As with an intricately knotted Persian rug, each square inch of this book is maximized to include as much detailed beauty as possible. The case cover resembles the old frayed rug we soon learn will be replaced when the protagonists weave a new one, while the illustrations on the CIP and title pages work to establish the book’s setting and introduce characters ahead of the first page of Nayeri’s gentle text that takes us through each step of a boy and his grandmother making a rug woven from Grandpa’s sheep’s wool.   

With so many colors, patterns, and textures at play on each page, Vesper’s watercolor paintings could easily have become overwhelming, a tangled mess. Instead, her carefully balanced compositions weave seamlessly together with Nayeri’s poetic text, illuminating this Iranian family story that pays homage to twenty-five hundred years of tradition and culture and underscores the importance of trying one’s best rather than striving for perfection. 

Stamper’s stylized, pattern-rich illustrations exemplify “appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme or concept.” Each page bursts with details that convey and amplify the story’s setting of Isfahan and themes of intergenerational connection: citrus and pomegranate trees heavy with fruit; brightly colored, busy, but balanced textiles and cultural objects; an abundance of flowers and vines; Persian arched doorways; and kohl-rimmed, almond shaped eyes gazing at each other with love. 

Stamper’s illustrations also “convey information through the pictures,” both in the body of the story and in the backmatter, which visually explains the relationship of KPSI (knots per square inch) to the level of detail in a rug, and also the colors produced when wool is dyed with various botanical materials. 

While most of the illustrations are single pages or double-page spreads, Stamper chooses to employ close-up spot illustrations to draw attention to the careful knots that “curl up and to the right in the Persian style” and the way Grandma uses a comb to tighten the weave. In contrast to these zoomed-in details, one of the most striking illustrations in the story shows the pair working on a large piece of graph paper, plotting the new rug’s design together with care. On the following page, Stamper includes a diagram explaining the various parts of a Persian rug: corner ornaments, medallions, pendants, and borders. Readers come away from the book not only touched by a heartwarming family story that emphasizes effort over perfection but also enriched by significant knowledge about the rugmaking process. 

On the left side of another striking double-page spread, the reader sees the grandmother’s hands deftly weaving and knotting, while on the right, the grandson’s smaller hands tangle in the warps and wefts. The perspective is as if we the readers are seated at the loom ourselves, making it easy for the reader to feel the child’s frustration as if they were our own hands caught confused in the threads. Stamper makes excellent use of the gutter, further highlighting the divide between the pair’s skills. This spread also calls back to an earlier one introducing the loom, although in that spread, the pair’s faces, not hands, are in clear focus and locked in deep eye contact, Grandma saying, both to her grandchild and the reader, “Watch carefully.” The perspective here is as if the book’s beholder is watching the scene at the same distance from the loom as the rug weavers, and at their eye-level, too, inviting us into the story. 

During mock Caldecott discussions at the Takoma Park Maryland Library, school librarian and ALSC member Alicia Blowers noted that in illustrations showing the wool dyed blue, red, and gold with indigo, madder, and larkspur, the text references a green wool, with “some parts … more blue and some more yellow. Just like in a field.” But no green wool is shown on the page; following the characters’ eyes, both the little boy and his grandmother are looking at red wool. Blowers questions this artistic choice, saying it took her out of the story. I, however, wonder if this was intentional on illustrator Stamper’s part, perhaps a nod to the “the Persian flaw.” 

While the text, and, I posit, the illustrations, clearly convey the sentiment “nothing in this world is perfect, and nothing should pretend to be,” A Knot Is Not a Tangle is, as far as I can tell, a perfect candidate for this year’s Caldecott.

[Read The Horn Book Magazine review of A Knot Is Not a Tangle]