Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

 
Shannon Hale’s and Tracy Subisak’s This Book Is Not for You! (Dial, April 2022) is the story of Stanley. Poor Stanley. Excitedly, he heads to the bookmobile. You can tell he’s a kid who loves to read. Ms. Christine, the regular bookmobile worker, is not there. When Stanley tries to check out The Mysterious Sandwich, the subtitute librarian tells him it’s a book for girls, and Stanley is embarrassed for being called out about his reading choices. And when Stanley’s friend Valeria appears, the librarian gives her the book. The cat gets a book about cats, and when Stanley asks for a robot book, the old man says that only robots can read robot books. “Stanley smiled,” we read. “He had to be joking, right?” We are with you, Stanley. We. are. with. you.

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Doug Salati’s Hot Dog (Knopf), his first book as an author-illustrator, will be on shelves in May. And you’ll really want to find a copy of this brilliantly constructed story of one dog’s (and human’s) escape to the sea.

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Andrea Wang’s Luli and the Language of Tea (Neal Porter Books, May 2022), illustrated by Hyewon Yum, ushers readers into a child-care room for those learning English as a second language. As you can see pictured below, Luli enters and sees all the other children playing alone. None of the children speak English, and no one is interacting.

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I’ve a review over at BookPage of Kate Hoefler’s Courage Hats (Chronicle, March 2022), illustrated by Jessixa Bagley. That review is here.

And here today at 7-Imp are some spreads.

Enjoy!

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(Click spread to enlarge)

 
“In Ukraine,” writes Yevgenia Nayberg in her new picture book I Hate Borsch!! (Eerdmans, April 2022), “you were supposed to love borsch from the first moment you picked up the vegetables.” But as a child, Yevgenia hated borsch. In this very funny — and ultimately touching — story, she learns to appreciate it after she discovers that “there was something missing” in American food.

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“There was a boy named Emile
who fell in love with a field.”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
I’ve a review over at the Horn Book of Emile and the Field (Make Me a World, March 2022), written by Kevin Young and illustrated by Chioma Ebinama.

It’s one of the most exquisite picture books you’ll see this year.

The review is here, and here today at 7-Imp are some spreads.

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(Click spread to enlarge)

 
Tanya Landman’s The Song of the Nightingale (Candlewick Studio) will be on shelves here in the U.S. next month, and it’s a beauty. Illustrated by Laura Carlin and first published in the UK two years ago, it bursts with color and life.

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In the world of picture books, we see a lot of hero journeys, which usually involve the hero returning home. I love Marianne Dubuc’s Bear and the Whisper of the Wind (Princeton Architectural Press, March 2022), originally published in French in 2020, because the protagonist takes a different kind of journey, the kind that takes him away from home and the kind that is hard to explain — but nonetheless necessary.

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“There was going to be a big costume party at school.”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
I loooooove to see the books of author-illustrator Blanca Gómez, who lives in Spain, and she has a new picture book on shelves now from Abrams. It is being released in both a Spanish (Día de disfraces) and English version (Dress-Up Day), and because I couldn’t pick which to share today, I’ve got spreads in both Spanish and English. Dedicated to “all those who know the feeling,” this is a story about a moment of deep insecurity that turns into one of triumph.

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Here’s an early sneak peek at a picture book coming to shelves in September of this year — Alice Faye Duncan’s Yellow Dog Blues (Eerdmans), illustrated by Chris Raschka. I got to hear all about this book during this chat I had earlier this year with the author. It’s the lyrical story of Bo Willie, who is distraught to find the doghouse empty: The boy’s “puppy love” is gone. “Sometimes life is a mystery. Love is a mountain climb. The blues grabbed me like a shaking chill.”

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