Tag: book-reviews

But, Seriously

This Book Is Seriously Silly – written and illustrated by Ben Clanton
Tundra Books, 2026

You may have originally met Narwhal and Jelly in their raucously funny graphic novels (see here and here) or in their board book. This Book Is Seriously Silly is Ben Clanton’s second picture book featuring the duo. Similar in premise to the other books, the picture books are not only accessible for younger readers, but, if anything, are a bit more irreverent.  Narwhal can puncture anything with his single horn, including here Jelly’s pretensions to serious content. 

Readers interact with Jelly from the first page, if not exactly in the way the character may have hope. After all, someone has changed the title of his book! He had intended to produce a serious work, and instead, it has been transformed into a series of jokes, cartoons, and subversive nonsense. His menacing stare, meant to intimidate the perpetrators, hasn’t worked. The stern warning, “No smiling,” seems laughable to readers.

Speaking of laughter, it’s strictly forbidden! Yet readers persist in defacing Jelly’s portrait with a moustache and clown ears, making obnoxious noises, and undermining the book’s aspirations. Jelly had posted a carefully composed list of serious subjects on his blackboard: “concrete, anchors, fossils, chess, formal wear.” With the last term emended to “underwear,” adults sharing the book with kids will understand Jelly’s frustration. If they miss the little clownfish beneath Jelly’s thinly disguised plea, “Fine. What do I care? You can clown around,” a brief explanation might be in order.

If you are missing Narwhal, he shows up near the end, holding a mirror up to his desperate friend. At first Jelly fails to recognize himself, but he finally concedes that he does look silly, at that silliness has its place. Go with your strong suit, Jelly.

Remarkable Quest

The Magic Library of Waterfall Way – by Julie Abe
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026

Imagine that you’re a child whose fate will be determined by your membership in one of the following categories: Extraordinarily Remarkable, Quite Remarkable, Slightly Remarkable, or Unremarkable. Of course, those harsh judgments often seem to be part of any childhood. In Julie Abe’s middle-grade novel, Lyra Hunt is an orphan on a quest. In order to avoid the dreaded fate of her status, she will need to find a guild that will accept her. As in many of the classical works of children’s literature that seem to have inspired the author, Lyra’s sensitive and bookish nature is paired with courage. With the help of mentors and friends, she will determine her fate.

Guild matchers are responsible for placing everyone in the Alterran Empire in their appropriate niche. With each child’s status unalterably decided by the age of one year, at a Prophecy Reveal event, there seems to be no escape from this rigid practice. Not surprisingly, high-status people seem to perpetuate their own privilege, as the Slightly Remarkable but utterly inept boy who is accepted into the Guild of Warriors when his parents make a donation. Lyra has no such option available. Her parents had been members of the now defunct Guild of Paperweights; even the lowly Guild of Pinecone Collectors rejects her.

This dismal scenario is rendered even more difficult by the constant propaganda emanating from the Guild of the Crown News, an official organ of the regime. Some chapter titles are derived from its lies, while others are countered by the truth. “Books must be protected at all costs. And I must protect those who will read them, too,” is The Chronicles of Lyra Hunt. Books matter, and so does having the courage to speak out and defy authority.

Sensory descriptions of the idyllic magical village where Lyra finds refuge enhance the narrative. (“From the bakery across the street, a whiff of freshly baked baguettes washed over us.”). Judicial use of magical elements also lends a cinematic touch, with inanimate objects assuming lifelike powers: “’The faucet’s upset. My apologies.’ When it noticed me, the water began to stream ominously.” Brief, but powerful, statements reinforce the source of Lyra’s strength, as when the generous and wise Gemini, Master of the Guild of Scholars, explains that books have been a key to her survival, especially in a world where “most prefer the, well, simplicity of the Guild of the Crown’s newspaper and books.”

By the end of the novel, Lyra and those who support her quest have subverted categories and gone some distance towards replacing acceptance with skepticism, both about official lies, and the sense of helplessness those lies are meant to engender.

Perishable, but Lasting

My Best Friend Is a Butternut Squash – written by Heather Smith, illustrated by Kass Reich
Tundra Books, 2026

It’s hard to see how the title of Heather Smith and Kass Reich’s new picture book could not be intriguing.  Is it literal, or a metaphor?  Children sometimes develop attachments to unusual toys, or, in psychological parlance, “transitional objects.”  In My Best Friend is a Butternut Squash, a boy named Alex adopts the vegetable of the title, and grants it personhood with crayons and imagination. Soon he is taking it out for walks in a stroller and identifying him, when asked, as a two-month-old baby.

