As a country kid at heart, I identify with city-living Frances and her itch to DO THINGS! The problem is Text ©Liz Garton Scanlon. Illustration ©Sean Qualls City walls aren't for climbing and city cats aren't for catching. (Don't you just love that alliteration and assonance?) Text ©Liz Garton Scanlon. Illustration ©Sean Qualls City rooms … Continue reading Frances in the Country – Perfect Picture Book Friday
In my early teens, ©️I learned to play The Entertainer, loving its rhythm and the feeling that my hands were somehow accomplishing great feats while I enjoyed the song (after many hours of brainwork and practice that it took to keep my left hand hitting the backbone notes while my right hand capered off to … Continue reading King of Ragtime – Perfect Picture Book Friday
I don't know about you all, but I'm desperately feeling the need for a little sweetness of spirit and connection. When this book arrived this week, it felt like it could help heal a tiny part of what's broken in our world. Swashby's an old salt, a curmudgeon, a grumpy old man who has no … Continue reading Swashby and the Sea – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
First thing I've got to say: This is NOT a simple, boring counting book. It is, as a reviewer for School Library Journal states, “Stunning…brilliantly colored…striking… [with] Just the right amount of tension, delicious vocabulary…" The attention to detail is fabulous, with the front end papers leading the way. The tension begins even before the … Continue reading One Fox: A Counting Book Thriller – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Lee Bennett Hopkins passed away earlier this year, but he left behind a massive body of work, both his own poems and ones of other poets collected for anthologies. Here we have a fine example, with a front cover that offers a glimpse of what we can expect inside. Then there's the playful back. For … Continue reading A Bunch of Punctuation – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Ok, I'll admit that I'm getting a jump on Halloween, but there I was minding my own business, checking my holds out at the library—when what to my wondering eyes should appear? THIS! Who can resist that title? Who can resist the smell of—well, I won't go there. I brought the book home, opened it … Continue reading I Love You More Than the Smell of Swamp Gas – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Want a sure-fire read aloud—perhaps a sure-fire sing aloud? Look no further. What would happen if consonants suddenly thought they ruled the alphabet, and told those poor little vowels they weren't important? The Letter B gets on his high horse and informs the first vowel, A: There are 5 vowels in your group but 21 … Continue reading Can U Save the Day? – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Need a fun read aloud? An awesome bedtime book? Look no further. It's nearly summer! Let's go berry-picking, shall we? Wagon on gravel goes bumpety-bump. Pebbles in the pond fall dunkety dunk. Toes in the grass go thumpety-thump. Bumpety, dunkety, thumpety-thump. This has got to be one of the most playful language stories I've read … Continue reading Thumpety, Dunkety, Thumpety-Thump #Perfect Picture Book Friday
As promised, one more gratuitous pic of a fabulous sculpture in THE LAST BOOKSTORE: Apparently, one reader got lost in the Horror Vault and mummified so they strapped her to the wall as a warning to others....I think she looks like an angel. You can see more pics of THE LAST BOOKSTORE in last week's … Continue reading The Worst Breakfast – Perfect Picture Book Friday
After getting my MFA in Creative Writing for adults, I thought I knew how to write. Turns out, I didn't know how to write stories with pictures. But for the past two years, I've been trying. Correction, the first year I flailed about in the dark. The second year, I bought a flashlight to shine … Continue reading Want to Improve Your Writing?
Jilanne Hoffmann 