kids

Love this author – love this illustrator – love this author and illustrator combo – love this book. That’s a lot of love, but if you read this book I think you’ll agree with me. I don’t remember how I came across the illustrator Mark Hearld, but my guess (and hope) is that we will be seeing and hearing a lot more from this talented British artist. His mixed media work reminds me of Eric Carle, but colorful and vibrant in a fresh new way.

Award-winning children’s author and biologist Nicola Davies provides the perfect poetry to go along with the artwork, to vividly present the abundance of our

Duck! Rabbit! is a funny Easy Fiction story that challenges you to see images in a different way, similar to an optical illusion, it is a great way to involve everyone in the story.  A wonderful childrens' librarian once used American Sign Language signs for "duck" & "rabbit" which allows everyone to participate in the story and extends their experience.  This is one of my favorite books because it is fun, silly and a nice ongoing discussion about whether it is a duck or a rabbit.  While I have colleagues at the library that don't quite see it this way...from my perspective it is a duck :)

Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making is a wonderful, magical fairy-tale fantasy that is aimed at children but doesn't talk down to them—and is written in a way that will appeal to adults, too. It's a fantasy in the same vein as Alice in Wonderland, The Phantom Tollbooth, and L. Frank Baum's Oz books. In The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, 12-year-old September is whisked away from her home in Omaha, Nebraska by the Green Wind and taken to Fairyland on his steed, the Leopard of Little Breezes. September has a wondrous, mysterious