Extra Yarn is a picture book written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Klassen. It was published in 2012, and was a Caldecott Honor Book in 2013, which means it has already been honored as one of the best picture books of that year.
It is easy to see why. The book’s language is simple and efficient. It feels like a fairy tale: it exists in an unnamed time, and there’s unexplained magic. The inciting incident to the story just happens: Annabelle finds “a box filled with yarn of every color.”
She uses the yarn to knit herself a sweater. There’s still “some extra yarn,” so she knits one a sweater for her dog Mars. Then for Nate (an adult who mocks her out of jealousy of her sweater) and his dog. There’s still “extra yarn,” so Annabelle makes sweaters for every student in her class at school. Her teacher says it is “Impossible!” for her to do this, but she does. (This is when the yarn transitions from possibly realistic–a box with a lot of yarn–to magic.)
Annabelle continues to knit “sweaters for everyone, except Mr. Crabtree,” who doesn’t wear them. She makes him a hat.
The knitting gives the images throughout the book texture. Everyone (except Crabtree) wearing sweaters gives the book (and town) unity. The different colors of the yarn and the fact that humans and all other animals (including birds and what looks to be a bear). A pickup truck gets one too (making this an invitation to pause the book and ask kids what else she could make a sweater for).
Eventually, news of Annabelle’s unending yarn spreads into the larger world, producing first a generalized fame and then a visit from “an archduke, who was very fond of clothes.” (A great line: a very fairy tale way to sum up a person in a single line.)
He tries to buy the magic yarn. Annabelle refuses, despite huge offers.
So he steals the box and takes it back to his (appropriately black) castle, where he opens it and finds…nothing.
He tosses the box out the window and curses Annabelle to be unhappy.
But it makes its way back to Annabelle, and his curse fails.
She keeps knitting. And is happy.
Pure fairy tale logic. Unexplained. Pure of heart. And illustrated with unique images.
