the first snow

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was reading picture books in preparation for the upcoming holidays… and now I am reading my first picture books of the year about wintertime! These things go hand in hand, but it makes me laugh a little bit since we’re still firmly in summer weather-wise. Marie Štumpfová and Radek Malý's wintry picture book The First Snow, translated by Mark Worthington, is a gorgeously-illustrated and meditative picture book, and its layered, screen printed art will delight readers young and not-so-young.

 

It’s common knowledge that there are many shades of snow. As is the fact that it is possible to find just about anything in it, from a lost glove to a careless arctic explorer.

Even though Stefan and Agnes come across something altogether different under the snow that morning, their journey through the dreamlike snow-covered landscape sometimes seems like an expedition to a frozen wilderness. Even so, they still find time to feed the birds and stroke the cat on the way. And even Miss Smilla would be delighted by the shades of snow in the illustrations.

 

Stefan and Agnes wake up one morning to a world blanketed in white. They venture out into the newly snowy landscape accompanied only by their tiger-fierce kitty, as their mother has chores to do. Once in the wintry wonderland of their backyard, they find that even common objects have been transformed by deep snow. They make snow angels, follow animal tracks, shovel the path, and then begin building… a polar bear! In a flight of imagination (or is it truly magic?) the children visit the frozen wilds atop the bear’s back before returning to their own backyard and continued surprises. 

In this picture book, siblings Agnes and Stefan experience that singular joy of a first snow day as a child, when everything seems impossibly wondrous under a blanket of new-fallen snow. Their whimsical adventures will feel familiar to adults, and spark children’s imaginations. The main characters take moments to marvel at the world around them, and this is reflected in the pacing of the book – it feels as though it should be lingered over as well, like a gorgeous view or any other nature-driven delight.

Worthington’s translation of Štumpfová and Malý’s prose is at times uneven. There are clunky choices of verb tense and contractions where full words might produce a more poetic effect. All that to say – the words don’t all flow perfectly, but small children will not mind this. I admit that as an English teacher, I am becoming more crotchety about words each year! Language choices to celebrate in The First Snow? Plentiful figurative elements in the form of metaphors and similes, such as “quiet as a lamb”, “like being in another world”, and “like winter-flavored ice cream.”

My quibbles with the text do not matter in the grand scheme of things because the art is transcendent! Štumpfová’s illustrations appear to be screen printed, in an array of pastels. The visual elements of this text are truly magnificent – of course there is a lot of white on each page, but all the different colors that snowy white can be – reflected blues, pinks, and even yellows, show up throughout the pages. The screen printing also adds subtle depth, textures, and patterns to the illustrations, and the many different forms that snow can take are the stars. I can’t emphasize how much I love the art – I’d snap up boxes of The First Snow-themed holiday cards and wrapping paper in a hot second!

In all, The First Snow features exquisite art and a story that both young ones and their adults will enjoy reading. It may even spark world-traveling polar bear adventures in backyards after the first snow of *this* season!

Recommended for: fans of seasonal picture books, young readers ages 3-6, and winter holiday gifting!

 

Fine print: I received an advanced digital copy of the text from the publisher (Albatros) at Picture Book Palooza. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

ursula upside down

When I did a 2021 book gift guide for the holidays, Corey R. Tabor’s Mel Fell featured as a must-buy picture book. It was a huge hit that year with my niblings, and when I saw that Tabor had a new title out at School Library Journal’s Picture Book Palooza, I bought a copy immediately. Ursula Upside Down is another flipped-script picture book with tons of charm. Young fans will request many, many storytimes and rereads of this title in years to come!

Ursula is a happy catfish, swimming through a shimmering river with weeds waving above and a sky full of scrumptious bugs below. 

Then one question turns her world upside down. 

Is left right? Is right wrong? Which way even is up? 

Children will love turning the book upside down and back again as they follow Ursula’s humorous journey to self-discovery.

