This book pulls on me. I have no idea how to write about it, but it pulls on me so I can’t not.

I don’t think there’s really much that anyone needs from me for this book other than to let you know that it exists and you should get it and read it, either yourself or with any child you can find.

But it won’t let me go, so I can’t help but try to say more. I’m going to do an awful job, I am not Brian Floca and I am not Sydney Smith, but here goes. Island Storm by Brian Floca and Sydney Smith reads in my mind like a scene from my very own childhood, only more so.

I can’t imagine a more beautiful book, and if there is anything I’m angry about in this world, it’s that this book isn’t eligible for the Caldecott. This book is, in every respect, a clear example of the kind of quality we need more of, and, not to put too fine a point on it, I want THIS on my wall. (Dear Sydney, please send me the original, and I’ll get it framed. Thank you. Or– really any page.)

I’ve quite often talked, recently, about how really good picture books have a core element of truth and that this fundamental honesty (whether it be the goblins Ida pursues Outside Over There to get her baby sister back or the blueberries in Sal’s bucket) come across most clearly when the picture book creator is coming from a place of specificity. I’ve seen an increasing amount of talk, recently, about universal appeal in art, and I passionately advocate for seeing the universal appeal in art. But it is almost always found* through the faithful rendering of something deeply specific.

In this case, we experience a storm on what I’m absolutely certain is an island in the Atlantic, definitely somewhere around Canada’s Maritime provinces, and I know this because it feels viscerally familiar. I’ve been there, I have walked that storm, I’ve gotten totally drenched in it and been a bit scared in that high wind. I’ve also had parents deeply pissed off at me for going out in it, actually.

Interestingly, all of that feels like it comes to me through Sydney Smith’s art, and that is one of the thrillingly interesting things about a picture book: each book is collaborative, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Even when conceived and executed by an author-illustrator, they are collaborations between the art and text. (To say nothing of the role of the editor and all the others in a good publishing house.) The ideal picture book appears, in the hand, to be a single and unified object, which it is, but it must be synthesized from various sources working together.

I think, and I’m sure that you think, of Brian Floca as an illustrator. In this case, he is the author and the book’s art is entrusted to Sydney Smith. I find that simple fact, in itself, fascinating, particularly because Brian Floca isn’t from my childhood region and Sydney Smith is from right next door to where I grew up in the Canadian Maritimes, so to my mind this collaboration was done precisely so I’d have a book just for me. Logically speaking, this may not actually be the case. Intuitively, it totally is.

The text is simple and pared but calmly confident in its evolution: “Now take my hand,” it opens, “and we’ll go see the sea before the storm.” Quietly, we enter the children’s eyes and walk with them, feeling their feet on the gravel road and their anticipation of the storm as the wind rises and the ocean booms, and the urge to try for just a bit longer, just a bit more, as the wildness of the weather nears and grows. “You pull on me, I pull on you.” The weather, too, might be addressed here, and the scenery, and the wildness and the sea and the driving wind and rain. I know this, because I’ve been in a storm– so, too, has Brian Floca, and so, too, has Sydney Smith. I know this from the text and from the art, but, as I said, the art is so visually arresting a force for me– I’ve seen this place, I lived there– that in reading it to a child I find myself expecting to turn the page and come out on the street.

And yet, look at that art. It is not in the least photorealistic. It feels hasty and hazy. We see through the children’s eyes but don’t see their eyes. The rain on the window: “How does he do that?” my beloved librarian friend asked when I showed her the book, pointing at this page. “Is this book eligible for a Caldecott?” she added. I know exactly how she felt, and I felt the same, but also I was remembering rain on windows like that. The lowering skies, the crashing storm, the driving rain– we don’t get rain like that here. You don’t know the meaning of “driving rain” until you’ve been out in it.

But, surely, this is almost too specific, too area-specific, too situational to be universal? Well, the funny thing is that when this book showed up, I really, really needed to read it aloud to a kid and my Spriggan was in daycare and my daughter was out with her friend, but, fortunately, the friend’s little brother was quietly playing in my living room. (NB: I love being the safe house for kids to show up in. I don’t always know who will be here, mind you, but I love these kids and it’s nice to see them happy here.) So I apologetically asked if I could please pull him from his game to read a story to him. He kindly agreed and curled up on the couch beside me and I read it to him. He was quietly absorbed until we came to the crash of thunder and pouring rain, when he got visibly excited: “That was like last night! We had thunder!” And I realized– this child has English as his second language and moved here only a couple of years ago from far inland in China. He had never seen a storm like this, and this scene was as strange to him as the plains of Mongolia would be to me.

Consider Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. As originally conceived, musically and visually, it was a decidedly specific story, scene, and idea. The collaboration between Stravinsky, Nijinsky, and Roerich created a unified piece on stage– a picture book in dance, in a way. It is a difficult, demanding, and beautiful piece, utterly alien to every single observer, which continues to be terrifyingly accessible, catapulting the viewer into the scene onstage only to emerge wondering what just happened. And when I once watched a totally rechoreographed version which was introduced as being “more universal,” in minimalist black and white, it left me completely cold; the music was still good, the dancing was good. But by trying to be open to everyone, it spoke to no one.

This scene, a storm on an island in the Atlantic, was as familiar to me as my own pulse. To the child I first read it with, it was new and exciting. But it pulled on us both, differently, but oh so beautifully.

And so I tell you: this book is out now, and you should get it and read it, either yourself or with any child you can find.

And see if you can find every shade of blue on its pages. They are, I think, as numberless as the waves.

* I say “almost always found” because I resist absolutes. But I can’t think of an example of the vaguely universal in a picture book which has appealed to me as a universal more than something specific. In fact, one of the most compelling single images in my mind is Joan Aiken’s description of a slice of bread being toasted. That’s it.

