Yesterday, a friend posted a link to fabric artist Salley Mavor’s blog where Salley revisits a 2012 post on her process of creating the eye-popping three-dimensional cover art for The Horn Book Magazine’s January/February 2012 issue. Salley’s book Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes had won the 2011 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award for Picture Book, and her Magazine cover celebrated the Awards and the acceptance speeches published in that issue.

I could lose myself in Salley’s illustrations. And travel back in time...Pocketful of Posies will always hold a special place in my heart. There was a time when my eldest was teeny-tiny that this book was a treasured friend. I still have his well-loved copy with its pages taped and worn (of course, I also have my own pristine and equally treasured signed copy from the Awards ceremony). There’s another post on Salley’s blog, one in which she shares a note I wrote to her in 2010 about my child’s all-consuming passion for her book. After a quick search, I found it: “Jakob and the ring around a roses book.” This kid will be eleven years old in two weeks, and rereading this post is a gift for this sappy mama. I mean, is there anything better than a toddler earnestly proclaiming: “Reading a book. This a good page”?