Where Is Pim? by Lena Landström (review)
Deborah Stevenson · Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books./Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books · 2015
Reviewed by: Where Is Pim? by Lena Landström Deborah Stevenson, Editor Landström, Lena Where Is Pim?; tr. from the Swedish by Julia Marshall; illus. by Olof Landström. Gecko, 2015 32p Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-927271-73-5 $16.99 R 2-4 yrs The pairing from Pom and Pim is back; Pom is a sturdy orange-haired little kid and Pim is his beloved stuffed toy, with an undefinable four-limbed shape that looks like a nearsighted grandma’s attempt at making an octopus. This time Pom and Pim are out in the park having fun—until a dog eagerly catches the flying Pim and gallops off. An upset Pom hunts high and low, with a little canine help, but finds only park detritus; fortunately, Pim’s abductor happily romps back and reunites the two, then bounds off in the company of the pooch who assisted Pom. Text is spare, only a few deftly chosen words per page, which gives the narrative a staccato rhythm that emphasizes the situational urgency and also puts more focus on the art. The illustrations are cleanly designed line and watercolor touched with colored pencil; while some compositions give amusing takes on Pom’s retrieval of objects that turn out not to be Pim, the major focus is on Pom’s distress. Pom is amusingly rather Pimlike, with no identifiable gender and a round head with eyes halfway down, just as Pim’s round center body has eyes (wittily turning, cartoonlike, into crosses when the dog runs off with Pim) in the middle. Some viewers might not realize that the dog who’s helping Pom isn’t the one who took Pim (they’re both brown-spotted white dogs but their markings are mirror opposites), but they’ll just see the revelation as a rather pleasing twist. With as much suspense and much more pathos than Taken, this will keep young viewers on the edge of the rug until the joyous resolution. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois