Petit, the Monster (review)

Poor Petit is a little confused: sometimes he's a good boy and sometimes he's a bad boy, and that's a hard contradiction to work out. It doesn't help that these distinctions get pretty fine ("Petit is bad when he tells a lie and good at telling stories") and consequences don't always align with intentions ("Why is it that the harder Petit tries to be a good child the worse things turn out?"), but finally he just concludes that he's a mix, "some kind of good-bad boy." Argentinian author-illustrator Isol touches imaginatively on the challenging complexities of behavioral morality, and the book gains special traction from going into failed intentions and contrary correlations (the girl whose hair Petit pulls still likes to sit next to him) while keeping the concept easily kid-accessible. Isol's quirky illustrations feature pencil and oil pastels, mostly in the lightly scrawled linework, while computer planes of color fill in figures and backgrounds. There's an interesting dual drafting technique, with black linework echoed by a sister line in a palette-suitable tone (gold, spice, and aqua are predominant), and a pastel shadow behind Petit shaped to indicate his fiercely wolflike or sweetly bunnyish mode; there's also a Roz Chast touch to the vigorous, somewhat childlike style. Kids will appreciate this playful approach to one of their biggest moral conundrums.