When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry…

View this picture book about a little girl named Sophie who becomes angry with her sister for trying to play with the stuffed gorilla that she wants to play with. When Sophie gets angry at her sister, she runs away from her house and climbs a big beech tree where she watches the waves and lets the calm breeze comfort her. When she feels better she climbs down and goes happily back home. The illustrations in this book are drawn in a way as to reflect her mood at that time. They are not drawn with fine lines and a lot of detail. They have wide outlines and vibrant color. In a way, they look as if they were made by a child using crayons or finger paints. They start out, before Sophie becomes angry, with more calm colors such as green. When she begins to get mad at her sister the background changes from green to hot pink and when she is at the peak of her anger, the background changes to bright red to symbolize her anger. Sophie’s anger also changes the sizes, proportions, and perspective of the pictures. The book starts off showing Sophie, her sister, the cat, and a few things on the floor and in the background. Then as her anger grows the pictures get closer in and show more of her face. One of the pictures when she is most angry has a red background and her face takes up two whole pages. The size of the picture emphasizes how big and powerful her anger has made her feel. When Sophie is stomping around her house in a fit of anger, the author helps the reader imagine the noise she is making by writing different sounds on the page as she is making them. She doesn’t just type them in, but she draws them and tries to incorporate them into the picture. One illustration shows Sophie roaring with anger. Instead of just writing that she roared with anger, there is a picture of little Sophie standing in the corner of the page and the word “roar” coming out of her mouth in the form of flames going across the entire page. As Sophie is running through the woods to the beech tree, many of the trees are drawn diagonally to show Sophie’s unstable mood. As she is running through the woods the colors and the perspective of the illustrations gradually change. The colors go from bright angry red back to more calm colors. In the end when Sophie is sitting in the beech tree the sky is bright blue and Sophie is small again compared to the other things in the picture. Overall this book is great to read to children. The illustrations on their own can tell the story. This book can also be useful in helping children understand how certain colors can make them have a certain feeling toward something. Just the illustrations alone in this book make it worthwhile to read.

– by Molly Bang