Julián at the Wedding
Author & Illustrator: Jessica Love
Candlewick Press
Ages: 4 to 8 years old, Grades PK to 3
Love has hit the sophomore slump.
After the incredible debut of Julián is a Mermaid, I was eagerly anticipating Love’s next adventure with Julián. Where would we go? What would we do? The answer, Abuela and Julián take us to a wedding.
At the wedding, Julián meets Marisol, and the two soon hit it off. They run off to play together, and Marisol’s dress gets dirty. Julián, through some magical realism, fixes a new outfit. That’s the book.
This book is visually stunning, as should be expected from Love. There is enough detail in her gorgeously rendered pages to get swept away in the melodies of her drawings. There is a grace to her artwork that draws beauty from the line between detail and abstraction. No finer example is found than the “mermaid tree” where our pair is ultimately found.
However, in this case, beautiful artwork does not a story make. And, the depth of character development and through-line so carefully constructed in Mermaid is absent here. This book provides nothing more than a bird’s eye view of a play-date. As an art book, it’s lovely. As a storybook, it’s not much at all.
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Julián at the Wedding (Hardcover at Amazon)*
More books for this Age Group can be found here.
More LGBTQ+ themed books can be found here.
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My thanks to Edelweiss+ and the Publisher for providing a complimentary copy of this book. The views expressed herein are my own.
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