Like a purely imaginary friend, the butternut squash can be a different age on different days. One day Alex cradles it in his arms; the next day they are twins, dressing alike and anticipating one another’s thoughts and words. Alex’s mom is really good-natured, even bestowing a kiss on this beloved companion. There is no limit to the possibilities for dramatic entertainment, including a “spectacular sword fight” that is completely harmless. Reich’s gouache and colored pencil drawings capture a child’s point of view, but they are also sophisticated, matching the expression on Alex’s face with that of his endlessly flexible friend, who can be a fairy, a pirate, or even a doctor. The doctor scenario has a bit of heartbreak.  Like all children, Alex experiences anxiety, answering the squash-doctor’s question about his symptoms with the troubling answer, “It’s my heart…Sometimes I think it’s shrinking.”  The squash wisely advises Alex not to worry, reassuring him that he has “a very big heart,” a quality the reader has already suspected about this sensitive boy.

The butternut squash has a backstory. His original home was Alex’s grandfather’s garden.  Maybe uprooting him has created problems that Alex had not suspected, like being excluded from games in the schoolyard. Other children don’t necessarily share Alex’s “big heart,” in accepting the inevitable square peg who won’t fit the round hole, especially if he is an item of produce in a human world.  When Alex meets Trudy, he learns that her special object is an old alarm clock, with the disturbingly personified accident of broken hands.  Then the other shoe drops, with Alex admitting that the butternut squash’s eventual fate is to be compost.  Uh oh.

Just when adults reading this charmingly idiosyncratic book with children might become concerned, the kids work it out.  Alex and Trudy find a solution to the transient nature of squashes, clocks, and maybe everything.  They defy convention and create their own universe of play, where art supplies and affection are more important than fitting in. 

Jewish American Readers Are Still Here

It is halfway through May. I am posting a follow-up to my recent comments on Jewish American Heritage Month, and Asian American Heritage Month, at School Library Journal.  Please find that post here, which includes links to previous attempts to understand that publication’s policy about celebrating both communities in May.

After my recent post, I did contact the editors of SLJ, and their parent company, Media Source Inc., about their April features on the upcoming month of May, when Asian American Heritage Month is observed.  My previous post lists all the articles. In addition, I found this one from Edith Campbell’s SLJ blog in May, specifically referring to the history of Asian American Heritage Month.

I also noted that Library Journal, but not School Library Journal, did acknowledge Jewish American Heritage Month with one list.

They also posted about Asian American Heritage Month with book recommendations:

Apparently, the journal dedicated specifically to books for children and young adults has a different policy regarding Jewish American-themed books, which may be of interest, and certainly importance, to all readers.  The purpose of paying specific attention to a particular group’s heritage is not only to highlight resources for the use of that group, but to educate everyone about the group’s heritage.  We all benefit from this show of intellectual curiosity, literacy, and a truthful approach to the broad spectrum of American culture.

To use an outdated expression based on antique technology, I feel regret at sounding like a broken record.  Nevertheless, I need to reiterate the most important component of my distress. If SLJ were just determined to avoid the volatile issue of Israel and Palestine, they could focus exclusively on Jewish American-themed books not rooted in that part of the Jewish experience. In fact, these books compose the majority of Jewish-themed children’s and young adult books! The only explanation, as I have written before, is an intrinsic prejudice against Jewish Americans, as part of the Jewish people. Apparently, SLJ is uncomfortable with our presence within the wonderful array of American children’s books reflecting our country’s diversity.

Brilliant, Lovely, Compassionate

Audrey Hepburn: An Illustrated Biography – written by Eileen Hofer, illustrated by Christopher Longé, translated from the French by Christopher Bradley
Abrams ComicArts, 2025

The subject of Eileen Hofer and Christopher Longé’s meticulously thorough graphic biography is portrayed as embodying the trait know as imposter syndrome. This incredibly gifted actress, stunningly beautiful woman, devoted mother, and tireless humanitarian actress was not convinced that she deserved any of those accolades.  While not an uncommon human problem, in general, it may be less prevalent in those who achieved her phenomenal level of success.  One of the many outstanding feature of this book, which is actually aimed at an adult audience but is completely appropriate for young adult readers (there have been several picture-book biographies of Audrey for younger readers, such as the ones I reviewed here and here and here and here) is its unassuming, but convincing, tone.  Laying out the facts of Hepburn’s life, from her childhood in war-torn Europe to her death (1929-1993.)  Every vignette and conversation included supports a consistent interpretation, while leaving room for the always unanswered questions about any life.

