Extra Yarn

About the Book

One day a girl named Annabelle who lives in a gloomy, snow-covered town finds a small box of colored yarn. After she knits herself a sweater, there’s extra yarn so she knits a sweater for her dog, Mars. But even then, there’s extra yarn so she knits a sweater for a boy and his dog. When her teacher declares Annabelle’s colorful sweater distracting, the girl says she’ll knit a sweater for everyone else in the classroom. The teacher says, “Impossible!” but Annabelle succeeds. So it goes until even the buildings in town have colorful sweater coverings. When a greedy archduke steals the box, it magically returns to Annabelle–to keep knitting. Klassen’s outstanding, elegant pictures show the gloomy town and its people transformed by color.

Why this Book?

What looks like a stark wintry, perhaps Scandanavian, town turns out, surprisingly, to have magic both in the way the yarn in the small box is never used up and the way the box mysteriously floats back to Annabelle from far away. The knitting is magic in its own way, making everyone and everything–even a pickup truck–more colorful. Barnett excels at concise, dryly funny writing. Klassen excels at using the pages to create imaginative settings and humorous characters. His animals are especially entertaining, clad reluctantly in sweaters. Witty and joyful.