I enjoyed Brendan Wenzel’s They All Saw a Cat–both the visuals and the ideas.
Yesterday I read Wenzel’s 2024 picture book Two Together. I once again liked the images: the book follows Bell and Bone, a cat and dog pair, and the drawings of both animals are great. They are expressive, and capture the way dogs and cats move (or lay, bend, or sit) without being strictly realistic.
The story, though, didn’t grab me as much. Kids will like seeing what they saw, heard, and smelled as they made their way through the day and world. There are lots of nice small moments to keep the pages turning. However, there was no drive or tension to keep them going. The book could have ended earlier or much later, so long as they ended up home at some point.
So, lovely and solid, but without the spark of other Wenzel.
