Editorial Review

“Clotilde Perrin’s The Remarkables: The Most Incredible Children I’ve Met—So Far!, translated from the French by Daniel Hahn, introduces readers to the 38 kids that the author (Inside the Villains; Gotcha!) has encountered “on my travels,” as her illustrated likeness says up front. All readers of this outsize, gorgeous, and charming picture book should find themselves represented by one of the featured kids, although why should readers limit themselves to just one?
The kids get one or two pages each to explain what makes them, as the book’s subtitle has it, incredible. Leading off is the Electric child, whose spiel begins, “Don’t come too close! I’m a live wire, born with sparking eyes and a shock of wild hair.” Many self-descriptions can be read metaphorically, as when the Royal child says, “Since the day I was born, my parents have kept me on a soft cushion sewn with threads of gold.” Still other kids’ statements are strictly fanciful, as when the Foldaway child says, “I’m easy to transport: you can fold me in two, four or even eight.”
Each layout includes a dynamic, defining illustration of the featured kid and tidy supplemental vignettes, as of the Elastic child at exercise class flexing spaghetti-like limbs and showing off “my superpowers.” The Remarkables sits somewhere between an art book and an illustrated reference book of personality types, all of which have something to recommend them, and all potential objects of identification for readers. The book concludes with an inventive quiz: “And What Sort of Remarkable Child Will You Be?” Every answer is implicitly correct, of course."—Shelf Awareness