 

Ursula lives a happy life, swimming through her world. The river reeds wave from above and sunbeams light the world from below. Until one day… another fish asks her if she knows she’s upside down?? This prompts a chaotic awakening – Ursula had no idea that she was living life differently than anyone else! Luckily, Vern the bat swoops in to help before tragedy can strike, and with a little bit of wisdom, Ursula realizes that she’s just fine, and her reality is right side up after all. 

Interactive art makes for a fun reading experience for both kids and adults – and while I’d like to say that art is the absolute standout of this title, the standout element is EVERYTHING. Tabor’s picture books are a perfect marriage of text, gorgeous illustrations, innovation and creativity. Hilarious asides and character choices enrich the text, and make for a fun and funny experience (the bugs and crawfish! lol). The story’s point, aside from pure entertainment? That a different viewpoint isn’t wrong simply because it’s different – in fact, the world is full of those who view things differently, and that’s okay. A valuable and evergreen lesson for kiddos and adults alike!

Tabor’s illustrations are a mixture of watercolor, pencil, crayon, and other media mixed digitally. Ursula’s underwater world is full of a variety of creatures, each lovingly depicted, amid a wash of blue-green watery layers. Animal features, while simple, nonetheless express emotion when something unexpected happens. My favorite detail was how Ursula’s whiskers mirrored her mental state – they added drama as the story progressed.

In all, Ursula Upside Down is an illustration-forward picture book with moments of hilarity, lifesaving, and friend-making, and interactive elements that will invite repeat reads.

 

Recommended for: read alouds, bed times, and storytimes with young ones ages 3+, and as a phenomenal gift for any book-loving household.

the baker and the bard

This June one of our local bookstores, One More Page Books, offered Sur-PRIDE boxes – you could pay $25 or $50 for a personally curated surprise package featuring queer books, goodies, and chocolate. You could even share a little bit about yourself and your reading preferences to guide the booksellers in putting together the right box for you. It sounded really fun, so I ordered a box! Fern Haught's fantasy young adult graphic novel The Baker and the Bard was one of the books in my package – and I was glad to see it because I’d been eyeing the cover art for a few months on other bookstore visits. 

 

Juniper and Hadley have a good thing going in Larkspur, spending their respective days apprenticing at a little bakery and performing at the local inn. But when a stranger makes an unusual order at the bakery, the two friends (and Hadley’s pet snake, Fern) set out on a journey to forage the magical mushrooms needed to make the requested galette pastries.

Along the way, Juniper and Hadley stumble across a mystery too compelling to ignore: Something has been coming out of the woods at night and eating the local farmers' crops, leaving only a trail of glowy goo behind. Intent on finally going on an adventure that could fuel their bardic craft, Hadley tows Juniper into the woods to investigate.

What started as a simple errand to pick mushrooms soon turns into a thrilling quest to save some furry new friends—and their caretaker, a softspoken little fey named Thistle—who are in danger of losing their home.

The Baker and the Bard’s subtitle “A Cozy Fantasy Adventure” definitely lives up to its billing. This brief volume clocks in at just under 150 pages, and it follows baker June and bard Hadley as they go on a brief journey and solve a mystery to save the day (or really, find a rare ingredient to make some fancy pastries on time for a rich patron!). The world they live in is vaguely medieval, and contains all sorts of mythological creatures – June is a faun with pink hair, and Hadley a blue elf (?) with a snake sidekick named Fern. Their adventure is basic and easily solved – there are no bumps or snags in the road here – just some mild misunderstandings. The book as a whole is beautifully illustrated, but feels like the definition of “fantasy vibes” instead of a fully-fleshed out adventure.

That isn’t to say it isn’t gorgeous, or worthy – it just has more vibes than plot! Part of its appeal is that there is no conflict… but plenty of beautifully illustrated scenes with interesting landscapes, gorgeous clothes, colorful creatures and people, and of course tasty looking baked goods. As characters, June and Hadley’s motivations are fairly clear from the outset: June would like to start her own bakery and be with Hadley, and Hadley would like to go on an adventure, get to know her own queer identity a little bit better, and be with June. And the townspeople would like to find out what is destroying their crops, and… well, I won’t spoil that last bit. Readers will find a lot to like here if they don’t mind a bit of meandering and focus on the incredible art over text and plot.