“Eh bien, je ressens de la joie, je ressens plein de trucs bénéfiques ou maléfiques…”

My husband sent me an interview from a dance event in France put together by the French dancer, Hugo Marchand, for children and families to have a chance to see some of the étoiles of the Opéra de Paris. The interviewer asked an 8-year-old boy attending the event about his love of ballet, and when he asked the child what he feels when he dances, those were his words, stated with a conviction and such scintillating placement of le mot juste that I don’t even want to try to translate them in any literal fashion. “I am moved by a fierce joy from the heights to the abyss of human emotion,” would be my hash at what, I repeat, and 8-year-old said about what he feels when he dances ballet.

(Side note: translation is an evil task; you can’t do it without some form of betrayal. In French, the language is balanced by gorgeous dualism borrowed from the Latin, lyrical and so adroit that it spins fluidly. English has nothing as perfect as bénéfique and maléfique, for example, but is rich in atmospheric words. Bluntly, generally, and imperfectly: French makes more beautiful lyric verse; English is perfect for picture books. Also: I adore English lyric verse and revere French picture books. Go figure.)

Why am I on about this?

On October 13, 2023, after the attacks of October 7, I wrote a post in response to a sudden call for resources. At that time, the situation in the Middle East was still considered complex, and, in a nutshell, no one wanted to talk to their kids; they wanted to outsource to picture books. I was, and remain, adamant that the best response is, actually, to speak directly and forthrightly. Children, like that 8-year-old above, like my 4-year-old, like my almost-12-year-old, have an immense emotional capacity and a fierce ability to hold a full picture without lopping off the bits they don’t like in order to simplify it.

We, as adults, have gotten wounded enough times in our lives that we can’t always bear to hold onto the parts that hurt us. It’s understandable, maybe, but the flaw is in us, not the child reader. Consider the fairy tale: once upon a time, fairy tale books had actual skeletons embedded in briars on the page, and just a couple of years ago, there were rather nervously defensive articles about how Jon Klassen’s book The Skull was honestly ok to publish. (Though it didn’t get so much as the tiniest nod at the ALA YMA, but I’m not bitter about it.) (Yes, of course I’m still fucking mad as hell.)

When I first heard that Israel had attacked a nuclear facility in Iran, beginning another front in these exhausting and painful wars (Ukraine, Russia, Palestine, Israel, now Iran– too many humans hurt, too many stories lost), I dug out two books for myself from my shelves, ones I really treasure. The first was The Conference of the Birds by Peter Sís, and the next, in English and French editions, were by Delphine Minoui, The Book Collectors or Les Passeurs de livres de Daraya. (I have both; see my passionate relationship with the facets of translation above. I get intense about it.)

I don’t read these as resources for children. I read them for myself. Because to be human is to find that place where we “ressens plein de trucs bénéfiques ou maléfiques,” and not to run away.

Peter Sís, child of the USSR, explored and delved into a Sufi poem, and he created a newly transcendent work of art out of it. The link above is to a paperback edition; it’s shamefully unavailable as a hardcover book now. Get it secondhand if you can find one. The birds, on their journey, take us through the fullness of what it means to be a feeling and thinking being, through everything beautiful and painful and dry and rich, through the highs and lows. We go with them, and we are them. It is reading and art as experience, and you will, after an attentive and absorbed reading, come out broader than you went in. Art and text are integrated, and you and the book will be integrated, too. I can’t explain it better than that; it is one of those books which simply has to be experienced, and must be revisited periodically.

Delphine Minoui is a keen-eyed, keen-eared, and sensitively attuned journalist and author from France, her background balanced evenly between France and Iran. She has written extensively about Iran, including Badjens about the uprisings of women and young people in Iran. Coming from such a different background from mine, and so intelligent and astute, she challenges me, and what gives me an especial jolt every time is that she accepts no easy answer.

In Daraya, a group refused to submit to al-Bassad’s forces. They would have no part either of Daesh’s religious extremism or of Ashar al-Bassad’s ruthless regime. And so in Daraya, they remained, starved and under siege, steadfastly repelling both forces, and a group of these mostly young people gathered books, creating a subterranean library. The scrupulous honesty of these people in collecting books (numbering, dating, recording exactly where each volume came from so it could– the hope was beautifully absurd– be returned to the original owners) was a kick in the gut in a world of corruption; the young librarians held themselves to a higher standard than anyone was asking of those besieging them. And they read, and read, and talked over Skype to Delphine Minoui who asked them questions and drew, in her book, an astonishing portrait, including her tough questions. You have to be made of stern stuff to be able to write such a book, because the interview process can be neither short nor simple. The depth and complexity is in the very marrow of it. It is the kind of book that, after buying it from curiosity when I saw it on a table at my local shop, forced me to further research, and I bought it in the French original, because that kind of thing matters.

Very well, there we have crisscrossing axes of humanity, geography, the USSR to 12th century Sufi poetry to France and Syria and Iran. But this is all very serious. I challenge you to go further. I have not yet read Autocorrect, the new collection from Israeli author Etgar Keret, though I have seen excerpts through his newsletter. I have read an earlier collection, Fly Already. If you think you understand Israel, Jews, humour, or grief, Keret will stagger you with what you do know, certainly– but more. There is always more. It feels a bit like thinking you were getting on a Möbius strip roller coaster but finding out after you got on that it was actually the double helix ride instead.

You do know more than you think, but Etgar Keret will leave you wondering if you’ve accepted that. When you struggle to accept a skull on the cover of a book about a child finding a home, do you have the inner resources to handle that a fairy tale has thorns and bones? You feel a pang of sorrow for children in pain, you tell your friends that one person’s pain doesn’t negate another; but do you believe that yourself when confronted by the pain of someone you consider your enemy? Do you, reading this, think I am asking that of everyone, or are you, reflexively, choosing where I’m coming from and to whom I am speaking– or do you see I am speaking, also, to myself?

