One Is Not a Pair, by Britta Teckentrup

A few weeks ago we had Britta Teckentrup’s lovely book Tree from the library and I really liked it. Unfortunately, the weeks we had it coincided with the 1-yr-old developing his own, very strong, opinions about what picture book he would tolerate being read in his presence. His taste is not that developed and he would not stand for such sophisticated illustrations, thus I didn’t get to read it as often as I would have liked.

I’m so glad we have another of Britta’s lovely books in our home. One Is Not A Pair is a graphically interesting read that will be fun for the grown up and the child.  Her style is really very engaging, I found myself drawn into the pictures and eager to see what the next page would bring. I sat to ‘quickly’ read it with a child before her nap and we were happily engaged for more than 20mins.

We’ve recently gone through a few of Bastien Contraire’s books which are similar, in that they are very graphically simple. Bastien’s books are based on the premise of finding the ‘odd-one-out’. One Is Not A Pair is based on the same idea, but not only is their one item that is odd, but all the items have a pair. Some pages are easier than others, but all require your full attention to work out which item is unique.

At the end of the book, I felt like the 3 yr old and I had done 15 wonderfully colourful, exceptionally designed worksheets and loved it. Each page we noticed (and discussed) differences in shapes, numbers, colours, and emotions. I think many of us view reading as if it is a spectrum with fun at one end and education at the other. If this is reality then One Is Not A Pair hits the dead centre of that spectrum.