Author and illustrator avoid melodrama in chronicling the painful nature of Hepburn’s early life.  Her British father, Joseph Ruston Hepburn, was something of a manipulative con artist who saw marriage to her Dutch aristocrat mother, Ella van Heemstra, as a route to social and financial success. Worse, he was an ardent supporter of fascism; Hepburn’s mother, for a time, joined him in his alliance with this brutal movement.  Hofer pays careful attention to part of Hepburn’s history, including Dutch collaboration and virulent antisemitism.  Her participation in resistance activities is placed in context, existing alongside her ambition to become a ballet dancer.

After the war, Hepburn continued to study ballet, but the interruption in her training, and her tall height, closed off that field to her. Throughout her life she expressed disappointment about this turn of events, which seem also to have sensitized her to a sense of failure. But ballet’s loss was an unparalleled gain to theater and film. From bit parts in The Lavender Hill Mob and Monte Carlo Baby, she went on to the starring role on the stage in Colette’s Gigi and the movies that have become indelibly identified with her legacy.  Hofer and Longé approach both analytically and lyrically, this timeless series of images of Hepburn’s dramatic transformations, in Sabrina, My Fair Lady, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, How to Steal a Million, Two for the Road, and more.

Longé’s illustrations assume a particular vision of Hepburn and those who shared her life. Rather than photographic realism, they combine different aspects of her character and experience to create a believable image.  Neither Hepburn, her parents, her husbands, nor her directors and co-stars look exactly as readers may remember them. Instead, with minimalist strokes in black ink he captures the essence of who they were and how they behaved.  Ultimately, her father’s calculating oppressiveness, husband Mel Ferrer’s controlling nature, and second husband Andrea Dotti’s duplicity, all unfold in a balanced vision. There is almost a resigned sense of people’s imperfections in the book, making Hepburn’s commitments seem even more worthy of wonder.  Even if you have read other books about Audrey Hepburn, this one deserves careful attention. If the young adult readers in your life are unfamiliar with her life, here is an opportunity to correct that unfortunate gap.

I Want to Be a Reader

Let’s Have a Sleepover: A Kat and Mouse Book, 2 – written and illustrated by Salina Yoon
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026

Kat and Mouse, the very different but certainly not mismatched friends, are back. In Salina Yoon’s second book in the series (and I’ve reviewed other books by her here and here and here), they once again have to negotiate some disagreements, but their underlying affection for one another, and respect for difference, are reassuring. The book is also funny, illustrated with bold colors and text in fonts and sizes that correspond to changing circumstances.

If you remember from their first outing, Kat and Mouse expressed opposite ideas about food. Now they are about to have a sleepover, and Mouse has high expectations. “It will be the sleepover I have always dreamed about!” Yoon’s rendition of a mid-century turntable will certainly make that a reality.  Mouse, on the other hand, wants to read, and also build a fort. But the fort-building project is actually a cozy reading nook. No wonder Kat is a little frustrated. She has other ideas for the structure.

Having already listened to Mouse’s reading aloud of “Three Blind Mice,” Kat envisions something a bit more dramatic, better suited to an extrovert. Their friendship is characterized by compromise more than conflict. Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin, Frog and Toad, George and Martha, all have their own perspectives but still manage to get along. 

Mouse suggests a new role. It’s not exactly new, given the “Three Blind Mice” performance, but it has a new name, “narrator.” The sheets used as walls for the reading fort will become stage curtains. Mouse will read aloud the story of Cinderella, while Kat, costumed in a pink cape and hat, delivers a heartfelt performance of the lead role. Indeed, Kat is the “belle of the ball,” and Mouse is happy. They are best friends, they both enjoyed eating chips, even if Mouse found Kat’s loud crunching to be a distraction.  The sleepover more than meets their expectations, as it will for readers of the series.