Can you, adult reader, read to your child not about working through anger, but simply read anger? Can you read funny? Can you read beauty? Now, can you read those– to yourself?

Here is the conundrum for adults who love good books for children: There is no child reading this article here. There are only adults. The children will read what you let them, or be read what you will read them. They should have access to everything beautiful, but first you have to accept that responsibility. The responsibility to make the world more beautiful, to propagate the excellent, to take a seed or clipping from a beloved plant and make a new one, and to share the best of books with others.

Your job is, in a nutshell, to “ressens de la joie,” feel joy, but also to “ressens plein de trucs bénéfiques ou maléfiques,” to feel a bunch of stuff both good and bad. (I did what I said I wouldn’t, but there we are. I always do.)

Because otherwise– why read?

Both of my children found cats in a toy store. They looked to me like stuffed animals on a shelf, but my children, each of them as they were emerging from babyhood to toddlerhood, set eyes on a cat (think of Lisa finding Corduroy the bear) and recognized that cat as theirs. My daughter’s became Remy, I’m not sure how that name happened but happen it did, and Remy is no longer toted about everywhere but retains a position of respect and prestige in the toy box of my 11-year-old girl. The little one’s cat is Mrrow and has always been Mrrow and Mrrow is Mrrow and has not gotten another name. Mrrow has been to the hospital a few times and is a figure of real importance and comfort, to the point that I got another one just the same and kept the package, doubtful that it would be sufficient replacement but feeling it was imperative nevertheless– if only for me.

And then it happened. I couldn’t find Mrrow. I didn’t say anything but looked everywhere. And then the worst happened. My little 4-year-old boy with a passion for ballet, deep affection for Mrrow, and not so great lungs at the moment, had an asthmatic episode necessitating a trip to ER and Mrrow, who had been there for every other occasion, wasn’t there. I gulped, pulled out the backup cat, and off we went. My Spriggan was very respectful and nice about the new cat, and I was honest that I couldn’t find his original Mrrow but “this is what Mrrow was like when she was new,” and “I didn’t want you to have to go to the hospital without any Mrrow.” She was not Mrrow and we both knew it. But he’s a sweetie who reserves his tantrums for critical things like there being no molasses in the house when he wants to make gingerbread men, and he held the cat and said her name was “Hilda, like Hilda Hippo in Busytown,” and was very patient. I felt awful but there wasn’t anything I could do, so I didn’t have a tantrum, either.

Exactly one week later, my big, beautiful girl was taking my small, beautiful boy to the park. And they came rushing back, my daughter shrieking, “GUESS WHO I FOUND!” She explained all in a tumble that she thought she saw a dead squirrel in the dog park and went to check if maybe it was just injured and could she do anything, and it wasn’t a dead squirrel, it was Mrrow! You should thank your lucky stars that this was on Shabbat so I didn’t take a picture; it would not have been beautiful.

Filthy, saturated with spring rains and mud, probably mouthed by a dog or ten, but they were good doggies and didn’t tear her, I plopped her in the bath and ran in water and soap for a spa treatment. (To any Orthodox Jew reading this: do not take the above as halachic advice. I ran a mental calculation of “checking with the rabbi” vs “I have a small, emotional child here” and put cold water and soap in the tub with Mrrow and did not consult any rabbinic authority beyond, “this will have to do.” Hot water, scrubbing, and more came after Shabbat.)

Direct quote: “When I found Mrrow, he burst into tears. He told her he loved her and missed her and he was very, very sorry.” And he checked on her throughout Shabbat, talking to her and making sure she was getting on ok. The after-Shabbat scrub with hot water and soap was arduous but transformative. I wrapped her in towels and pressed out the water, telling him I’d put her to dry on a laundry rack overnight. He nodded politely, took a clean, dry towel, wrapped her up, and took her to bed with him. I didn’t stop him.

I think you can tell which one is Mrrow and which is Hilda. (Hint: Hilda is clean, fluffy, and sweet. Mrrow is, at least, clean.) But I’ve taken you through this not because of my kids or Mrrow. I walked through this story because I have a new respect for a few points about literature. All the above pictures (except the photo of the stuffed cats, of course) are from Dogger by Shirley Hughes. (I can’t find a purchase link to it in the USA, so if you’re in the US, you may have to get it either secondhand or from the UK. I bet it’s easier to find in Canada, though. No matter how you get it, it’s more than worth the price.)

I’ve noticed a trend, articulated also by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen in a few places, of adult readers of picture books expressing anxiety that children will see what they read as prescriptive: “You, child reader, ought to behave like this.” Or they fear that children will imitate what they read: “If children read this book, they may drink juice instead of milk and water!” I think, too, that creators respond, consciously or not, by writing books that provide curative scenarios: “When you lose a beloved toy, you will feel sad, and that’s ok! You can feel sad! And also things will turn out just fine…”

Living through a real-life Dogger and Dave scenario, I didn’t even think of Dogger until after my daughter came running in with Mrrow. I was so immersed in the moment that I didn’t register it as being so perfectly in parallel, right down to the tiny blond boy and darker-haired big sister. But then I emerged with a jolt and realized that Shirley Hughes wrote this story down a while ago, didn’t she? And the astonishing thing is that it’s exactly a reassuring story, not because it’s curative, not because it tells you how to handle things, what you should do, what will happen, not even because it validates your feelings, but because it’s so damned real.

I absolutely hate realist fiction, by the way, especially for adults. It’s inevitably depressing and boring at the same time. You always know what will happen because the ending is never happy because happy endings aren’t real, you see? Realist fiction for kids is simply boring and half the time I hope it ends unhappily just for a change of pace. Realist fiction for adults ends unhappily because adults know that unhappy endings are the only real ones. Realist fiction for children ends happily because adults are writing it and are squeamish.

