Mirror – Jeannie Baker

Mirror is a collage picture book, the type that Jeannie Baker is renown for. It mirrors the lives of two boys and their families one who lives in a city in Australia and one that lives in Morocco. Their lives are very different but there are some things that connect them.....some things are the same for all families no matter where they live.
The book is a visual feast! So many things too look at, marvel and compare. There are pages on mealtimes, travel, and shopping, baking, and home routines. Linking the two stories together is a carpet that is woven by the family in Morocco, is sold, and makes its way to a shop in Australia where it is bought by the other family.
The collages are constructed layer by layers using a combination of natural and artificial materials such as sand, dirt, plant material, fabric, wool, tin and plastic. They are then photographed to collate into the finished book.
The book is wonderfully presented. Both sides of the book open out. The left side of the book opens like all English books and shows the pictures of the Australian family. The pages on the right hand side of the book depict the Moroccan family and opens how most Arabic books are read, from back to front from right to left. This allows both sides to be opened simultaneously so that the families can be compared.
This book was always out of the book box and my children would keep returning to it to look at the pictures and to find something new. It was my 9 year old how pointed out that the carpet appears in both sides of the story.
A fantastic book for all ages that is short listed for the Australian Children's Book Association's: Picture Book of the Year and I think it is almost a certainty to win. 10/10