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PRESCHOOL
Proimos, James

Over the Moon

40 pp. | Chronicle | March, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-4521-7715-1 $17.99
(2) PS Illustrated by Zoey Abbott. A meditation on parenthood (including parental insecurities) and growing-­up-and-letting-go, this gentle story about a nontraditional family begins with two wolves finding a baby girl floating down the river in a Moses basket. One of the wolves is thrilled to save the baby and adopt her; the other takes a little more convincing ("I was planning on ­eating her") but eventually comes around. They form a happy and contented unit of three--until the near-feral girl, now approximately kindergarten age, sees some human children for the first time. She starts to feel curious and restless, and it appears that the wolves' apprehension has been realized: "Time moves too fast." "I'm afraid she will leave us one day." Leave she does--but just to go to school; the wolves' mixed feelings about this milestone will be familiar to many. Abbott's delicate-lined, pastel-hued gouache, colored-pencil, and ink illustrations feature subtle textures, shadows, and motion lines that enhance emotion. Though the text may be more ­adult-centered than child-focused ("That was the whole point of nourishing her and teaching her about good and evil, dark and light, right and wrong"), young people on the verge of something new may relate to the girl's growth and ­independence.
Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2020

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