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Dear Book Lovers, Welcome! I am delighted that you have found The Through the Looking Glass blog. For over twenty years I reviewed children's literature titles for my online journal, which came out six times a year. Every book review written for that publication can be found on the Through the Looking Glass website (the link is below). I am now moving in a different direction, though the columns that I write are still book-centric. Instead of writing reviews, I'm offering you columns on topics that have been inspired by wonderful books that I have read. I tell you about the books in question, and describe how they have have impacted me. This may sound peculiar to some of you, but the books that I tend to choose are ones that resonate with me on some level. Therefore, when I read the last page and close the covers, I am not quite the same person that I was when first I started reading the book. The shift in my perspective might be miniscule, but it is still there. The books I am looking are both about adult and children's titles. Some of the children's titles will appeal to adults, while others will not. Some of the adult titles will appeal to younger readers, particularly those who are eager to expand their horizons.

Monday, January 31, 2011

The TTLG 2011 Picture Book Celebration - Book Thirty-One

When I was a child, I loved books. I was lucky enough to have a father who loved to read to me out loud, and he had the perfect voice for it too. I can remember feeling very frustrated when he went on trips, because he wasn't around to read to me, and I was too young to read to myself. I would have loved the wordless picture book that I have reviewed for you today. Young children can tell the story in their own words as they turn the pages and look at the pictures. 

Elisha Copper
Wordless Picture book
Ages 4 to 7
Random House, 2010, 978-0375857652
   One day Beaver gets onto a log that is traveling down the river. Instead of getting off and going back to his family, Beaver stays put. Beaver even stays where he is when the log he is riding on is picked up by a big machine and is transported to the city on a truck.
   In the city, the truck takes the logs to a lumberyard and this is where Beaver finally makes a run for it. A dog sees him, and Beaver just manages to escape by slipping through a hole in a fence. He enters a yard on the other side of the fence, swims across a swimming pool, and he walks through a house.
   Across the street from the house, there is a zoo, and here Beaver sees another beaver in a glass tank. He is pursued by a zookeeper and a little girl, and has to take refuge in a little lake. People in swan boats float up and down, and it is a nice place, but Beaver is determined to get home.
   In this almost wordless picture book (there are six words in the book) Elisha Cooper takes his readers on an amazing adventure with a beaver who is inadvertently carried far away from his lodge home. Little children will enjoy seeing how the beaver uses pools, ponds, streams, and other bodies of water to get back to where he belongs.

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