MORE 'BEST-BOOKS-OF-2022' POSTS
The picture book Endlessly Ever After by Laurel Snyder (out everywhere today!!) not only combines the Choose Your Own Adventure format and applies it to fairy tales, but it is also sumptuously illustrated by Caldecott Award winner and general nice fellow Dan Santat. Come listen to the creators discuss it!
I don’t do it very often, but sometimes, when the right one comes along, I’ll even review board books. Today I have discovered the wonder and beauty of Laura Gehl and Gareth Lucas’s Odd Birds.
Beware the mobs. Beware joining them. Beware and aware of what they’re capable of, and don’t disregard them either. But beware your worst instincts most of all.
What happens when a book takes tall tales and liar’s tales and then ties all of that into some of the finer examples of trash talk and blacktop exaggeration? The Legend of Gravity by Charly Palmer is that link.
Sometimes it feels like I've seen so many picture books on immigration, and yet I've never seen anything like Zahra Marwan's WHERE BUTTERFLIES FILL THE SKY. There's a lightness to it, even in the midst of a deadly serious topic, that isn't like anything else out there.
The Lock-Eater is a marvelous example of how you may render old ideas new, if only you’ve the ability to combine smart, timely writing with the current zeitgeist. Our kids are lucky they get to tap into books like this. Let’s hope for more of the same.
“Maybe because blue has such a complicated history of pain, wealth, invention, and recovery, it’s become a symbol of possibility, as vast and deep as the bluest sea, and as wide open and high as the bluest sky.” I consider a truly gorgeous bit of picture book history in the magnificently written and illustrated BLUE.
After 12 years, George O'Connor concludes his epic series. Undeniably the best god-by-god accounting of Greek mythology in comics you'll ever find, I sit down with him to discuss his latest and the series as a whole.
An ideal book for a grandparent to read to their own offspring’s offspring. Especially if that kid can’t stand it when grown-ups get facts wrong. Here’s one fact that isn’t wrong: This book is delightful. A win of an import.
Utterly carefree and ridiculous, this is a book that never takes itself too seriously. Which, naturally, means that I’m about to.