Comment

Oct 18, 2014mmcbeth29 rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Extra Yarn is about a little girl who finds a box of yarn. She begins to knit, but she has leftover yarn. So she uses that leftover yarn to knit things for everyone and everything in town. But news spreads about her never-ending box of yarn and an archduke comes to buy it. The little girl won't sell so the archduke steals it. But the box is empty when he opens it. He throws a tantrum and curses the little girl. At first this book had an optimistic message. The town is black and white and apparently grumpy, but begins to color with every item the girl knits. She spreads joy wherever she knits. But then this archduke enters the scene. He brings violence to the story by stealing into her house to take the box and sending a family curse of unhappiness down on the girl because he didn't get what he wanted. There were several things about this story that did not work. First was the language of the writing. It contained sentences that were too long without stopping which made them sound very awkward. I felt like I was reading an English translation of a very old folk tale. Here is an example: "And even after she'd made a sweater for Nate and his dog, and for herself and for Mars, she still had extra yarn." Then an archduke enters the story. He belongs in a completely different time period from this story so he is out of place. It seemed like the writer needed an antagonist for the story so he pulled one from thin air. And why does the archduke have to be so nasty like a bad gothic novel? This, again, is out of place for a children's picture book. I feel like the author had an idea in his head, but was unable to come across the way he meant to here. I was often lost and did not understand all that I was meant to. Perhaps the author was trying to be too deep when a simple story about a little girl who brightens up her town would have sufficed.