Love, the app

Gr 4 Up—There are many ways to regard Siff's short story, originally published in 1964, and illustrated by Gian Berto Vanni. An unattractive little girl lives in an orphanage, desperately lonely and so ill-behaved that the orphanage director wishes to send her elsewhere. He thinks he's found his justification when the child is seen placing a note in a tree—orphanage children are forbidden to communicate with the outside world. The note, however, only says "Whoever finds this, I love you."The story is an artifact of a certain kind of mid-century European pathos, for sure. It's a small, sad, musical tale, like Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon or Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince. It is also an extremely charming example of the kind of squiggly-line pen-and-ink illustration style that picture book enthusiasts will associate most strongly with William Steig or James Thurber.But where Love the book really succeeds is in the artist's use of paper. Peepholes of all shapes pull readers through the book. Vivid, saturated colors and unexpected textures subtly remind the viewers that there is more to the story than what the words are saying. Love, the app does a magnificent job recreating these tantalizing peeks and soul-satisfying papers and enhancing them. Die-cuts curl away from the "page," images are sliced into irregular windows and gently sift away. Each scene slides or rips or lifts to show the next. These actions reveal the true meaning of the story—that what is true about a person may not be visible at first. Appearance and behavior are layers that obscure our real nature, but can be torn away and discarded like so much colored paper.Slow but cheerful music featuring glockenspiel and piano helps set the mood. Minimal extra enhancement is offered—to the extent that there is no narration available, nor a navigation aid that allows for skipping around the text. This is an artistic app, and uncompromisingly so.—Paula Willey, Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, MD