Children are sensible and knowledgeable based on experience, so when real kids’ books tell a real story, fairy tale or not, it simply feels true in your bones. Strega Nona blows three kisses to the pasta pot. The bear eats the rabbit and gets his hat back. Dave finds Dogger and Bella helps even the balance of toy distribution– and reunites the true friends. These are simply real events because they feel concrete and true rather than cutesy (in banal picture books) or dank and gritty (in banal adult literature).

We have a lot to learn from real books, and we have a lot to learn from kids.

Dave and my little Spriggan didn’t cry about the loss of Dogger or Mrrow. They were quiet and even quieter. But when Dogger and Mrrow were found, then they cried. This is simply human; Odysseus does the same on returning to Ithaca. (He also cries earlier in The Odyssey, but usually when his companions are killed. He cries a lot; he’s human.) The outpouring of emotion is on resolution. The prelude is sadness or anxiety. But the accuracy is the point, and the click of recognition is pure.

Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake can be fooled, in his immaturity, into accepting the decked out Odile for Odette. When he recognizes the inner being, the truth of Odette, it’s too late to save her. They die together, though, ultimately saving her friends and vanquishing von Rothbart. Dave and my little one are so sensitively attuned that only Dogger and Mrrow are recognizable as real to them. And that’s how they had their happy endings.

When Tomie dePaola died, he left behind a world of loss.

When Tomie dePaola’s dog, Brontë, died, Brontë left behind a grieving Tomie.

And, so, when Tomie died, he also left behind a manuscript, spare and simple, about loss–but also about memories.

That manuscript was sent to Barbara McClintock, one of the finest artists of our days, to be illustrated and released posthumously: Where Are You, Brontë? by Tomie dePaola and Barbara McClintock (pre-order at that link and you can get a copy signed by Barbara). Given that it deals with Tomie’s death and bereavement, losing his beloved dog, the manuscript naturally carries a lot of extra feeling in our own bereavement– the loss of a beloved author, illustrator, and human being. (Frankly, I’m struck with a panoply of feelings that have nothing to do with the beautiful outcome: I’m relieved here. The book had the potential to be turned into a soppy, tear-jerky mess of fluff that would probably have made Tomie dePaola gag. In Barbara’s hands, we are safe: we have every nuance of honest sentiment and no false sentimentality.)

Loss is a funny beast. It feels physical, like a real yank of something integral away from you. No matter how intact your body may be, it feels less. A family friend recently died, and with it came a wash of memories: some about other friends lost, others about visits with my friend and his family, others about times that may have been technically unrelated but felt emotionally linked. I found myself making crème caramel for a reason that was not exactly related, as such, but kind of was. Anyway, it resulted in crème caramel, so it’s not like I’m going to complain about that. Memories go with loss. Jews sit shiva after a death, a seven day period of gathering around the bereaved and listening and sharing stories. Many cultures and faiths have memorials, funerals, and other customs involving sharing memories and stories– consider vigils and wakes, for example.

These memories feel tangible. They are an evocation of a person’s presence. It’s almost like the gap of physical loss is filled, something like a phantom limb in our spirits, until our minds are reconciled to the absence.

On every page of Where Are You, Brontë?, Tomie dePaola is present, and usually Brontë is, too. The book is incredibly simple. The repeated question, “Where are you, Brontë?” is asked, section by section, with a few lines of text building up to an overall answer. The early spreads show Brontë’s arrival, and how he settles in, sleeping with Tomie, playing with toys but never destroying them, and working his way into Tomie’s books. As time goes on, Brontë becomes an adult, and then an old, blind dog, but maintains his joyful spirit until the end, when he has lived every day of his life and is now gone; and, of course, Tomie is sad. We see him looking at the dog bed with only a toy and no Brontë. The food and water bowls, empty, with no Brontë. Having breakfast at the kitchen table, and no Brontë around, only an empty collar. Those two spreads are the only ones with no Brontë, but they sting, keenly. There’s a page turn, then, and we see Tomie on a solo walk, his face lighting up as he sees a rainbow and his eyes catch Brontë in the clouds, and all those memories from all the way through the book flood back to the reader’s mind (or at least they did to my mind) in that moment: “But then I knew you were right here.” Another page turn: Tomie draws beautiful Brontë, whose memory endures. As, of course, each adult and aware reader knows, Tomie’s memory endures in his own books, from the earliest to this one.

And that’s when the children’s librarian I showed my review copy to rushed out of her office with puffy eyes and said, “Oh my goodness this book needs to come with a YOU WILL CRY warning!” (Sorry!!! I really thought you knew the backstory of this book, or I would have warned you!)

Now, here’s the hard part: Barbara’s job wasn’t to reflect that rich layering of death, memory, and endurance, of both the dog and Tomie himself. It was to illustrate a very, very simply written book for children left by an author whose style was well known to be deceptively simple. The effect of how she did this was layered, rich, and covered a gamut from the beautifully simple picture book all the way to provoking tears in children’s book lovers in their library offices. But the actual, real task was to do a good job of illustrating a simple manuscript, and that must have been absolutely agonizingly difficult. And Barbara aced it.

I can tell you how I know she aced it. I read the book to my very convenient 4-year-old on hand, my Spriggan, and he loved the book (and kindly comforted his sniffly mother at the end). He wasn’t in the least distraught because it was such a nice book! We enjoyed it together very much, as every book to be read aloud should be enjoyed, of course. That is the goal, for the adult and child reader to enjoy the book together, but each in their own ways. In this case, that job was a really tall order because of the demands presented: a) illustrate a simple book with simple art, b) for a child, and the child will only have the context of the book itself, c) for the adult reader, who will have a lot more context about the author, and expectations to go with it.

