This new picture book from the popular team of Hutchins and Ohi is a characteristically gentle and humorous story exploring the concepts of direction and size and the experience of disorientation – all topics of interest to preschool-age children.

The story concerns a little boy and his goat who journey away from home, get lost, and are brought safely home again. Setting out like Little Red Riding Hood to visit his grandmother, the boy does try to follow his father’s directions, but finds them confusing: is it under or over the bridge? around or through the trees? in front of or behind the waterfall? The boy’s mistakes result in a meeting, not with Red Riding Hood’s scary wolf, but with another fairy tale character – a Giant Baby. Along the way, the boy finds various puzzling objects – things “long and round like a rope,” “round and shiny like a dinner plate,” and “squishy and lumpy like a jellyfish.” After the first reading, the child, savouring their qualities, can recognize what they really are: the Giant Baby has lost its shoelace, its button, and the nipple of its bottle. The story climaxes in restoration and reassurance, with an extra-large fold-out picture of the Giant Mother holding the two small creatures in her hand, as she sets them right on their way to Grandmother’s house. The durability of the book, especially in public libraries, may be affected by the fold-out: little hands will have trouble with the folds, making the nice concept of the extra-large picture less of an asset in situations not controlled by an adult reader.