The Missing Piece Meets the Big "O"

Title: “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O”

Author: Shel Silverstein                                

Genre: Picture Book                                     

Publisher: HaperCollins Publishers

Copyright Date: 1981                     

Pages in Book: 98 pages

Reading Level: K-3 grade

Summary: The missing piece is lonely, and longs for a circle to join. But whenever it comes across a circle (or an O) with a piece missing, it never seems to fit. It’s either too small, too bit, to short, too fat, not the right shape, etc. It finds a “O” that it fits perfectly in, and for a while they’re happy together. But randomly one day, it starts to find itself growing out of the “O”. Lonely again, it goes in search of another “O”.  Finally one day, it comes across a circle that doesn’t have any pieces missing. How did the “o” find its missing piece? It realized one day that it didn’t need to feel lonely anymore and decided to make itself whole by rolling, and squirming itself until that missing piece wasn’t missing anymore. The missing piece is no longer just a piece, but an “O”.

Reaction: I thought it was a cute book, but not one that I would read to my children. There are a lot of pages, and I just wasn’t able to really get much out of it.

Recommendation: I would probably recommend this book to little children, but not ones older than kindergarten. I just don’t feel that it’s a book they would be interested in. 

Potential Problems/Conflicts: For me, the book was very bland. My main problem with this book was that he pictures didn’t capture my eye, and I didn’t feel that it was one that I would want to read again.