You see, Tomie dePaola’s illustration style was described as folksy and simple. What that means, from everything I’ve read, and I recall a particularly colourful anecdote from Trina Schart Hyman describing an attempt she once made and certain colourful language she deployed along with crumpled pieces of paper being tossed around, is that it’s torturously difficult to replicate. When I close my eyes and call to mind Barbara McClintock’s art, I always see delicate flowing lines (think of another “where” book she illustrated, Adèle & Simon) that are more closely akin to Trina Schart Hyman’s than to the simple, broad lines of Tomie’s Strega Nona.

Simon’s drawing of a cat is very good. I think Brontë would like it, and Tomie would, too.

So, choosing Barbara with her lovely lines and keen eye for children for this job was absolutely genius. She would take the job seriously, reverently, even. Her respect for Tomie dePaola is total, and that means that her respect for the picture book (also demonstrated over a long career of brilliant books) is also total. She would have her own expectations, but ignore the expectations of adult readers when they competed with the all-important child; by doing so, she would take that manuscript and make a beautiful book. And so her art brings the words to the book to life not as Tomie dePaola would have done it, but as Tomie as a character in his own book of life, illustrated by Barbara McClintock. Barbara as illustrator and artist, who loves picture books by people like Tomie, knows when art is active and when art is illustrative. She imbibes elements of his style in grateful and graceful homage, but does it in her own way, with the breath of life only an artist doing her own work can do. There’s a little mouse I’ll let you find who appears in her wispy fine lines, simple but perfect, popping up in the broad folksy grasses, evoking a curious Barbara exploring a world of Tomie’s making. I can tell, on every page, that she worked with love, awe, and enjoyment.

And I read it, snuggled in bed with my own tiny boy, and we read it with love, awe, and enormous enjoyment– and, in my case, with damp eyes and a sniffly nose. I got patted on the head and given a hug and a kiss. It was fine– better than fine. I hope you’ll enjoy it, too.

It’s a bit like falling into a picture book world, thinking about all we’ve gained from all of these creators over all of these decades.

There is a grand total of one thing that I don’t like about this book, which is that styling the title in writing is a little irritating. Here Is a Book is what makes most sense, but then you have two tiny words beside each other “is” and “a” and one is capitalized but the other isn’t. But “is” can’t be left lowercase because it’s a verb, which just doesn’t sit well. Naturally, Elisha Cooper can gleefully duck this by elegantly clean typographic layout in all caps. Book designers, editors, art directors, authors– they have all the options. The reviewer is stuck thinking, “Are you doing this to us on purpose, Elisha?” (NB: This isn’t just Elisha Cooper. I adore Jan M. Ziolkowski’s clean and thoughtful book, Fairy Tales from Before Fairy Tales. But why is “from” lowercase but “before” capitalized? Why?) Elisha Cooper is a tease. Like, say, when I was at the book event for Sergio Ruzzier’s elegant beauty of a book, Bianca and the Butterfly, all hopped up on book fumes, and Elisha whipped an early author copy out of his bag, showed me, and wouldn’t let me so much as touch it. Kindly observe this cover which he showed me and didn’t let me touch.

But it’s ok, I don’t hold a grudge.

Not for longer than a century, anyway.

What, exactly, is a book? And how do you make one? What does it hold? How do you end up with a title and how do you format or style it?

Books about books and book-making aren’t a new idea, and they are, as is typical, extremely variable in quality, to be polite. I’ve written about some which are good or brilliant. I’ll let you search, if you want to, but I looked up some of my old reviews and wrinkled my nose at my prose, so you’ve been warned. I still think the best of them is This Is Not a Picture Book! (NB: Styled as such in most databases, though it is now sadly out of print, but the cover cleverly formats it in the French style: This is not a picture book! just like a normal sentence. The Brits do that, too. It is by far the best way.)

This is not a picture book! (going against the herd there) channels the feeling of vulnerability or anxiety about facing a new and potentially dangerous type of book and turning that into cautious exploration of uncharted territory, exciting and unexpectedly beautiful. Children have that as they gain literacy skills, learn to parse words, or find themselves navigating a page without pictures. I get that feeling as I open a book in a language I haven’t yet mastered– right now, Italian. The feeling Sergio puts on the page is visceral and, even as I choose to get that hard book, I still feel the duckling’s anxiety and rage as I face a page that, somehow, inexplicably, doesn’t make immediate sense to me. (Note to self: It doesn’t make sense to you because you haven’t yet learned to read it with full confidence. That takes time. It’s exactly that simple.)

Elisha Cooper’s new book, Here is a book (hee hee), places itself with more detachment, but is, fascinatingly, a portal you fall into. Look at the cover: a book on a book. Look at the back cover, now.

With his usual brilliant humour, he shows on the back exactly how, though apparently we are getting a detached, bird’s-eye view of the book-making process, we will really be tumbling through the pages of the book, landing in the artist’s studio, meeting the editors, and, as we take the book from the library, emerging into our own chair, holding the book we made with the artist at the end. Only she is the one who made us, the readers, in a very real way. Or maybe not, I don’t know. Let’s look under the dust jacket and start again.

Isn’t it pretty? There are more languages on the back, but you can find those when you buy your own copy. Let me just show you one little thing. The eye searches for patterns, and we see a gradual fade from red on the right to blue on the left, except… it’s not quite so. So, if you’re me, you start tracking languages. Those are also mixed. Wait, green is — no, also pops up and out. Integrated, yet sorted. Rhythmic patterning, with mischievous pops of the unexpected. The very cover (on and under the jacket) is telling us what to expect. A serious, rhythmic book describing the book-making process, but unexpectedly humorous and immersive. [Publicist, take note: the preceding sentence is your pull quote.]

