Review: The Onion's Great Escape

Sara Fanelli is a UK based artist born in Florence. Her work hangs in the Tate Gallery and she illustrates for The New Yorker and has won countless international awards for her stunning picture books.

Her wonderful new book The Onion’s Great Escape is part activity book, part picture book and has been dubbed as “Basic Philosophy for Kids”. It’s really too much a design masterpiece to
be called just an activity book.

There are two stories running alongside each other, the onions and your own.

Children have to to help the onion escape from the hot frying pan by responding to and filling in each of the questions that appear on each page. Then you peel back the next layer of the onion and move on to the next question.

By the end of the book you have a gorgeous 3D mini flip book that becomes completely detached from the original book and the child ends up with a collection of thoughts and ideas to keep forever.

The onion’s adventure is not one to be missed either. An onion was an interesting choice to focus an adventure story on but an onion does have many layers and the idea of peeling and layers does go hand in hand.

The book poses questions about time, memory, what makes you happy etc but there are also questions like if a chicken eats a worm and you eat the chicken, have you eaten the worm?

There’s lot of space to respond too, either by drawing pictures or writing. It’s a wonderful way to spark creativity for any age and you even end up with an extra book at the end.

Great for both and boys and girls to tackle during the holidays and also the grown-ups as
well. I think it’s suitable for ages 8 to 108!

Reviewed by Barbara on ABC 702 Sydney