Baristaville has more authors and illustrators per square mile than probably any other corner of suburbia. Among those hitting store shelves in recent weeks: Montclair's Dave O'Neill and Verona's Ed Shankman, who've collaborated on two delicious new children's books: "The Boston Balloonies" and "I Met a Moose in Maine One Day."
I'm a tough sell when it comes to kids' books. ...
Besides reading them to my own kids each night, I've spent whole days combing through cartons of new releases in search of a half-dozen truly good ones to review. There's plenty of treasure to be found, but there's also much that veers toward annoyingly cutesy, numbingly repetitive (I know small kids love repetition, but even they have their limits) or painfully unoriginal. And yet, my heart goes out to authors and illustrators who've devoted months of work to a project that gets ignored in the crush of other new releases.
I opened "Balloonies" and "Moose" wondering if they'd be of the cutesy/repetitive/unoriginal variety. They weren't.
Both stories manage to tuck in a few imagination-sparking geography lessons alongside snappy, Seussian dialogue and images so appealing that you'll want to climb inside the world they depict.
It seems I'm not the only one who's smitten: O'Neill and Shankman trekked north to L.L. Bean's flagship store in Maine to promote "Moose" over July 4th weekend (that's Dave, in the plaid, signing Ed's head) and found a crowd of fans waiting. They sold more than 300 copies that day.
I would love to write a book! make it tens pages (by pages I mean thick cardboard pages) each page with four words and a drawing. The last page will be reserved for the words "The End"