out the muffled teeming of a snowy city or the gentle waves and inviting blue sky around a balmy island. Readers unfamiliar with The Red Book will get the full trippy impact, as this story plays out the same ingenious and emotionally resonant beats. For those who already love the first book, however, there's something extraspecial. Just when you think Lehman is content to simply play out the same deeply humane story once again, she folds this tale into a closed loop with the first in a twist ending that will blow many young minds (and some not-so-young ones, as well).

School Library Journal Starred Review (Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 CDT 2017)

K-Gr 3Picking up exactly where The Red Book leaves off, the boy who finds the mysterious red book at the end of that story takes it home to examine it in this one. Wordless panels show him looking through the pages at the islands that fans of the first tale will recognize, zooming in until he sees a girl fishing in a boat and finding the red book in the water. When she opens the book, she finds pages revealing the boy in his room. Illustrating the power of a book to connect, she uses her intuition (and a baguette and a seagull) to find her way out of the narrative and to her new friend's door who, in his excitement, drops the red book. The smart, clean art with smooth bold lines offers so much to observe and puzzle through while telling the complex story effortlessly without the use of text. This title stands alone but pairing it with the first work makes it all the more magical, particularly because the end brings the story into a breathtaking circle. The final page showing a girl finding the lost red book in the snow is from the beginning of the previous volume, deepening the intrigue around the red book and its time sequence while providing many opportunities for discussion and creative thinking. VERDICT Whether being explored for pleasure or for academic purposes, this title will add value to any library collection, especially ones that have copies of its predecessor.Julie Roach, Cambridge Public Library, MA