We, the readers, flip it open to see a beautiful landscape. The eye takes in a soaring sky and lovely house. We likely miss the quiet, solitary figure sketching. Until we flip to the title page, where we are suddenly looking at the sketchpad with the hands holding a pencil exactly where our hands would be if we were sketching. We are in the place of the sketcher. Page turn. We pull back, and see: “Here is an artist, looking.” The artist isn’t just looking, of course. She is sketching, and we see the sketches flowing up, to the left, drifting seamlessly behind and away. The effortlessness is part of the landscape of the book. It is the poetry of the text, the metre of the art. [That is the kind of thing I feel passionate about, write, but makes a bad pull quote for a publicist.] Page turn. Beat. “And look, here is the artist’s garden” and the stanzaic structure emerges: “made with sun, rain, dirt, shovels, seeds, and love.”

Paragraph break for me to point out: contrast the effort of the garden with the apparent effortlessness of those sketches drifting left and off the page. But the rhythm is smooth and almost whimsical on the tongue. A list of things you use to make a garden, that’s all.

Page turn, next stanza: “And here is…” You see, here, that the opening of what I’m insisting is a poetic structure was the line: “And look, here is the artist’s garden.” That began with an imperative: “look.” Our attention is commanded. We are outside, looking in. But then the structure quietly takes over with “here is” and we walk with the artist wherever she goes. We go into her house and see the cat and the bread and the family. The list of nouns on this page culminates in “warmth,” a lovely match to “love” in the garden. It was Daniel Donoghue who casually mentioned to me in grad school when we were reading Beowulf that good lists build to the last, important beat in poetry. This holds true here, and though Elisha softens the “BAM” of that beat to more of a “bop” by extending the list length, the repetition makes it very clear that those culminating words, stanza by stanza, spread by spread, are absolutely core. Soon enough we are in her studio, where the list is topped by “wonder.” Love, warmth, wonder. This must be a lovely place to live, and we slip happily into the armchair with the artist, and pat her cat.

The next stanzas are linked and color, rhythm, and teamwork take us to the completion of the book’s development until it goes to a printer where the list of elements that make the book culminate in “time.” The finished, printed books, which we haven’t seen because the artist showed us sketches but won’t let us touch them, are trucked over hills and valleys and we watch the tantalizing progress through layers of fog, forests, rocks, bears, and (bop) beauty. The truck is still going along, tantalizing us with its travels (which we remember started with an artist simply looking) across a country ribboned with rivers (have you read Elisha Cooper’s River?) and so much more including (bop) adventure, until we travel with that truck into a city soaring with a list including (bop) grit.

That was the one that really made me blink with delight, by the way. I hate grit. I hate it getting into my eyes when there’s wind. I hate gritty realism in literature. Why is realism always gritty? Can’t it be delicate and whimsical? A butterfly is as real as a rock! But as our nouns went from beauty and wonder and adventure to grit, I thought of the other meaning of “grit,” namely “courage.” If I hadn’t been reading aloud, I would have laughed, but as it is I grinned at my sleepy Spriggan, who laughed back to me as I turned the page. Those books were finally delivered to a school library and a student took her library books home, so, finally we are back in a home, back with a new friend and new eyes, not the artist, now, but with her reader. The reader’s home is built with bricks and mortar and structure and her kitchen is filled with vegetable soup and two cats and humor. Her room is overflowing paper and pencils and days and nights and wonder– again.

The last two spreads take us full circle in a closing stanza of such fabulous capaciousness yet impeccable specificity that I’m leaving it to you to discover everything except one particular point: all those culminating “bop” beats? They pull together, with all their nuances of definition (grit, wonder, structure) into the last list of all.

The book is quite as immersive as This is not a picture book! even with the apparent detachment of that bird’s-eye view, which deceptively tumbles into a portal, as though that bird swooped into a rabbit down the rabbit hole, leaving me exclaiming, “Curiouser and curiouser!” as I turn the pages again and again and again.

Elisha Cooper, you are a blasted genius. I liked the pandas on the artist’s studio wall.

The book would have been perfect at any time, in any age. Despite the nicely labelled dates (example: Saturday, June 7, 1986), it doesn’t feel stuck on any day of any month of any year. And this book is a not insignificant part of why I thought I’d really, really better go to NCTE back in November. I knew Scholastic would be there, and I just desperately wanted to see if I could talk to someone about how I could wheedle a review copy. Well, they just handed me a copy (and then I lost the card of the lovely person who gave me the copy, so I can’t email her this review– I’m bad at this! Sorry, lovely publicist.), so that part was easy.

What’s not easy is writing about it. I read it and my heart swelled and twisted so I wanted to cry. I made my husband read it. I re-read it. I tried and tried to write, and swore, and threw out drafts.

It’s difficult.

Danny, whose voice we hear for most of Run Away With Me, Brian Selznick’s new masterpiece (order from that link to Books of Wonder and you may get a signed copy), also struggles to speak sometimes. Angelo is the more loquacious of the two friends, young men finding each other in Rome. Angelo is the storyteller, but Danny, in his quiet way, elicits stories from Angelo and shares his own.

There is a manuscript, too, which is hidden and found, and the manuscript is in itself a hidden text, the secrets painstakingly unfolded by Danny’s mother, a paleographer.

Oh, yes, that’s right. There is paleography. My one potential quibble: the rare book librarians I know do not currently use white cotton gloves in handling books. Would they have in the 1980s? It’s certainly possible. I feel like Brian Selznick would have covered that in his extensive research. He’s such a thoughtful, careful creator. He doesn’t push books into being before they’re ready. He is eloquent, but not overly wordy. Like Maurice Sendak. Like Margaret Wise Brown. Like Sergio Ruzzier. Brian Selznick crafts his manuscripts deftly and considers them with care.

