THREAD BY THREAD: An unforgettable Journey

 Here's a picture book that enchants on its surface and aches at its core. How to write about refugees for very young audiences and still resonate with heart and hope? Try this one. Then, perhaps donate to a school or refugee center or family, or talk it up with someone you know who might not seem welcoming to the need for acceptance of desperate humans. I know, these are mice, but the story is universal!

Eerdman Books for Young Readers, 2023

THREAD BY THREAD is written by Alice Briere-Haquet and illustrated by Michela Eccli, with translation by Sarah Ardizzone. The cover image allows for some effective predicting. This seems like a delightful and charming story, a clever presentation of the warmth of family and home using mixed media and delicate but appealing line art in color. If that was your guess, you'd be right, on the first spread. 

But the title page features one unraveled strand of yarn, suggesting that the peace and contentment are short-lived. Endpapers, too, show that curly, unfurled yarn from the faoundaitonof the family's home along with some other yarns in different colors and conditions. 

The  minimal text is as pure as the knit one/purl one process that once constructed the security of their lives. The race to escape is inevitable, show on mostly white pages with literal and symbolic images shown in scenes combining color pencil art and yarn. Tension rises as the dangers increase, the pace intensifies, and the stakes rise. With nearly nothing to cling to, the escape across waves includes loss, and arrival reveals an armored encounter. What happens next is where the heart and hope enter the design. This community effort not only helps produce a new roof over their heads, but builds a social network and surprises that suggest not only safety but joy. 

This irresistible little picture book contains a global story, told through the universally identifable characters of mice. By no means does it replace picture books that reveal more details and specifics of individual and varied refugees and their cultures. For some examples that I've reviewed in the past, check HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and CROCODILE CROSSSING. 

And if that knit-bit caught your attention, check out Mac Barnett and jon Klassen's EXTRA YARN.

Side note: I read this and loved it when it first released a few years ago. The warm response (in the midst of ice and ICE) of the Minneapolis community brought it back to mind. If you know of little ones who are wondering about the things they see in news and media, remind them that the horror and chaos are nominally caused by concern about refugees and immigrants. The en-armored characters on the arrival shores could be discussed as having potential for acceptance or rejection... or worse. The choice they make (those with power and authority) leads to this happy and satisfying ending. The other titles linked can help do the same. Don't miss out on using such a tender and fun picture ebook with young audiences. 

Side-side note: This book works especially well as a LAP book (even if that just means Looking At Particulars). This is a delightful example of ways that illustration details, even the smallest, hold full stories within them and enhance the encompassing story with richness and depth.

SWEET DREAMERS: A Dream of a Book-- YES!

Anyone who reads my posts here can be forgiven for thinking that I rave about any and all picture books. 
Not true, my friends.
It IS true that I adore picture books. I swoon over text that is lyrical, powerful, surprising, tempting, laugh-inducing, tear-teasing, and otherwise memorable. 
It IS true that I savor picture books as a form of fine art, with the added intentional benefit of storytelling, question-raising, emotion-soothing, mood-setting, purposeful page-turning design and execution.
The many things I love about picture books are the reasons I am selective about which books I choose to feature in my blog posts. 
Not all picture books that cross my lap or laptop are featured here. 
There is not enough time in my life (or in the universe) to analyze or even account for every picture book, even the recent ones. 
Instead, I selectively consider which books serve special purposes in life- in the lives of adults like me, and teachers, parents, and librarians. 
So, yes, I tend to rave about the books that I feature here. 
Even more so, I seek out and feature books that BELONG IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG READERS! 
Yes, I shouted that.
Yes, I'm presuming that my opinion matters.
Yes, some books are worthy of that assertion, shouted in upper case letters.

Eerdmans Books for Young Readers March, 2019

You may want to plug your ears in case I shout, but keep on reading, please.
SWEET DREAMERS, written and illustrated by Isabelle Simler, is such a book. This is a picture/poetry book that, on the surface, is a bedtime book. 
Many bedtime books are produced in hand-friendly trim sizes, with thirty-two or fewer satiny pages within glossy covers, often with pastel colors. There are plenty of exceptions, but few that divert so thoroughly from those conventions.
Sweet Dreamers is an oversized book (about 10"x11" with 80 pages!) features intense colors, especially orange tones, created with what appears to be a black scratchboard technique. I puzzled over the remarkable application of this media for several days before discovering a review by Elizabeth Bird of Fuse #8 Production, an acclaimed blog for School Library Journal. 
Finding her post was both good news and bad news for me. She had tracked down the answers to my questions about Simler's art technique. It is, in fact, an incredibly original and gorgeous digital adaptation of scratchboard art. Bird also provided the translator's name, Sarah Ardizzone, who deserves credit for preserving the remarkable beauty of the poems written originally in Simler's native French. Bird's review (also raving) managed to include virtually every feature of this book that I had intended to praise. She points out the thematic organization of the images and poems, the flow from page to page, as a seamless whole, the wordless double page nighttime scenes of  varied habitats, the drama of shifting perspectives and scales of the featured animals and backgrounds. Bird also praises the short but astute, sensory-rich poems of various animals like seahorse:

"He clings to a stalk/and drifts with the waves./ 

As if on a carousel,/ the seahorse dreams at a gallop."

Each poem suggests a dozing, dreamy creature while hinting at the nature and behavior of the species, suggesting the instinctive patterns that shape the nature and value of sleep for that individual creature. She also notes the remarkable organizational structure of this lengthy collection. 
Are you wondering how annoyed I was after reading how thoroughly she had analyzed and praised this book?  Let me assure you that Betsy Bird is such an admired librarian/reviewer that her reflections actually reassured me about my assessments. I did wonder, though, if my review would be  limited to a link to her post and my robust "I AGREE!". (Now or later, I urge you to read her linked post in full.)
Actually, though, as I read her post over and over, I realized I still had things to say. 
Along with the many reasons she noted to admire this book, I want to call attention to the unifying impact of the colors and shapes of the moon and eyes throughout these pages. From the end papers (front and back) and all the scenes and creatures within its covers, there is a unifying, transformative power of light in the darkness. The moon itself, and its reflected light in and through and across various surfaces, defines and reveals hidden truths about the world around us. The moon shines through the wordless spreads, in the moon-like faces and eyes of sloth and bat, in the globular leaves and rounded bodies of robin and flamingo, even in the crescent reflections in the eight spider eyes, or the curled cat... I could go on. Throughout it all, the darkness is no longer a scary entity, but rather a landscape of beauty, inviting dreamers.
Consider paging through this amazing book without reading, without imaging the stories/poems of each creature, without seeking a unifying theme. Simply turn the pages, soak in the images, follow the flow of light and darkness, and allow yourself to slip into its magic. 
What does not appear on first glance to be a 'typical" bedtime book may well be the most effective and beautiful bedtime books in years. 
I urge you to share this book with young sleepyheads, and keep it handy for your own next sleepless night.

A copy of this book was provided in exchange for a fair and honest review.