Lana Llama

PreS-Gr 2–The cute but conflicted title creature (not to be confused with Sonica Ellis’s Lana Llama or Barbara deRubertis’s Lana Llama) hates the ways she’s unlike “her flock”—who happen to be sheep. Lana is aware of their similarities, but embarrassed by her differences, minimizing them by contortions. Absorbed in these efforts, she misses her friends’ anxiety: they are being harassed by a bully. Finally taking note, all she has to do is stand up to her full height to scare off the dog. Being herself doesn’t seem so bad. The title gives the game away (we might have noticed Lana’s species for ourselves). Better known in Canada, Doody has a spare, naive style, using depthless compositions and bright flat-color techniques (but is that William Carlos Williams’s famous wheelbarrow among the carmine highlights?). The endpapers would make delightful wallpaper.