picture books

Paddington’s Twelve Days of Christmas by Michael Bond, Karen Jankel and R.W. Alley (+ a holiday blog break)

~ jama ~ 35 Comments

Ho Ho Ho and Fa la la!

What better way to celebrate Christmas than with our favorite bear from Darkest Peru? Paddington’s Twelve Days of Christmas by Michael Bond, Karen Jankel, and R.W. Alley (HarperCollins, 2025) was just released in September and as far as we’re concerned, any new Paddington picture book is a special gift.

This story was actually first published in 1988 as Paddington’s Magical Christmas (art by David McKee), and then in 1993 (art by John Lobban). Now for this recently revised edition, longtime and current Paddington illustrator R.W. Alley has created brand new pen-and-ink and watercolor spreads that fairly sing from the pages with energy and pizzazz.

So what is dear Paddington up to this time?

One day while writing Christmas cards he overhears Mrs Bird singing — unusual in itself, but even more surprising since it was about her true love sending her a partridge in a pear tree. What a great idea! Wish he’d thought of it since he needs a special present for the Browns. But when he checks the garden, there’s not a pear tree or partridge in sight.

He then hears Mrs Brown singing that her true love had sent four calling birds, three French hens and two turtledoves — and another partridge in a pear tree. Paddington hurries outside again, only to find none of these things anywhere. What is going on?

And that’s not the end of it. Next, Judy breaks out in song. What was she given? Everything Mrs Brown received plus five gold rings! Wow! The Browns’ friend must be very rich to be able to afford so many presents.

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[review + recipes + giveaway] Celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday

~ jama ~ 31 Comments

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a certain 18th century English author turns 250, worldwide fans who ardently admire and love her will want to commemorate this important milestone all year.

Today we’re celebrating Jane Austen’s birthday with a brand new historical fiction picture book and two teatime treats. Few writers have the distinction of being read and studied continuously for more than two centuries. We have Jane to thank for focusing on the internal lives of complex characters, and of course, her witty and ironic social commentary.

Because of my love for china, I was especially excited to read Jane and the Blue Willow Princess by Catherine Little and Sae Kimura (Plumleaf Press, 2025). Published especially to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, this delightful story was inspired by a fragment of Blue Willow pattern china unearthed during a November 2011 archaeological dig at Steventon, where Jane spent the first 25 years of her life and drafted her first three novels.

As the story opens, we find Jane perched up in her treehouse calling down to her sister Cassy (who’s at her easel). She has so many story ideas she doesn’t know what to do.

Cassy is relieved when Mother appears in the garden carrying a tray with blue and white teacups and plates; Jane has been working hard and needs a break. As the three of them enjoy tea and cheese toasties (Jane’s favorite snack), Mother asks Jane about the story she’s writing for Father’s birthday.

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[peaceful review] Woods & Words: The Story of Poet Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman and Naoko Stoop

~ jama ~ 25 Comments

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.” ~ Mary Oliver

Beloved American poet Mary Oliver is well known for her sensitive, pure-hearted observations of the natural world, but did you know she credited her love of nature and poetry with saving her life?

Thanks to Woods & Words: The Story of Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman and Naoko Stoop (Beach Lane Books, 2025), young readers will learn how a lonely girl survived a difficult childhood by finding refuge in the woods and writing about the wonders she found there. Her lifelong practice of walking in the wild and treating poetry as central to her very existence would earn her literary acclaim, but more importantly, the rare status of being a popular, best-selling poet in an otherwise poetry-indifferent age.

We first see young Mary in the woods, crouched in a grass-and-sticks hut she had stitched herself, “noticing” treasures like birdsong, velvet leaves, and “a glittering beam of light.”

Whenever she felt confined by classroom walls, she made the woods her school. There, she wrote, filling stacks of notebooks, alone except for books by favorite poets like Poe, Blake, and Whitman.

The spring after graduating from high school, Mary drove to Steepletop in upstate New York, where she stayed in an old farmhouse where the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived. She helped Edna’s sister organize papers and “wrapped herself in woods and words. What more could she ask for?”

One day, Mary saw a visitor at the kitchen table — it was love at first sight! Mary and Molly became inseparable, capturing the world around them, Mary with her words, Molly with her camera.

They eventually settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Mary continued to walk the woods or along the shore, searching for poems: “There were always poems if you paid attention,” whether under leaves, on the backs of black snakes, or prompted by the sweet or rotten smells she encountered. She carried a pocket notebook and stashed pencils in trees so she’d always be ready.

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[ravenous review] Attack of the Hangries by Katherine Pryor and Thiago Buzzy

~ jama ~ 7 Comments

It happens to the best of us. Keeping busy, moving through an ordinary day, things seem to be going quite well, when suddenly — out of nowhere — ATTACK!

Instead of our cheery, cooperative (and might I add) cute and cuddly selves, we’re cranky, cantankerous, even a bit CRAZY. Help! What’s going on?!

We’re HANGRY, of course. Hungry + Angry = Hangry. Simple as that. Good thing there’s a brand new picture book all about it. In Attack of the Hangries by Katherine Pryor and Thiago Buzzy (WorthyKids, 2025), we learn what the hangries are, what causes them and how to effectively keep them at bay.

Entertaining, informative, and all too relatable, this belly rumbling tome is powered by Pryor’s lively, engaging prose and Buzzy’s hilarious, high octane cartoons, providing readers with lots to chew on as they consider the science behind hunger and mood.

First off, we’re told the hangries are sneaky. No matter where you are or what you’re doing (home, school, “spelunking in the caves of Quintana Roo”), or whether you’re having a terrible or fantastic day, the hangries can take over.

Your brain scrambles. Your limbs flail. All you want to do is SCREAM! AT EVERYONE! FOR ANYTHING!

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[racy review] Dinos That Drive by Suzy Levinson and Dustin Harbin

~ jama ~ 25 Comments

Attention Auto Aficionados, Jurassic Junkies and Diehard Dinomaniacs!

Buckle Up and Start Your Engines! Vroom! Zoom! We’re off on a prehysteric prehistoric poetry adventure sure to get your motors humming.

If you relish turbo-charged humor, well-oiled rhymes, fun facts and genius cartoons, steer your way right into Dinos That Drive by Suzy Levinson and Dustin Harbin (Tundra, 2025). This well-versed vehicle consisting of 21 poems is packed with fossilized fun from brontos to buses and triceratops to tractors, with friendly herbivores and one terrifying carnivore throwing a wacky wrench in the works (say that fast five times). Look, here they come now, roarin’ down the highway . . .

DINOS . . . GOING?

You've never seen a dinosaur
that's into driving cars?
You've never seen a dinosaur
that flies a jumbo jet?
You've never seen a dinosaur
that rockets to the stars?
Then buckle up! Let's take a ride . . .
YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHIN' YET!

The concept of putting dinosaurs behind the wheel is brilliant: Dinos + Things That Go = Kid Heaven. Dustin Harbin’s imaginative, immersive Scarry-esque cartoons expand upon the captivating humor of Levinson’s rollicking poems via zany details and cool sight gags.

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