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“Make no more clouds. I have drawn the rainbow here.” Attend the tale of Bea Wolf, and a better comic for kids you're unlikely to find anywhere.
If you think the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, and Brooklyn at that same time makes for an awkward tri-narrative, you are wrong. And if you also think that it would be highly difficult to weave three such perspectives together, there you are correct, but it can be done. The Lost Year proves as much.
Today we look at one of the latest National Book Award nominees, and the only picture book in the batch.
“You have a family, friends, a home. You go to school, and like all children, you like to play. One day, a threat appears and changes everything.”
This is the kind of book that’s going to appeal to kids young and old. A contemporary classic with ingrained appeal and the occasional jolt of weirdness to keep things interesting.
A squirrel heroine. An epic adventure. Delicious hints of familiar fairy tales (Little Red Riding Hood, naturally), and tasty treats. For the anxious child, Evergreen may well be the hero they’ve always needed.
Folks, I see the challenge before me and I raise you one Chris Harris and one Andrea Tsurumi. A literary power duo the like of which the world of literature for kids has never seen.
A book that had me laughing and biting my nails in turn. Hard to think of any other title to compare to this.
A book that takes a pretty basic concept and strings it along to its impossible, illogically logical, end. For some kids, this is going to be the book they remember for the rest of their lives.
In this book be prepared for laughs, music, snot, baby coffins, live amputations, feats of strength, bad haircuts, and (of course) family, family, family.