Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me

by Danielle Marcotte

Illustrated by Josée Bisaillon

Owlkids Books

978-1-77147-201-2

32 pp.

Ages 3-7

April 2016

Instil a love of reading with award-winning author Danielle Marcotte’s Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me, whimsically illustrated with Josée Bisaillon’s collage art.

The story may be called Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me but it is more a young boy’s compendium of reading.  It includes everyone who partakes in the pleasure and value of reading, and the reading of everything from novels to sheet music and cookbooks, as well as the sky, the future, signage and body language.  The young boy, who starts with listing who reads in his family–his parents, grandparents, uncle and auntie–also makes note of who can’t read, like his little brother Buddy, Toto the fish and Gracie the cat.  Then he ventures further afield to those who must read the weather, thermometers, tarot cards and more as part of their vocations.  Finally, he speaks to the emotions that books can evoke, from laughter to tears recognizing that,

Thanks to books,
I find balance,
I climb high,
I follow new roads,
and I move forward.

From Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me
by Danielle Marcotte, illus. by Josée Bisaillon

This is a dream book for every parent and teacher and librarian who would like to delight a young reader into the appeal and importance of reading while permeating that lesson with an appreciation for the many versions of literacy out there.  Danielle Marcotte imparts an important message in an inviting story, all the better communicated with Josée Bisaillon’s collage artwork.  The textures are both intense and subtle, as the illustration necessitates, and colour combinations evocative of busyness or calm, as appropriate.  Text and art come together strikingly in Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me to become a book that all literacy advocates i.e., everyone, should be sharing with the very young, those who can read and those who can’t, yet. 

From Mom, Dad, Our Books, and Me
by Danielle Marcotte, illus. by Josée Bisaillon