Mac Barnett

With a supply of yarn that never runs out, Annabelle knits for everyone and everything in town until an evil archduke decides he wants the yarn for himself.

Extra yarn

Sarah Sammis

Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett is illustrated by Jon Klassen, the author of I Want My Hat Back and This is Not My Hat (review coming). For fans of Klassen's books, there's a cameo tucked inside.

Annabelle finds a box of yarn. It's the most colorful thing in her dreary village — a place that reminds me of the painting Jagers in de Sneeuw (1565) by Pieter Bruegel. Just imagine that snowy landscape filled with Klassen's characters, being slowly but surely covered in knitted sweaters and blankets and whatnot.


Presented with a box full of yarn, Annabelle sits down and knits herself a sweater. When the box remains full of yarn she knits sweaters for all her friends and family, neighbors, and the local wildlife and pets. When she still has yarn, she yarn bombs the village and the forest until everything is colorful.

It's here that her knitting draws the attention of a jealous duke. He steals the box but the yarn isn't there. It doesn't matter if you have the tools and supplies if you don't have the drive to create.

Gracie Marsden

Lara Engle

Extra Yarn is just so sweet and adorable. The illustrations make me squee! I can't wait to read it to my little bitty granddaughter.

Katie Day

A creative cumulative tale, a colorful example of a kind of Zeno's paradox or the miracle of the loaves and fishes -- where it seems impossible, but there's always something left over and it's always enough. In this case it's Annabelle's box of yarn which allows her to spread warmth via sweaters in a cold little town on a cold afternoon. It's also an emotional warmth -- the generosity of a home-made gift. In the beginning of the book Nate's jealousy and ridicule of Annabelle is overcome by a sweater. When the remarkable girl and her infinite knitting eventually become famous, a greedy archduke (fond of clothing) attempts to buy the box. Annabelle steadfastly refuses. His subsequent midnight theft of the magic box is bested by the box itself -- which proves to be empty in his hands. And his curse on Annabelle and her future happiness, as he throws the box out the window into the sea, is reversed by it simply floating back to her. We don't actually see Annabelle opening the box at the end, so it is left to the reader to decide if the box is really empty or not. Dogs and cats are sprinkled throughout - all in colorful sweaters, of course.

The brown blockcuts on the homemade-looking (scratchy) sepia paper backgrounds are slowly stamped with the warmth of (mainly) red, orange, and yellow pearl/knit stitches. The evil archduke is portrayed in dark browns, while the night he steals the box is washed in dark grey-green, bled to the edges.

Extra yarn

Reviews