Mycological

Fritz: A Mushroom Story – written and illustrated by Kelsey Garrity-Riley
Tundra Books, 2026

Fritz is a quiet chanterelle mushroom.  He likes hats, which is a good thing, because he always appears to be wearing one, as well as a red cardigan. Fritz is quiet and introverted.  Books for children about people who prefer solitude or quiet activities to raucous socializing are a welcome phenomenon, and not a new one. Nor are books that emphasize that people with different, even opposite personalities, can still be friends (other examples can be found here and here and here). The mycological element in Fritz: A Mushroom Story is appealing, but Kelsey Garrity-Riley is not simply following a trend. Her mushroom child is his own person.

The details that support Fritz’s character are specific and not exaggerated. No, he doesn’t only sit curled up in a blanket reading books, although reading mysteries with his dad is one of his preferred pastimes. So is building boats out of acorns. It looks fun and simple, and messy enough to require a scraps of paper, depicted in a lovely collage style, to absorb the glue. His culinary tastes on sensible. Rose-hip ice cream and cream of chestnut soup are clearly appropriate for different temperatures. He’s not rebellious enough to reverse their seasons, but rather content with his choices.

Socializing is definitely part of Fritz’s life.  Garrity-Riley’s pictures, rendered in gouache, collage, pencil, and ink, feature a subdued palette with moments of brightness, much like Fritz’s day.  In an outing to the playground shades of green predominate, while a bright red slide just off center emphasizes that Fritz can have fun. Other scenes of offer balance, including a smaller circle of friends, and sometimes “only one friend” for cozy indoor play.  Red-roofed dollhouses populated with mushroom dolls stored in a basket seem perfect. Just when it might seem that solitude is not important to Fritz, Garrity-Riley reminds us that “often,” that state is exactly right for him. Reading in bed, his mushroom dolls placed at carefully composed angles, is just right.

Pip is Fritz’s more outgoing friend. The contrast between them is not so dramatic.  Pip enjoys theater and music, with all the character traits that implies. Since he is a fly agaric, otherwise known as amanita muscaria, his body is square and his top a dome.  At one point, the two pals are playing hide-and-seek, and when Pip finds Fritz, the latter declares, “Actually…I don’t think I’m ready to be found yet.” But their time together is harmonious, as they share different flavors of ice cream and “different ways to be wonderful.” There is a fine line between reassurance and preaching, and between resignation to unchangeable traits and celebration of them.  Fritz: A Mushroom Story captures that truth by speaking directly to young readers about difference, accompanied by the colors of a mycological childhood  they will recognize as their own.

More Books for Purim

Today I Am a Hamantasch: A Poem for Purim – written and illustrated by Varda Livney
PJ Library, 2026

Purim Possibilities – written by Barbara Kimmel, illustrated by Irina Avgustinovich
PJ Library, 2026

In addition to the Purim board book I reviewed last week, here are two more Purim board books, all from PJ Library; these emphasize the flexibility of who you are on the holiday of Purim. Today I Am a Hamantasch is small, square, scaled to young children’s hands. They may have different ideas for Purim costumes, changing their minds several times before their final decision.

The child in the book is actually a rotating cast of animals: bunny, mouse, cat. She begins as the iconic three-cornered pastry, and then becomes a tree. The sequence seems random. There are cut-out holes on several pages through which the reader can see the animals changing costumes. Queen Esther, of course, is lovely in her pink dress, crown, and proud six-pointed star scepter. There is an interlude, where the bunny decides to just be herself, wearing overalls. Then back to the costumes. The mermaid, again, is a not derived from the Purim story, but the grogger, a noisemaker activated every time the villain, Haman’s, name is mentioned, is key to the Megillat Esther. Back to a cupcake, and to a kitten happy to be herself. If you feel dizzy reading it, that’s to be expected. Purim as a day when norms are reversed, but, finally, the holiday ends and “we’ll all be back to normal.” That’s a relief, maybe.

Purim Possibilities also emphasizes the freedom of temporary change. It begins with a lively scene of the Megillat Esther reading, with the scroll unrolled and held at each end by a young girl. Then we experience the same series of choices, but this time the protagonist is identifiably human. She may impersonate a train engineer, a robot, a superhero, or a baker. Then again, Queen Esther is as heroic as may be imagined, fearless in her glittery outfit. Artistic creativity is part of the story, with colored pencils available to sketch the costumes. Finally, the young artist decides on an eclectic combination of elements. Sometimes you don’t have to make a choice. The book concludes with a selection of outfits as reusable stickers, to be removed from a closet and placed on the girl. Anything seems possible in these two books.

