Friends and Pals and Nice Reviews, Too!

We've gotten some nice reviews in for Friends and Pals and Brothers, Too! Kirkus started things off by saying:

"This is a dear piece of work, not least because it fosters congenial relations between brothers. Wilson's easy, rhymed text has a pleasing bounce and echo—"I call him squirrel. He calls me bear. / We sing in bed. We mud our hair . . . . In spring we bring out balls and bats. / We look for frogs. We pet strange cats."—but it plays as background music to Landry's irresistible watercolors. He has drawn the boys with elemental features: dots for eyes, jug-handle ears and snug helmets of hair; their sickle-moon smiles and arms waving above their heads convey innocence and bonhomie. These guys are simply having a good time. And why not, when life involves eating handfuls of cake, tooling about on bikes, chomping on pancakes, jumping in leaves, spitting cherry pits and blobbing grape jelly on each other's heads? Point taken: Make your own Eden, play hard, get dirty—why squabble when the alternative is to mud your brother's hair?

Also, from School Library Journal:

Two young brothers, nicknamed Bear and Squirrel, enjoy spending time with one another. They go on nature hikes, rake leaves, and sleep outside in tents. These simple pleasures highlight the siblings' closeness throughout the year: "In spring we bring out balls and bats./We look for frogs. We pet strange cats." Told in uncomplicated verse, one short line per page, this unassuming book captures the warmth and delight of being best friends. The rhyming is easy and predictable with only one instance in which the ending words do not work as a pair ("jokes"/"coats"). The childlike, unembellished watercolor and pencil illustrations fit the text perfectly, and the muted colors underscore the simplicity and joyful intimacy of the boys' relationship. This title would work best in small-group readings and one-on-one sharing.

Yay!

The Lion and the Unicorn

Another fun thing that I got to do in the London area is visit a terrific children's book shop in Richmond called The Lion and the Unicorn. Here are two photos of myself (I'm the one in the schleppy brown hoodie) and my new pal Tony, the manager of the bookshop. In the first photo, we're posing in front of an amazing wall of pictures taken from the dozens of author and illustrator visits to the store over the years (Don't let the bald heads blind you!).

I spent over two hours there, marveling at the amazing difference in inventory between an english independent children's book shop and an american one. Sure, there was J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, and Philip Pullman, but there was lots more in between that was new to me, both in middle-grade fiction and picture books. One thing that I loved there is that picture books come out so much more quickly in paperback -- there was Chester and the Scaredy Squirrel books by Melanie Watt, and a few new Emma Chichester Clark titles that I hadn't seen here yet.

Among some of the novels I came home with thanks to Tony's recommendations are The Witch's Boy by Michael Gruber (I'm reading this one right now and am loving it) and Poison by Chris Wooding.

I was especially happy to see that old favorites such as Helen Oxenbury, John Burningham, Shirley Hughes and the Ahlbergs are still going strong in the U.K., as well as my current favorite, Polly Dunbar!