Bound To Stay Bound

Other - 02/03/2025 In a winningly granular work that shows how components make up a whole, Caldecott Honoree Cooper uses list-forward lines and thumbnail-like sketches to trace a book’s creation, from inspiration onward. An artist, a tiny form briefly outlined, sits sketching outside a seaside cottage, penciled images flying forth. Indoors, her art studio overflows with "paper, pencils, watercolors, brushes, sketches, drafts, a wastebasket." Miniature vignettes show the figure painting, wielding a pencil, considering images on the wall. Finally, the finished manuscript heads to a publisher’s office ("editors, designers, assistants") and then to a printer ("printing presses, binding machines, glue"). Sweeping vistas next follow the finished volume’s journey to a city school library, where it at last reaches a reader. The child’s imagination is set alight, and, surrounded by classic picture books, the reader sits down with a sketchbook and forms a new stream of images. It’s a step-by-step representation of how a book comes into being, focused on how much depends on "teamwork, time, beauty, adventure, grit, inspiration, curiosity, action, structure, humor, wonder, and love." Characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4-8. (Apr.) - Copyright 2025

School Library Journal - 03/01/2025 PreS-Gr 2—Caldecott honoree Cooper has crafted a lovely tribute to the process that brings books from creative and talented minds into the hands of children, inspiring further creation. Sweeping illustrations and small spot art, done in watercolor and pencil, capture the experience of an illustrator creating a book, delivering it to their editor, and the book going through the manufacturing process and out into the world to be shelved and eventually taken home by a young person. The use of faceless characters nudges readers to find themselves under the influence of a beautiful story and may encourage them to create one themselves. For a look into the global production process, Polly Faber's Special Delivery: A Book's Journey Around the World could be a worthy complement to this title. Curiously, while the details of production are not the focus of this text, it is worth noting that the production phase features a printing factory with a large American flag in the art while the copyright page of Cooper's book is itself is marked "printed and bound in China." VERDICT Focused on capturing the creative process and its power to, in turn, inspire further creation, this title is broad in scope; the wide landscapes and tight vignettes will encourage young people to find the stories around themselves in places large and small.—John Scott - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.