On a dull, rainy day, a little girl wearing a paper crown and her pet tabby cat wait by the window for the mail. When a package arrives, its brightly colored green tag hints at its content and the fun that’s about to transpire in Just Add Glitter. This truly crafty picture book combines author Angela DiTerlizzi’s bouncy rhymes with illustrator Samantha Cotterill’s cut-paper patterned scenes that she arranges in a 3-D environment before photographing them.
Once the rosy-cheeked girl opens the box, full of glitter, she brightens her drawings, paper crown and bedroom bit by bit, offering readers this advice: “Try a speck, a fleck, a sprinkle. / See how things begin to twinkle. / A little here, a little there, / Glitter, glitter anywhere!” Unable to resist the shimmering change, she introduces purple glitter to her creations and decides to brighten the entire house with “MORE glitter.” Readers can share the joy visually and tactilely by running their fingers over the increasingly bumpy, glitter-covered pages.
Up to their necks in glitter, however, the girl and her tabby realize there can be too much of a good thing. After sweeping it up, the girl looks in the mirror and also realizes that under all the bling, the most important part is just being herself. But that doesn’t mean a girl still doesn’t want to have fun. A concluding delivery of a package with googly eyes lets readers imagine what comes next. This delightful, vibrant story encourages children to sparkle inside and out.
