Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 09/15/2022 A love of words, walks, and a watery natural landscape highlight an intergenerational friendship in this posthumously published picture book from Newbery winner MacLachlan. One half of the duo is Lucy, a young girl with a white-blonde bob. The other half, referred to as my poet, is the beloved wordsmith Mary Oliver, whose white hair is also bobbed. Both appreciate exploring Cape Cod; enjoying the sea, woods, and market; and finding the just-right words to describe what they see—a strawberry, for instance, is a jewel. The words are here, my poet tells Lucy. You just have to find them. Hill's blowsy, light-washed pictures capture the area's magic, full of weathered fences, pink rugosa roses, shell-strewn beaches, and gray-shingled cottages. The poet's dogs—one white, one black—cavort through the spreads, leading readers onward as Lucy discovers her own words and, inspired by the poet, ends the story with a poem. A sweet paean to inspiration and contemplation, with an afterword by MacLachlan explaining how she knew the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Oliver. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 10/01/2022 K-Gr 2—Lucy, who is white, lives next door to a poet; as the two wander the farmers' market, beach, and boat house on the first day of summer vacation, they observe the natural world and transform it into words. With notebook and pen, Lucy is still trying to get the hang of it, while (readers learn from the author's note) her slender companion, a white woman with short gray hair, is based on Mary Oliver. Lucy observes the poet as much as the strawberries, stones, and spiderwebs they see: "Does she untangle the sound of/ aspen leaves/ blowing in the wind/ into words?" Hill's illustrations are bright and breezy, loose, and beachy; the poet's dogs—one black, one white—are on nearly every page. At home in the evening, Lucy writes a short poem of her own, about a stone the poet gave her on the beach. First-person narration from the child's perspective lends an open, curious tone that may inspire readers to be close observers and try their hands at poetry, too. VERDICT Even without the author's note, this is a gentle but formidable addition to picture book collections everywhere; as nuanced as a poem, it spells out as much as it withholds and leaves readers with questions they'll be inspired to try to answer themselves.—Jenny Arch - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.