Review: La Frontera (My Journey with Papa)

I want you to stop for a moment and imagine being a parent telling your eight-year-old that you’re about to send him on a journey that will take him to another country, mostly by foot, across hundreds of miles, across all sorts of terrains, in all sorts of weather, facing untold dangers, in search of a better life. Now imagine that you’re the eight-year-old.

Review: Julián at the Wedding

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 are ultimately found.

Review: Dance Like a Leaf

A gentle book that slowly introduces the concept of death, Dance like a Leaf, tells the story of a young girl who shares many Autumn traditions with her grandmother. As her grandmother’s health deteriorates, the young girl begins to lead, rather than follow. Until ultimately, she carries-on the traditions with only her grandmother’s spirit by her side.

Everybody’s Different (Even Fathers)

“But I didn’t know the first dad-gum thing about raising one,” says my dad, who still talks like that, Southernish, with a twinkle. For her part, my mom likes to tell the story of the maternity nurse at Touro Infirmary who—after my folks gathered their things and Mom settled into the wheelchair for the short discharge trip to the car—winked at my mother and grandmother, then turned to my startled dad and offered him the 21 tightly swaddled inches of his firstborn.

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