All By Himself?

Publication Date: September 6, 2022 by Beach Lane Books

A child spends the day building a castle with wooden blocks—all by himself! But was it really only his work that made his masterpiece possible?

What does it take to create something new? A whole lot of work—and a whole lot of people! The child may be the one to stack the building blocks. But someone had to transport the blocks, and someone had to carve the blocks from wood, and someone had to plant the tree that provided the wood for the blocks, and so on!

Written by National Book Award finalist Elana K. Arnold and gorgeously illustrated by Giselle Potter, this deceptively simple story reminds us that we are all connected—and that no one builds anything all by themselves.

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Reviews

  • The eponymous “himself,” a white-presenting youth who proudly builds an elaborate block structure, doesn’t appear for the first half of this cumulative picture book. Instead, Arnold’s (Just Harriet) “The House that Jack Built”–tinged narrative and Potter’s (Sister Wish) watercolor and ink art—which has a stylized geometry and playful directness reminiscent of Grant Wood—introduce the people, portrayed with various skin tones, who make the child’s triumphant moment possible. First is the tree farmer who planted a seedling “years ago/ before the child was even born,” followed by an arborist and woodcutter; then it’s on to the studios of the woodcarver and artist who fashion the blocks, the truck driver who delivers them to the shop where the shopkeeper puts them up for display, and, finally, the grandmother who buys them. “Because of all this,/ today/ the child built a masterpiece.// ALL BY HIMSELF!” Lightly underscoring the message, the story then shifts into reverse, reviewing the work involved, and ending not with the farmer but rather, “of course…/ the tree itself.” With a measured tone and quiet beauty, the creators celebrate people’s interdependency, indebtedness to nature, and the importance of recognizing one’s support structures.

    -Publisher’s Weekly