Let’s talk about that art! Haught works with digital tools to paint a gorgeous, fantastical world filled with landscapes, meticulously-detailed tailoring, and bold color choices. Part of the “cozy” feel of the book comes from the art itself: its pastel-adjacent palette, the interplay of line art (which mimics colored pencil or crayon), coloring and shading style, and character design. The peaches, pinks, greens, blues, and purples *feel* magical, and dovetail nicely with the actual magic depicted in the book (such as snapping to give Hadley and Fern matching deerstalker hats as they investigate the local mystery). The visual art is what maintains interest in the book, and it is worth a read for that alone.

In all, The Baker and the Bard is a low-stakes fantasy with a mild and cozy aura. It can be read in one sitting, and would pair nicely with a cup of tea and a pastry of your choice.

Recommended for: fans of The Tea Dragon Society series by K. O’Neill, and anyone who likes the look of the cover art. Suitable for ages 9+!

bookie & cookie

We’ve reached the point in the year when I start reading picture books in earnest – because the holidays are coming! It feels ridiculous to type that sentence in AUGUST of all months, when school hasn’t even started up again yet, but it’s true. By the time December rolls around, the gifts must already be selected and ordered so that they arrive on time. I’m happy to report that Blanca Gómez's new picture book Bookie & Cookie is a strong contender to gift to the young ones in your life, or to check out from your local library. After all, it combines two of the best simple pleasures in life: books and baking cookies!

Even the best friendships have rough moments, but a true friend will always find a way to compromise (especially when cookies are involved!) – a scrumptious and clever read-aloud by the illustrator of Very Good Hats and Besos for Baby.

Bookie and Cookie are best friends. They love to spend time together, reading books and snacking on treats. But whenever this happens, it’s always at Cookie’s home . . . until the day when Bookie insists on getting together at his home instead. Cookie refuses: He doesn’t want to try something new. And now Bookie and Cookie are both alone, and the activities they used to enjoy together aren’t nearly as much fun. Can the two buddies each try something new for the sake of their friendship?

Bookie and Cookie are best friends, but they have an unconventional living situation. Bookie lives in the left-hand page of the book, and Cookie lives in the right-hand page. And when they hang out together, they are always in/on Cookie’s page. Bookie would like Cookie to come visit, but he refuses! He doesn’t like change. How will these best friends finally resolve their conflict? Page is synonymous with house in this delightfully-illustrated book about compromise and the power of friendship. It celebrates the delicious pairing of cookies and books while teaching gentle lessons about conflict-resolution, and the only thing that would make it more my speed is if it somehow worked in ice coffee as well, lol.

Gómez's text is the sort of metanarrative that is delightful to book lovers – the characters acknowledge the spatiality of the book! Vocabulary-wise, the text is simple and sparse enough for early readers, so the book will appeal in both the read-aloud era and into independent reading. It also has a few useful messages: that conflict hurts both parties, compromise is necessary to maintain meaningful friendships, and being afraid of change will keep you from a life full of adventures. Gómez conveys this message in fairly equal amounts of narration and dialogue between Bookie and Cookie. Parents and caregivers will laugh (or cry, depending on the day!) when reading the familiar interplay between the characters: “I don’t like what I don’t know.” “How can you know you don’t like it if you don’t try it?” “I don’t know, but I know it’s true.” And of course, young children may see themselves reflected in some of the stubborn resistance to flexibility that Cookie displays. There are kinder emotions discussed as well, such as gifting cookies, reading together, and eventually adventuring outside the book. 

