High Five

March 4, 2019
In this interactive picture book by the Dragons Love Tacos team, a high-five champion called Sensei, who resembles Bigfoot and wears a multicolored belt, offers to apprentice readers. It’s all to prepare for the annual high-five contest, where, Rubin writes, “high five fans from far and near/ all press their palms against the rest,/ to see whose high five is the best.” Spreads invite readers to try out their best high fives, and Salmieri employs forced perspective so that each contestant’s slapping hand extends right up to the image’s foreground. The narrative arc is relatively straightforward: there’s the training, in which the reader apparently makes a very favorable impression; followed by the big competition, which slowly ups the ante; culminating in the reader matching slaps with Octopus Jones (“He has eight hands, you just have two.../ a little uneven, it’s true”) before the winner is revealed. Although Rubin’s rhymes are only serviceable and the plot feels less sturdy than the team’s other collaborations, the pictures offer plenty of room to receive readers’ high-five innovations, and the pages crackle with Salmieri’s neon palette and scratchy, kinetic pencil lines. Ages 3–5.