My Book and Me

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 22 APR 2024

Newbery Medalist Park and two-time Caldecott Medalist Raschka celebrate the ways children shower their books with love—and what they get in return—in a picture book that catalogs reading's pleasures. In each spread, a child, painted in lush, loose, rounded strokes, describes the way volumes teach, feed, and free them. "This is my book," announces a young person who strides along beneath an umbrella, a book under a slicker-clad arm: "I carry it with me/ wherever I go." A page turn later, another describes a book with "jam on the cover/ from yesterday's toast/ and crayon inside/ from when I was little." Other spreads note the way books let readers create alternate selves ("I move like the characters"), recall language ("I know every word"), and offer escape ("I don't hear you call./ I can't come right now"). While the artwork expresses the children's passion in all its messy liveliness, the chorus of autonomous voices both persuades and invites: "Do you have a book?/ A favorite book?/ A book that you love/ the way I love mine?" Characters are portrayed with various abilities and skin tones. Ages 3–6. Author's agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown. Illustrator's agent: Brenda Bowen, Book Group.