I Am a Book

Children's Literature

It is easy to accept a book as is. The insides are filled with words. The words can weave a story or fill us with information. The voice of a book is the creation of an author's imagination. These are creations that can take you to far-away places or empower you with knowledge. But if we were to pick up a book and look at it physically, just what is it, really? What are we holding in our hands? How do the words inside an author's mind mix with plain paper to make something so powerful it can fill you with wonder? That is the premise of this title. It takes the youngest reader from the very beginning with a free-standing tree to something stacked on the library shelves to be read. It explains how each part of the binding process comes together to produce the book we hold in our hands. Told through a book's point of view, the voice is whimsical and lighthearted, highlighting the bare basics of book production. Numerous illustrations emphasize key visuals in the production process. The pictures portray a book with a happy face and animated scenes to help us on our journey. Controlled vocabulary and short sentences are appropriate for the reading level, but it also makes a great story for the youngest of listeners, too. 2006, Millbrook Press, Ages 5 to 9.
—Robyn Gioia

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2-It's hard for a librarian not to like a book about books, but this title makes it easy. The tone is insipid, the pastel pictures are amateurish, and the text is boring. "The dryer dries my ink. See how cute I am! A trip through the printing press changes you forever." Janet Stevens's From Pictures to Words: A Book about Making a Book (Holiday House, 1995), Eileen Christelow's What Do Authors Do? (1995) and What Do Illustrators Do? (1999, both Clarion), and Loreen Leedy's Look at My Book: How Kids Can Write and Illustrate Terrific Books (Holiday House, 2005) will be much more interesting to young children even though they may not be able to read them on their own.-Erlene Bishop Killeen, Fox Prairie Elementary School, Stoughton, WI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.