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Behold a story that runs, caterwauls, spies, sneaks, rides, and generally has a wonderful time. This is a book I can’t show my colleagues at work because my 8-year-old won’t let it out of her sight. A fairly high bit of praise, if I do say so myself.
I've read snail picture books before, but few have plumbed their humor quite as well as Tabor has in "Snail Crossing". Less a story of persistence than a lesson in karma, this may well be the first snail-adjacent picture book that has ever made me AND my kids laugh out loud for long periods of time. I can think of not better praise than that.
I’ve no doubt that there will be plenty of folks out there that take one look at its simple cover, flip through, scoff, and set it down. More fool they. If you want a book that gives your children raw, unblemished poetry in a form they CAN’T understand and love NOT understanding, this is the book for them.
Hats off to Stand Up, Yumi Chung! Sure it’s a funny story couched in a meaningful one, but for what it’s saying and how it says it, I award it a great big rubber chicken. It may not be a work of grit and suffering, but it’s fun and that, to my mind, is worth all the hoity-toity awards in the world.
No series of rote facts, Overground Railroad puts you in the shoes of the ordinary people that had to leave everything and everyone they knew in search of a better life. Historical events like The Great Migration are vague. This book hands young readers not just specifics. It hands them people they can get to know and care about.
Great writing for kids, when you encounter it, reminds you that there is always a new way to look at this old, familiar world of ours. If you buy only one bee book for the rest of your life, make it this one.
Hand this to the kid that yearns for that freedom. For wide-open spaces and mysterious figures hiding in the shadows and snot nosed brothers and lots and lots of puppies. Hand it to someone who needs their own mountain. Even if it’s just a literary one.
Taking a common hand rhyme and turning it into a story with a satisfying plot would be a difficult challenge for anyone but for Ms. Carmen Agra Deedy's Rita & Ralph's Rotten Day it’s a breeze. A marvelous addition to any storytime roster, no matter where you are.
Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve been missing until it’s arrived. I didn’t know I needed a graphic novel for kids on period parity. And now, here we are.
Whenever I have a chance to get my hands on a new Frances Hardinge book, it’s only because I want one thing: to be told a story I’ve never heard before. Deeplight fulfills that wish and a lot more besides. My sole regret is that I only get to read it for the first time once.