Through the Reading Glasses, in which the writer recounts stories of humor and joy and silliness and determination she found in books swept off the tables of the town libraries, one in Andover, the other further along the road in East Andover…

Swim Team, by Johnnie Christmas, is a graphic novel about one Black family’s determination to overcome an inherited fear of swimming through the kindness and generosity of neighbors and school friends. 

Kacen Callender’s Moonflower is a rather extraordinary and slightly, well, really rather magical tale of coping with and overcoming childhood depression. It’s well worth reading for adults, too. 

The Midnight Children (Dan Gemeinhart) arrive out of nowhere to turn Slaughterville on its head and prove that family counts far more than cussedness and plain old meanness.

In Vashti Harrison’s beautiful picture book, Big, we find a little girl with a big heart and big dreams who eventually proves that the size of one’s heart is all that really matters. 

Soaked, by Abi Cushman, contains some of the funniest illustrations of a disgruntled bear ever. Thank heaven the bear falls into a giant puddle and dances through the woods with animal friends before the grumpiness returns. 

And here the writer cannot help but inject a personal note: visiting her daughter in Australia last spring, she got to view firsthand the daytime antics of Peanut the cat and could only imagine what went on in the neighborhood after dark. Richard Jones’ delightful book, Where Have You Been, Little Cat?, could have been written about Peanut and his friends, right down to the evocative drawing of the cat, away from prying human eyes, curled up with the dog.