A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka (2011)

I try to look at all the Caldecott and Newberry winners every so often - I was three behind on the Caldecott's. This also got a New York Times best illustrated children's book award. OK, it is cute, telling a story without a word, mostly from the dog's perspective - almost all the images are from a dog's level, only the last few show the humans involved. Daisy loves her ball, plays with it, sleeps with it, and goes out to the park with it, where another dog bites and deflates it. I guess a young child could tell the story as they flipped through the pages, but I expected some words in an award winning book. Though come to think of it, there have been some other powerful books without words. Peter Spier comes to mind. I will have to go upstairs and see how many other winners are wordless. Towards the end I started focusing on the watercolors. I tried my hand at playing with watercolors one day this summer, and remembered how fascinating and, to me, uncontrollable they are.