The art is simple, with figures and furniture in a crayon box full of bright colors against a white background, which will appeal to the intended audience. Gómez's flat, rounded characters have nearly perfect circles for heads, distinctive hats, and a few straight lines indicating their hair. The geometric shapes and figures call to mind cut paper art, and the book’s delightful details (the book titles and cookie containers move around and correspond to what’s happening in the story) will invite commentary and rereads to check – are items changing and moving from one page to the next? These clever Easter eggs encourage interactivity and engagement.

In all, Bookie & Cookie is a brief and rainbow-bright picture book sure to delight book-loving adults and the young children they read to.

Recommended for: read alouds and independent reading, and anyone who appreciates a well-designed and artful picture book experience. 

 

Bookie & Cookie will release from Rocky Pond Books (Penguin Random House) on September 3, 2024. 

 

Fine print: I received a final copy of the text from the publisher. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

estranged

When I first read Ethan M. Aldridge's middle grade fantasy graphic novel Estranged, I jotted down a few disjointed notes and thought I’d post a review almost immediately. Several years later… I had to reread the book in order to interpret those scribblings. Ha! Ah well, it was time well-spent, because this middle grade fantasy is an engaging, inventive adventure with entwined main characters, has interesting things to say about society and family, and features an epic race to save the world.

Edmund and the Childe were swapped at birth. Now Edmund lives in secret as a changeling in the World Above, his fae powers hidden from his unsuspecting parents and his older sister, Alexis. The Childe lives among the fae in the World Below, where being a human makes him a curiosity at the royal palace.

But when the cruel sorceress Hawthorne seizes the throne, the Childe and Edmund must unite on a dangerous quest to save both worlds—even if they’re not sure which world they belong to.

Edmund is a fairy (or Fay, in this book) changeling. That means that his own parents, the rulers of the Fay court, switched him with a human child at birth, and that he has grown up with a human family he must constantly keep secrets from. The Human Childe, as he is called in the Fay court, doesn’t have a name – and has grown up stifled and dissatisfied by his life as a curiosity and a pet to his Fay “parents.” When the usurper Hawthorne leads a magical coup of the Fay court, The Human Childe knows he must escape – but to where? He decides to go find his counterpart in the human world, and thus kicks off an epic journey through both worlds, and a quest to defeat Hawthorne.

Hands down, my favorite thing about his book is the character design. Edmund and The Human Childe are mirrors of each other, but they differ in important ways too – Edmund feels constantly constrained, hiding his secret heritage, and The Human Childe feels like an afterthought without a family. When they meet, the Childe wants Edmund’s life, and Edmund refuses to give it up because his family is great. That family includes older sister Alexis, a brave and somewhat reckless older sibling, who is integral to the story later on. Other really cool characters: Whick, a golem in the shape of a lit candle, the witch and her apprentice Isaac, and Hawthorne’s henchmen, who have creepy hands covering each eye. Elements of traditional myth and legend are strewn throughout the narrative, but Aldridge plays with them in fascinating ways – this is both a beautiful book, and an exciting one.

Aldridge’s art is a mix of watercolors, ink, and Photoshop, and is most successful in its character design and fairy tale elements. The world below is drawn in meticulous detail – the reader’s eye will be drawn to the setting first (the Below is just plain cool!), and Aldridge’s style encourages this with lots of full-body shots and sequences, as well as landscapes. As a result, facial expressions and human faces are a secondary focus – there are not many closeups, and perspective angles do not change much over the course of the book. Illustrations are in full color, with lots of greens, blues, and an overall more menacing – and magical – feeling in the Below. Another interesting stylistic choice is using black gutters (the space in between panels) for the Below, and white for for the Above. This results in a very clear demarcation between settings when flipping through the book (and of course when reading it).

Estranged is a middle grade fantasy quest with themes of feeling like an outsider, even in your own family, the power of found families, and what it means to cultivate “human” traits. It’s an adventure and a half!

Recommended for: fans of changeling stories and portal or fairy fantasies, graphic novel readers ages 8+, and those who appreciate beautiful and detailed fantasy art.