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All the Feelings Before Breakfast

h1 August 4th, 2022 by jules


— From Rachel Vail’s Sometimes I Grumblesquinch,
illustrated by Hyewon Yum


 


“Friendship sits down beside you when you trip and fall.”
— From Tina Oziewicz’s What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking,
illustrated by Aleksandra Zając and translated by Jennifer Croft
(Click spread to enlarge)


 

Over at BookPage, I had the pleasure of writing about Rachel Vail’s Sometimes I Grumblesquinch (Orchard, August 2022), illustrated by Hyewon Yum, and What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking (Elsewhere Editions, July 2022) from Polish author Tina Oziewicz. This import was translated by Jennifer Croft and illustrated by Aleksandra Zając.

Both of these picture books capture the complex interior lives of children. The feature is here, and below are some spreads from each book. (The spreads from Sometimes I Grumblesquinch are pictured without the text, but I do provide the text in the captions.)



 

From What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking:


 


“Courage takes a rest in the very heart of the forest.”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


“Trust builds bridges.”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


“Loneliness trudges through the desert.”
(Click spread to enlarge)


 


(Click cover to enlarge)


 

From Sometimes I Grumblesquinch:


 


“Sometimes I GRUMBLESQUINCH. My insides tighten and I think mean thoughts. I wish that I had a trampoline or a tree house or a giraffe instead of a brother. If I had one of those instead of a brother, I could sit in my own seat at breakfast.”
(Click spread, which is sans text, to enlarge)


 



 


“‘Oh, Chuck! No punching Katie’s cereal, silly,’ Mom says, putting him down on the floor. ‘Say you’re sorry to Katie.’ I wish I could pop him like a balloon. I wish he’d kaploom into a million bajillion bibble bibble crumbs. I wish he would disappear.”
(Click either image, sans text, to see spread in its entirety)


 


“Then it’s quiet. I’m scared. I didn’t mean it. But also, I did mean it. They won’t think I am such a pleasure anymore. I wish I could GRUMBLESQUINCH it all back inside.
Maybe I ruined everything.”
(Click spread, which is sans text, to enlarge)


 


“Mom says, ‘I know.” She holds her arms out to me.”
(Click spread, which is sans text, to enlarge)


 


(Click cover to enlarge)


 

* * * * * * *

SOMETIMES I GRUMBLESQUINCH. Text copyright © 2022 by Rachel Vail. Illustrations copyright © 2022 by Hyewon Yum and reproduced by permission of the publisher, Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., New York.

WHAT FEELINGS DO WHEN NO ONE’S LOOKING. Copyright for the text by Tina Oziewicz, 2020. Copyright for the illustrations by Aleksandra Zając, 2020. English language translation copyright © Jennifer Croft, 2021. Originally published as Co robiq uczucia? by Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry, Warsaw, 2020. Illustrations reproduced by permission of Elsewhere Editions, Brooklyn.





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