Julie Roach
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From the Chair: Small Moments of Joy (2020 Caldecott Committee, ALA)
Readers of The Horn Book Magazine will have heard this before: a book has the power to change a person, and a person has the power to change a book. Depending on who you are at a given time and the experiences you have collected, the understanding of a book...
Review of Where's Baby?
Where’s Baby? by Anne Hunter; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Tundra 40 pp. 1/20 978-0-7352-6498-4 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-0-7352-6499-1 $10.99 “Have you seen Baby, Mama Fox?” Mama Fox feels certain Baby is “somewhere,” and so Papa Fox begins the search, like a game of hide-and-seek. “Ba-by! Are you indoors?...
Review of Kaia and the Bees
Kaia and the Bees by Maribeth Boelts; illus. by Angela Dominguez Preschool, Primary Candlewick 40 pp. 3/20 978-1-5362-0105-5 $16.99 Kaia knows that she should appreciate bees, and she would if she weren’t so scared of them. It doesn’t help that her apiarist father cares for two hives on the roof...
Review of The Underhills: A Tooth Fairy Story
The Underhills: A Tooth Fairy Story by Bob Graham; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Candlewick 48 pp. 10/19 978-1-5362-1112-2 $16.99 Tooth fairy sisters April and Esme (April and Esme, Tooth Fairies, rev. 9/10), along with dog Ariel and new baby brother Vincent, are fluttering in for a sleepover with...
Review of Almost Time
Almost Time by Gary D. Schmidt and Elizabeth Stickney; illus. by G. Brian Karas Preschool, Primary Clarion 32 pp. g 1/20 978-0-544-78581-6 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-0-358-16693-1 $12.99 Waiting for spring can wear on one’s patience, but readers may find comfort sharing the burden with Ethan and his (apparently single-parent) father,...
Review of Sweep
Sweep by Louise Greig; illus. by Júlia Sardà Preschool, Primary Simon 32 pp. 9/19 978-1-5344-3908-5 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-1-5344-3910-8 $10.99 In this story about emotions and self-control, a boy named Ed’s bad mood escalates from a tiny whirlwind into something sentient that “swept over him in a raging storm and stuck.” The...
Review of Cyril and Pat
Cyril and Pat by Emily Gravett; illus. by the author Preschool Simon 32 pp. 5/19 978-1-5344-3950-4 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-1-5344-3951-1 $10.99 Rhyming text and animated pencil, acrylic ink, and watercolor illustrations set the stage for a blossoming friendship between Cyril, the only squirrel in Lake Park, and Pat. Pat looks...
Review of One Dark Bird
One Dark Bird by Liz Garton Scanlon; illus. by Frann Preston-Gannon Preschool Beach Lane/Simon 40 pp. 7/19 978-1-5344-0443-4 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-1-5344-0444-1 $10.99 A small paragraph on the title page defines a murmuration (“a single-seeming mass [of birds] that performs coordinated acrobatic dances in the sky”) before using a counting-book...
Review of Sweeping Up the Heart
Sweeping Up the Heartby Kevin HenkesIntermediate, Middle School Greenwillow 184 pp. g3/19 978-0-06-285254-0 $16.99Library ed. 978-0-06-285255-7 $17.89e-book ed. 978-0-06-285257-1 $9.99The elegiac spirit of Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Bustle in a House” (from which this book’s title is taken) reverberates throughout Henkes’s story of people struggling to cope with love, loss,...