Making a World: What We'll Build--Plans for Our Together Future by Oliver Jeffers

WHAT SHALL WE BUILD, YOU AND I?

I'LL BUILD YOUR WORLD AND YOU'LL BUILD MINE.

WE'LL BUILD A WATCH TO KEEP THE TIME.

A father wants a place to keep his little daughter safe. He has his red toolbox--with hammers, saws, pliers, nails and screws, and all the rest--and with the urge to protect, he builds first a stout red door and a doorstep. But he knows she needs more--more rooms, strong brick walls, a roof to shelter her.

But that is not enough to keep them safe, so he digs an underground shelter... just in case. Or perhaps a castle, where they can cower in the keep while frightful figures (a Viking, a witch and a dentist) scale the crenellated walls? Or perhaps they are not in danger, so he'll build a welcoming table inside for all that come?

Perhaps he can devise an ocean liner that won't sink in a storm? Or perhaps he can build a faraway getaway.... a tiny house by a pond?

A PLACE TO STAY WHEN ALL IS LOST,

TO KEEP THE THINGS WE LOVE THE MOST.

But by this time both are weary and perhaps too tired to do more than build a fire to get them through the night.

THEN WE'LL SAY GOOD NIGHT,

AS ALL'S ALL RIGHT.

In his latest picture book, What We'll Build: Plans For Our Together Future (Philomel Books, 2020), the best-selling and award-winning author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers has a book for parent and child to share quietly. Jeffers' rhyming text and witty illustrations, executed with his signature lovely lines and little red fox, and his wide palette of colors--from cerise to coral, lavender to lilac, magenta and mauve--will please preschool and primary students, but this book is really one written for sharing between parent and child who together are building their own world. As School Library Journal says, "An intensely personal statement of intergenerational fellowship."