Square

What’s it about?

The story.

Square pushes a heavy cube up a hill to his cave. He does this every day. When the cube crumbles and breaks apart, it leaves something, something that Circle, passing by, immediately recognises as art. She is amazed. She is moved. She tells everyone Square is a genius. Square does not know what she is talking about. Mac Barnett's text is even more minimal here than in Triangle: Square says almost nothing, and the gap between what Circle sees and what Square understands is where the comedy and the philosophy both live. For children, it is simply funny that Circle is so excited about something Square cannot see. For adults, it resonates as a meditation on how art gets made, by accident, through labour, in ways the maker doesn't always intend or understand. Jon Klassen's illustrations make the crumbling cube genuinely beautiful; the colours shift across the page as the light changes. The warmest and most inward-looking of the three books, and the most rewarding for parents and carers who want a picture book that gives them something to think about too.