1) The Heart and the Bottle

Oliver Jeffers is mostly known for his sweetly adventurous Boy and Penguin (and occasionally alien) stories. This book about a girl who deals with grief in a real and recognizable way, is utterly without peer in children's literature. The relationship that exists between the girl and her father, who one day is suddenly, permanently, absent, is fully realized. His empty chair is physically startling, and more than one reader has found themselves unable to breathe fully until the very end of the book, when the heart is still hurting, but is back where it belongs.

What is, in other hands, merely pithy and tidy, becomes profound and challenging in Jeffers's hands. His images are stark in the bleak places and filled with impossibility in the rich ones.

I absolutely love reading this book. It isn't long, and it doesn't have a ton of story, and it gets me feeling emotions that are not generally part of my everyday, and I could love it for that alone. Happily, it is also filled with amazing imagery and was a large boost in my learning curve for children's books.

They are so infinitely possible, these books. Anyone who taps into that infinity is creating something timeless and good.

I mean, don't touch the heart, please, but still

I first read this book not long before Oliver Jeffers visited St. Louis on his book tour for This Moose Belongs to Me and getting it signed was the very first time that I was utterly incapable of speaking sense to an author. 

What was going to happen out of my mouth: "Your books have become favorites at Storytime. I really appreciate the development of friendships in them. Are you working on anything else at the moment? Thank you so much for signing my book." 

You know. Like a person.

What happened instead: "Could you sign it to Jonesey? That's not my real name! My parents didn't name me that! Jones isn't even my last name! OMIGOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH BYE!"

I may have scream/whispered my undying love at him while running away. 

Very politely and with no intention of ever saying the words at him on account of married. But still.

Conversation over the stack of books that he signed for stock after his talk a few hours later was much more in line with adults in the same industry. He is extremely good at the visiting author/artist thing, and I'm pleased that I got to work that event. Sort of getting house points back kind of thing.