Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 11/01/2022 *Starred Review* Artie has received kudos for her great hugs, and she would like to embrace her grandma Gertie, but they live far apart. The two are able to communicate by phone and with video calls, but those alone are not satisfying enough. So Artie devises another way to show her love from afar: accompanied by her ever-present white duck, she gathers art supplies and writes a snail-mail letter with plenty of artistic embellishments. Artie explains to readers the several ways one can mail a letter and what happens when it arrives at the post office. After being sorted, the missive travels to its final destination by a variety of methods, including train, plane, boat, or truck. John Rocco’s charming signature illustrations, created with pencil, watercolor, and digital assistance, reveal the child anxiously waiting for a letter in response to hers, and the pleasure she has in opening Grandma’s correspondence, which includes a fragrant surprise. A moving double-­page spread showcases letters from distant loved ones and the individuals and families to whom they are addressed. Here is a delightful tribute to “old-fashioned” letter writing that may inspire youngsters to try their hand at creating a work of art that can be read and reread often. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

Booklist - 11/01/2022 *Starred Review* Artie has received kudos for her great hugs, and she would like to embrace her grandma Gertie, but they live far apart. The two are able to communicate by phone and with video calls, but those alone are not satisfying enough. So Artie devises another way to show her love from afar: accompanied by her ever-present white duck, she gathers art supplies and writes a snail-mail letter with plenty of artistic embellishments. Artie explains to readers the several ways one can mail a letter and what happens when it arrives at the post office. After being sorted, the missive travels to its final destination by a variety of methods, including train, plane, boat, or truck. John Rocco’s charming signature illustrations, created with pencil, watercolor, and digital assistance, reveal the child anxiously waiting for a letter in response to hers, and the pleasure she has in opening Grandma’s correspondence, which includes a fragrant surprise. A moving double-­page spread showcases letters from distant loved ones and the individuals and families to whom they are addressed. Here is a delightful tribute to “old-fashioned” letter writing that may inspire youngsters to try their hand at creating a work of art that can be read and reread often. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 12/16/2022 Gr 1–4—Instead of calling this book something more prosaic, such as, How to Write and Mail a Letter to Your Favorite Grandparent, the author uses the language of hugs, while the illustrator translates it into nonfiction. "They will take [the letter you have written and put in an envelope and addressed and stamped] to a special building where all the hugs are sorted, and their jackets are stamped so that they all end up at the right place." In an era when many children only see the junk and flyers that line their family mailboxes, or the emails that line a computer screen, this book might be a revelation. The freckle-faced child at its center has not seen her grandmother, Gertie, in months, but here is a way to send a hug and all the accompanying love, straight to her heart. Scenes of postal buildings, carriers, trucks, planes, and all the waiting one does while a letter makes its way to a loved one fill spreads, as do letters that others have written, including one of a diverse crowd joyfully reading over the opened pages. An elderly light-skinned lighthouse keeper, an older man using a wheelchair and a plaid blanket to keep warm, a Black family of three, a white soldier sitting on sandbags, inhaling the scent of the pages—these are scenes of people who know the value of a hug in the mail. Share this with children, then get out the paper and writing materials and get started. VERDICT An old-fashioned way to introduce a newfangled idea: connecting via an envelope full of love, post-pandemic. For class projects or a conversation about long-distance families.—Kimberly Olson Fakih - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.