Thinking globally may be a tall order for kids, but who's better suited to act locally? That's one takeaway from The Knight of Little Import, Hannah Batsel's galvanizing picture-book ode to community-mindedness. Another takeaway: small (towns) can be beautiful.
From her modest town of Little Import, young knight Charlie watches enviously as the knights of fancy-schmancy Biggerborough fight "mile-high dragons and ogres on the horizon." Apparently, "Little Import just wasn't worth a monster's time," thinks Charlie. Or is it? When Charlie hears that a late-night pastry thief has hit Mr. Galette's bakery, she becomes convinced that the villain is the notorious Triple-Tier Hungerbeak. (Readers will see that the "villain" is actually a mouse.) After Charlie catches the fiendish purloiner, word of her heroism gets around, and suddenly her services are needed all over Little Import: who else can capture, say, the gruesome garden-devouring Frenzied Mudbull? (It's actually a rabbit.) Okay, so these "monsters" aren't exactly fire-breathing giants. But after several weeks of problem-solving, Charlie looks around at her tidy town and happy neighbors and sees that "dealing with small monsters had made a big difference!"
For her collages, Batsel (A Is for Another Rabbit) works with a sweepingly wide range of unfussy materials, including thread, sawdust, and artificial turf--selections true to the spirit of this tale of resourcefulness, improvisation, and pluck. Although the author isn't so artless as to say so, The Knight of Little Import delivers the message that a good imagination is more rewarding than all the money in Biggerborough. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author