Of course, orange and blue make brown, so a smart choice as towards creating a nature-inspired palette. Orange and blue (color complements) are used to great visual and storytelling effect as accent colors. The palette is prehistoric brown with textural flecks that make the paper look like natural fiber stock. The symmetry and complements don’t end there. Can we just start there? One has brown hair and an orange beard, the other has the opposite: orange hair which presents more as a Peter Frampton/Louis XIV wig of fiery leaves and a brown beard. Their hair and beards are so long they need no clothes. The fact that they are cavemen tells us that this is a story of not just two men, but by extension of mankind and its history. The only two human characters are our misguided protagonists (or lovable antagonists), each with smart four-letter names: Inch and Grub. It is a classic keeping-up-with-the-Joneses allegory, a cautionary tale of thinking bigger-is-better and being consumed with materialism. (I have begun to buy picture books as gifts to adults.) I had purchased this book as a gift for my adult nephew who is an Oxford-educated cultural anthropologist.
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