The High Street by Alice Melvin

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Don’t let the title fool you. While the term ‘high street’ brings to mind the typical mainstream chains and franchises that seem to be everywhere these days, if anything, Scottish author-illustrator Alice Melvin’s The High Street is a romantic throwback to the good old days of small independent shops that are not owned by faceless corporations, but regular folks whom you can actually get to know and build a trusting relationship with.

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Andrew Drew and Drew by Barney Saltzberg

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The idea of taking a writing implement such as a purple crayon, a red marker or a red chalk and magically drawing things that become real, or portals to other lands, has been explored many times in children’s books; and while they are all wonderfully imaginative, I’ve always found that they seem to be aimed at children who are already somewhat proficient in drawing.

While Andrew Drew and Drew also features a protagonist with a writing implement — a pencil this time — it is inventive and creative in a way that doesn’t intimidate or overwhelm children who simply have an interest in art and enjoy doodling, even if their sketches don’t exactly resemble — at least to the ‘untrained’ eye — what they are intended to be.

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Where in the Wild? by David M. Schwartz, Yael Schy and Dwight Kuhn

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In the animal kingdom, every day is a game of Survivor: outwit, outrun, outlive. Where in the Wild? thus highlights one of the key survival skills of animals: the art of camouflage. For a prey especially, if it can’t be seen, it can’t be hunted down; whereas for a predator, keeping itself hidden from plain sight is an advantage since the prey wouldn’t see it coming until it’s too late.

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