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Notes on New Visual Reads -- 9/5/22


As a long-time reader and a literacy prof, I'm always pulled in by books that arrange words and images in interesting ways. In this post, I'm talking about five titles that are either recently released or coming soon -- and they all do lovely visual/verbal work.


First is Monarca by Leopoldo Gout and Eva Aridjis. My goodness, what a beautiful book. It's a fantastic text pairing with Little Monarchs by Jonathan Case. Written for a wide range of reader ages and interests, the book draws on folk lore and features amazing images to pair up with the word-based text. Each page is something new.


I'm also sending love to A Starlit Trip to the Library by Andrew Katz. Katz notes, "FYI there is a little something new in this book: a song, accessible by a QR code at the back. I wrote the song and a Juno Award-winning Canadian children’s singer, Taes Leavitt from SPLASH’N BOOTS, performed it. The book––and song––will be also published in French. (The French title is VOYAGE DE NUIT À LA BIBLI.)"




This book is a lovely title for younger readers (although I always contend that picture books are for everyone). Co-authored by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel and beautifully illustrated by Joseph Sherman, the book features fanciful images and is a celebration of book love.


Next up in this post is the graphic novel My Life in Buildings by Cara Florence Goldstein. Goldstein shared a digital copy of the book with me, and I can speak to the ways that both images and words are used to capture feelings and experiences of transition. The author/artist is interviewed here.


The book is an artistic journey all its own. Goldstein arranges words on the page in a variety of places and, in keeping with the place-based variety, each page features a look at a location in the author's world.




Finally, a hat-tip to The Moth Keeper by K. O'Neill, which I had the chance to peek at this week but is still a bit in the future in terms of publication, and I'm sending love for Amazona by Canizales.




This last one is an evocative look at grief and experiences of loss, and these emotions are packed in a short space (less than 100 pages). The book is gorgeously designed and well worth a visit, along with discussions of illegal mining and the ways in which those in power sometimes take advantage, displacing members of communities.

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