After a dangerous voyage from the Rivendell wilds of New Zealand, my print copy of the children’s anthology Eeny Meeny Miney Mo: Tales for Tired Tykes has finally made it to my mailbox.
This is a larger book than I had pictured, much bigger than a typical scribbler (school notebook). The print is a nice size for reading and the full page illustrations preceding the stories pop off the page. All of the illustrations were done by artist Jon Stubbington.
The table of contents is a series of those illustrations rather than words, which works well for the younger end of the 3-7-year-old audience. They select a picture and their readers turn to the page to read the title. This frustrates me a little, I’ll admit, being used to titles in my tables of contents, but my girls love this feature.
My story contribution, Leif the Story Hunter, sits somewhere in the middle of the book. Of course I flipped there to read it first. It’s about a boy who lives in the woods with his father, hunting for stories which they trap inside blank books and sell to the bookstore in the city. It’s a wonderful life, but when they trap the wrong story Leif’s father is held hostage until Leif can catch a replacement. Lief has never hunted on his own before…
This is a fun book, and what’s great about it is that it’s geared to kids, not adults, on every level of its design. If you’d like to grab a copy, you can find them at the Patchwork Raven.
That’s it for now but stay tuned because the September 2018 issue of Cricket: the Realm of Imagination is out and I’m watching my mailbox for it. It takes a little extra time to make it into Canada but it’s going to be worth the wait because my funny fantasy story ‘Toby’s Alicorn Adventure’ is inside! The girls and I love reading Cricket and I am so excited to see my story inside those beloved pages.
Jennifer Shelby 