The perfect sofa
Book Details
The perfect sofa
Fifi Kuo, London: Boxer Books, hb. 978 1 9107 1641 0, 2019, £11.99, 32pp.
Picture book, 4-6 years
The Perfect Sofa is the second book from author and illustrator Fifi Kuo. It tells the heart-warming tale of two friends, Panda and Penguin, who decide that their old sofa is no longer good enough and that a new one is due along with the adventure they go on to find it.
From page one, you fall in love with the black and white characters and follow them on their quest for a new sofa. From too small to too big all the way to too colourful and too fancy, the friends try them all. In the end, they cannot find the perfect sofa anywhere and go home after a long day. Tired from all the sofa testing, they come to realise that they had already found the perfect sofa right there in their own house.
Every page of The Perfect Sofa brings with it a new emotion and you can’t help but laugh at the friends’ expressions, especially Penguin’s on the “too colourful” sofa also featured in the book’s cover, as they sit from one sofa to the next. A talented artist, Fifi, created all of the illustrations during her MA degree; it is this raw beauty that makes her books so special. She uses little text and allows the illustrations to create the emotion on the pages. This intimate illustration style leaves the reader with a small smile on their face as they see the two friends happily content on their sofa.
Fifi’s story perfectly reminds us that sometimes, what we have been looking for has been there in front of us this whole time.
Andri Johnston