I flip through my heavily read and creased ARC of the book, and marvel at the work that went into each image and passage. Brian Selznick’s draft work must be art in its own right. I know it without seeing it.

But each of these elements shows the beauty of the silence between the words. As usual in a book by Brian Selznick, much of that silence is visual art, and much of that visual art is an unfolding mystery: connection, misdirection, and brilliant bridges across time and space. Is that one of the boys, maybe Angelo? No! That’s an angel in the church! Wait– no, the angel is Angelo? Or–

The text draws further deft lines between these links, and no I’m not going to explain any of the above, about Angelo or Danny or paleography or the angel in the church, because to do so would wreck your experience in following the delicate strokes of pencil and text, from scene to scene, drawing and description, music and flowing water.

Of all of Brian Selznick’s books, I think this may be his greatest masterpiece to date. I felt a strong pang of recognition in his depictions of aching loneliness and longing for beauty.

“They always seem lonely to me,” I said. “The obelisks.”
“They are lonely,” he answered, as if the objects themselves had been telling him their secrets.

Even when they have each other, Danny and Angelo are aware that the days are ticking down to separation. But Angelo has already told Danny: “To have had a friend,” he said. “Even for a short time. That’s important.”

I think this book will be a friend to many of us.

In November 2017, I wrote a not particularly good but, I recall, intensely felt post about The Wall by Peter Sís. I recall the fear and agitation of the time vividly, and, of course, not much has changed. Some things have, of course, but, ultimately, what I see and hear swirling around me is a kind of misery contest of who is the first under attack: “It always starts with–” fill in the blank with your pick of women, LGBT+ folks, racial minorities, the arts, the intellectuals, the judiciary, or what have you. Historically, it all does start somewhere and with something and someone, I’m absolutely certain, but depending on what “it” is and where you set the goalposts, that will always shift, and–

Truly, it doesn’t matter, because it has already started, and here we are. Trying to figure out when and where it started is, I submit with a marked lack of humility, futile. At this point, we simply need to stop hiding, stop obfuscating, and say: We are living under the shadow of a new fascism.

Instead of blindly running around trying to warn that this is leading somewhere bad, please consider that it already is very bad and that fracturing into splinters of arguments over who’s most under attack is absurd while there’s what Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic called “a Mack-truck-size breach” of security regarding war plans being discussed on Signal. EOs against law firms are putting a damper on lawyers, and while everyone loves to joke about sleazy lawyers and quote Shakespeare out of context, please recall that lawyers with the Department of Justice were methodically, thoroughly, and competently investigating and prosecuting January 6 insurrectionists, a fair number of whom had histories of violent conduct. These lawyers, who were upholding our rule of law and shoring up the integrity of our democracy in the face of an angry government, were fired for the very nature of their work, and the insurrectionists were pardoned.

Thus: this is a growing wave of totalitarian conduct.

And here I am, back to The Wall. And thank God Peter Sís created this masterpiece.

I don’t know a single person who has not, to some degree or other, been affected by this rising totalitarianism. My entire home country of Canada, for example. But also: teachers under scrutiny, scientists facing lost funding, friends with jobs lost or going to bed wondering if they’ll have a job tomorrow, or the biography of the guy who constructed the Sunday crossword noting that he just lost his job as a management consultant for federal agencies in Washington, DC. The maelstrom of chaos is, of course, deliberate, but comes into focus when seen not as a first step but as an accomplished act: totalitarian regimes are not clearly organized, they are incompetent, and discuss war plans on Signal.

I had been thinking of The Wall often, since I see the entire world through a lens of art. Literature, visual art, music: this is how humans have always processed our experiences, of course. The picture book is an ideal medium because it is so limited that the great creator is forced to hone the experience to a synthesized visual and verbal package with the rhythm of a poem when read aloud. I don’t mean that it must be in verse; rather that page turns create the marks of beats and accents of a poem. An ideal picture book works with that rhythm and the constraints of the page and format to distill an experience into a felt experience.

In The Wall, Peter Sís distills growing up under oppression, finding a secret voice, hiding it, and with wave on wave of growing pushes towards liberty from the Soviet regime, finally coming to freedom.

I pulled it from the shelf while fears for Ukraine rose in me, intending to read it to myself or handing it to the Changeling to read with me. She’s 11, and feeling this political climate more keenly than I’d like, but I think every parent has that uneasiness. I did not expect the 4-year-old ballet-loving, twirling Spriggan to ask me to read it to him. I had just heard about the Kennedy Center takeover; on our frequently watched DVD of Swan Lake with the Spriggan’s adored Angel Corella as Prince Siegfried, the performance is on the stage of the Kennedy Center and it opens with a clip from the dedication of the Kennedy Center. My love of the performing arts has deep roots, and one of the joys of my nuclear family is that my husband and children and I all share this taste. So that was back of my mind as we read The Wall.

This is not a book for a 4-year-old, and while he found it interesting and said he liked the art, he very sensibly went to look for other books by the same author that were more at his level, which are thankfully easily available on our shelves. One of my deepest objections to education in schools today is the rush, rush, rush away from picture books, but this is a book for older children, older classes, and families and teachers. It is perfect and it is beautiful, but classrooms and education haven’t kept pace with Peter Sís’s genius and tell children to grow out of picture books by the time they can read to themselves. And yet Grade 7 and 8 should read this.

America to the rescue! I broke down a bit on that one.

We are back to The Wall, and I can’t say what to do or how to function, but I would like to recommend: a) Cohesion rather than competition; b) Read good books, including this one; c) Don’t obscure reality. It doesn’t start with anyone; we are here.

