I'm always intending to post more often about the books I'm currently taken with. Then I forget...then I'm on to new books, and the cycle continues! But the title of this new picture book alone made sure it wouldn't have such a fate.
I think everyone appreciates evocative book titles - the kinds that paint pictures in your mind right away and start storytelling all on their own. That's just one reason to love a book named, fantastically, curiously, demurely: Cecil the Pet Glacier
Another is that it is illustrated by Giselle Potter, who was one of the first contemporary picture book illustrators to reel me in (years ago, now) with her pseudo-primitive folk aesthetic's askew beauty.
Another is that it features a father who creates pictorial topiaries for a living. (Note: even if this isn't intriguing you, I'm selling myself on this funny little book all over again.)
Yet another is the idea of a little girl who wears a uniform of a brown pinafore and black shoes, who is constantly dismayed by the quirk and rather oppressive joie de vivre of her parents.
And the final reason - the most impressive one, is that the author, Matthea Harvey, has taken one of the old chestnuts of the picture book medium (the pet story) and turned it on its head and made it hers, and made it special.