Sometimes You Fly

Sometimes You Fly. Katherine Applegate. Illustrated by Jennifer Black Reinhardt. 2018. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 40 pages. [Source: Review copy]

First sentence: Before the cake...before the peas...before the laugh...before the seas...before the blocks...before the grow...

Premise/plot: Sometimes You Fly is a picture book for older readers. In fact, it is a picture book for young adults or "new adults." It is a reflective, near-poetic glance backwards at all of life's little-and-big moments of growing and coming-of-age. This sequence is carried mainly by the illustrations.

My thoughts: I liked this one. I'm not sure I loved, loved, loved it. But then again I am an adult that prefers reading picture books written for actual children. The first half of the picture book is leading up to graduation--perhaps high school, perhaps college. The second half of the picture book is the 'motivational' sequence reminding everyone--young and old--that life is full of mistakes that you learn from.

The illustrations definitely do the majority of the work in this one. The text is minimal. And in the first half of the book the text is often written in incomplete sentences or sentence fractures. The sequence works because of the illustrations, not because the text is super-amazing. The text improves in the second half of the book.

Overall, the illustrations show the universal aspect of growing up.

Text: 3 out of 5
Illustrations: 3 out of 5
Total: 6 out of 10

© 2018 Becky Laney of Young Readers