Finally, some words from Jeffrey Goldberg when asked if he feared retaliation: “It’s not my role to care about the possibility of threats or retaliation. We just have to come to work and do our jobs to the best of our ability. Unfortunately, in our society today—we see this across corporate journalism and law firms and other industries—there’s too much preemptive obeying for my taste. All we can do is just go do our jobs.”

“I FOUND MY CALDECOTT PICK!” I shrieked on the way into my husband’s study and I think he was in a meeting but let’s pretend he wasn’t. I was excited.

I had been a bit apprehensive about Let’s Be Bees. I will confess: I was wrong.

I adore Shawn Harris for his whimsically odd approach to picture books, for breaking with orthodoxy in a rather Ruth Krauss-esque way: in Have You Ever Seen a Flower?, the child shouts “HELLO” just to listen for an echo, and something about it reminds me of the jubilant page: “Yell, ‘Good morning, big fat world!'” in Roar Like a Dandelion.

And I keep somehow being nervous with Shawn Harris titles before I see them. I think it’s the presentation of simplicity that deceives me; will it be too empty? I cannot emphasize strongly enough that this is sheer stupidity, probably trauma induced from reading too many breathlessly inane titles about loving the whole world. Shawn managed to write the only book with a tiny pink unicorn that made me laugh and that doesn’t make me foam at the mouth and that I have even gotten as a gift for multiple children.

NB: I routinely lecture adults about the taxonomically incorrect unicorns in books and the media these days. Like, you know, hot pink unicorns. I pull out history books and demonstrate that these are not accurate based on documentary evidence. That Shawn could create a pink unicorn I grudgingly like is nothing short of gobsmacking, and I need to trust to the truth:

Shawn Harris can be trusted with simple books.

You see, not everyone is good enough to do simple well. Above, I compared him to Ruth Krauss, famous for, among others, A Hole Is to Dig. She did something simple and brilliant: she listened to kids. In reading her books, often illustrated by Maurice Sendak, who matched her in his acute and sensitive level of observation and respect for children, one has the sense of tumbling into the world delineated there. The logic is intensely obvious. It cannot be imitated, however, because Ruth Krauss is the one who did the work. She was the observer. Any imitation is going to be cute and coy and patronizing, and I will feel like feeding the offending book to an angry hippopotamus. For example.

Shawn, like Ruth Krauss, does the work. In this interview with Betsy Bird (shared by a friend– thank you, Macy!) he says this thought was the starting point: “Well, that was fun becoming a flower— now I want to be everything else on earth.” That thought catapults straight into the mind of a 4-year-old, and I live with one. Yesterday he was a beaver and a black swan. Usually at different times.

I’ve seen his books described as “weird,” and from an adult perspective, I totally agree. It is absolutely bizarre to have a spread that’s bloodred, just bloody. But we had a guest over who cheerfully told us about his 7-year-old child nemesis who wiped her bloody finger on his cheek to prove to him that she really was bleeding, ok, you stupid grown-up? Blood is visceral, she felt it, she needed him to feel it. And Have You Ever Seen a Flower? really gets that. In Let’s Be Bees, it feels weird to a grown-up to be anything but human, because we’re pretty convinced that’s who we are, see? My experience of 4-year-olds leads me to believe that their species identities are entirely fluid at all times, and the book feels natural to read with one. They move with the shifts. We need a little push to our less elastic brains. It’s a little odd, see.

Look, I’m too wordy. Let me share my Spriggan’s perspective. He wasn’t really feeling like a tree the day we read it, and my attempts to get him to rustle were met with indifference. But we came to what I’m thinking of as “the ROAR spread” and he had a lot to tell me.

“Mama, you read it wrong.”
“What?” I was surprised, a bit, because so far I thought he couldn’t quite read yet, and usually he trusts me to get the words right in books.
“That isn’t a fire.”
“Uh…”
Allow me to show you the spread:

I really, really thought that was a picture of a roaring fire there on the bottom left, so I just kind of stared a bit. I do that an awful lot when a kid is telling me something, because, frankly, I’m so often at a complete loss until I get more clues. (To be honest with you, I think Shawn must be a lot smarter than I am; he seems to get it.)

“Mama, that’s a Firebird. Firebirds don’t roar.”
“Oh! What does the Firebird say?”
He thought. “…tinkle tinkle?”

He didn’t speak with conviction, and I was, I confess, pleased to have stumped him. He’s advanced a few other suggestions, but mostly he thinks it’s important to know that they have Golden Apple trees. When he’s a Firebird, he carries his own tree with Golden Apples around with him, so that’s a Firebird, do we really care what they say? He doesn’t– the Firebirds he knows are from the ballet, and don’t talk, they flutter their wings and pluck Golden Apples from the tree and they’re delicate but stronger than Kotschei the Deathless.

The genius of this book, and it is absolutely genius, it is serious genius, is that it is delightfully weird to the adult reader, and it is natural and delightful to the child reader. It’s a book to read together as a lap read, but it would also work as a classroom read. And I particularly love the cozy framing of it, so gentle, as an adult reading to a child– reading this very book, in fact. That gentle set in image frames the whole experience as a read-together, and puts the adult in the position of entering the child’s world. It is the adult saying, “Let’s be bees.” That imagery puts us, as adults, in the child’s park, and we are joining them in their logical centre.

For children, so often pushed to join us in ours, this is a rare experience. Ruth Krauss gave it to them, Sergio Ruzzier does today, and so does Shawn Harris. I think he’s great. And, Shawn, sorry I ever doubted you.

Let’s be swans!

And this book? This is it. This is my Caldecott pick.

Side note: I must give enormous thanks to the editor, Taylor Norman, for sending this for my Spriggan (who is a Black Swan today), and who dealt with my enthusiastic messages with forbearance.