Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

It’s been a while since I’ve done a picture book round-up of more than two titles at once. Here are six from either the end of ’06 or just published in ’07 — and one is due to hit the bookstore shelves in February. So, let’s get right to it then . . .

Duck, Duck, Goose by Tad Hills (published by Schwartz & Wade Books; on the shelves — February 2007; my source: review copy) — I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Tad Hills’ Duck and Goose (published in January of ’06) for the Cybils committee work I did (unfortunately, I never got around to reviewing it). This book got all kinds of well-deserved accolades thrown at it, and it became a New York Times bestseller as well. “Readers will hope to see more of this adorable odd couple,” wrote Kirkus Reviews. And now said readers can cheer, because Duck and Goose are back. Read the rest of this entry �

{Note: Head here at Big A Little a for today’s Poetry Friday round-up} . . .

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Gail Gauthier’s recent post, “Why Blog Reviews Are Important,” in which she makes the case for reviewing older titles after discovering that her most recently published novel was reviewed — eight months after publication — on two different blogs. Blogs, she writes, can extend the season of a book. In today’s world, the season of a book (or movie or any number of other new events, for that matter) is pathetically short. I won’t go on and on about this, except to say that when Eisha and I created this blog, I never set out to review just new titles. But that’s exactly what I’ve done. Gail’s post is a nice reminder that reviewing older titles “remind{s} readers of books they’d been meaning to read but had forgotten about” (such as this review from this week at the excelsior file, one of my favorite blogs — and if it hadn’t been for Just One More Book’s review of the ’06 re-print of Margaret Shannon’s The Red Wolf, originally published in 2002, who knows how long it would have taken me to find this intriguing picture book).

On that note, here’s something else that’s been on my mind, and here’s where the poetry comes in: Mama Goose, which serves as a child’s introduction to poetry. I’ve been reading Chris Roberts’ entertaining Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme (first published in 2004 by Granta Books). Read the rest of this entry �