Ready, Set, Anne

Anne: The Chapter Book Collection – adapted by Kallie George, illustrated by Abigail Halpin
Tundra Books, 2025

Anne Dares – adapted by Kallie George, illustrated by Abigail Halpin
Tundra Books, 2023

For fans of Kallie George and Abigail Halpin’s wonderful collaboration in bringing the work of Lucy Maud Montgomery to chapter book readers, Tundra has issued a boxed set of paperback editions.  As you will read on my earlier posts (see here and here and here and here), this series is both an accessible introduction to the original Anne of Green Gables, and each volume a  wonderful illustrated novel that stands on its own merits.  Abigail Halpin’s pictures offer her own perspective on the characters and setting, and Kallie George has succeeded in writing an homage to Montgomery’s vision, not a bland imitation.

In Anne Dares, the bold aspect of Anne Shirley’s personality propels her to take some risks.  These include the physically daring walking on the edge of a fence, as well as the courage to perform in her school’s recital. The fence-walking stunt even requires her to ignore the advice of kindred spirit Diana. Ever conscious of a dramatic situation, Anne assures her friend, “And if I do perish,…you can have my pearl-bead ring.

Her performance involves facing her apparent nemesis, Josie Pye, as well as Gilbert Blythe, the boy whose thoughtless teasing will prove to be a mere mask over his true feelings. Her new puff sleeved dress, a gift from her beloved father figure, Matthew, gives her some of the strength she needs in front of an audience.  The dress is both a cherished article of clothing, as well as a tangible proof of the love that now characterizes her home life, although her initial arrival had provoked skepticism.  On stage, at first “she thought she might faint.” Daring or not, she is still afraid. Fortunately, “she knew she must live up to those puffed sleeves.”  Montgomery’s heroine, re-imagined by Kallie George and Abigail Halpin, lives in two worlds, where undeniable difficulties and dreams of beauty are intertwined.

Navigating Together

Together We Are Family – written and illustrated by Emily Hamilton
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2025

Wonderful children’s books each have their own outstanding qualities.  There is no one formula for producing the authenticity and beauty inherent in a distinctive picture book.  Emily Hamilton’s Together We Are Family features a tone of empathy with kids, simplicity that is not patronizing, and pictures that are reminiscent of children’s artwork without mere imitation. 

In the opening picture, the mother lowers her body slightly to speak with her daughter, a young girl using a walker.  The mother’s words are enclosed in a speech bubble bordered by unconnected dashes rather than a continuous curved line.  “You are you and I am me. Together, we are family.”  There is nothing trite about those words to a child.  The facing page shows family portraits framed and posted in their home. Each scene captures a moment: a bird carrying off part of a girl’s ice cream cone, a father holding one daughter and an older daughter’s face peering over the bottom of the photo, sisters on the beach with their back to the viewer.

Hamilton’s illustrations are rendered in watercolor and pencil, along with Photoshop.  Simply using media that children might also prefer, including colored pencils and paint, does not necessarily convince readers that the illustrator identifies with their point of view.  The primary colors and naïve brushstrokes need to be accompanied by a sense of identification. In a terrific two-page spread, Hamilton presents a bird’s eye view of a family that embodies the metaphor of finding their way together.  Sitting around a floor mat designed as a town with roads connecting the community, each family member chooses a different activity, but they are working in harmony. The father “drives” a red car in a traffic circle, while one child drives a similar vehicle on her mother’s pants leg. The mother builds a structure with blocks. The younger girl, who is moving a toy alligator, which seems more fanciful and less related to the overall purpose of the game, is just as integrated into the scene.

Frustration is also part of a child’s life, as Hamilton visualizes without judgment.  Putting on her shoes is a challenge for the young girl, as is climbing stairs without the aid of her walker.  As with all children, whether or not they have special needs, anger can erupt unpredictably, as “the moods that catch you unawares.”  While her older sister calmly picks up a piece of fruit at their picnic, the younger girl, frowning, tosses a sandwich into the air. The chaotic merriment of a party is off putting to the child, who stays close to her mother watching the scene with some discomfort. Anyone, young or old, who has ever experienced frenetic social activity as less than an unalloyed joy will relate to this scene.

In a sensitive author’s note, Hamilton explains how her daughter’s disability has influenced their life as a family in specific ways, but she emphasizes how all families inevitably cope with difficulties through support and love.  Together We Are Family resonates with that truth for all readers.