Whatchamacallit? I Am Blop! by Herve' Tullet

BLACK BLOP

WHITE BLOP

 !POLB REVOCSID

BLOP is a blob--a four-lobed blob, a shape that can be almost anything the mind can imagine--a flower, a cloud, a butterfly, a Blop family, a classroom of blops in neat rows, what-ever-you-want blops.

Herve' Tullet's latest, I am Blop! (Phaidon, 2013) explores what can be done with a faithful shape like the blop. Blue blop teaches colors with an acetate overlap of yellow which yields a green blop which works both ways, forward and back. Pink and purple overlays play with a touch of red.

There are blops with faces, blops becoming animals, broken blops, measled blops, even invisible blops, blops as famous paintings, blops seen on a mirrored page. There are fill-in-the-blank blops and even punch-out blops that kids can take away to put into their own blop stories.

Herve' Tullet's books play with the very idea of the book, extending the two-dimensional page into the non-dimensional world of the imagination, as he did in in his 2011 best-seller Press Here (see my review here) and his equally imaginative The Book with a Hole. Tullet's little books have broken new ground--genre-breaking, interactive books with deceptively simple art on traditional white pages which nevertheless become interactive when mixed with the imagination of the child.  This one is no exception.

 Publishers Weekly puts in "... even the format is a novelty," and Kirkus Reviews quips "Tullet will intrigue children and encourage them to think outside the blop."