Kevin Henkes

I LOVE Kevin Henkes - I must admit that he has got to be one of my all time favorite picture book author/illustrators and it is all because of a little mouse named Lilly. Lilly is one of those strong, precocious "girl" characters that everyone loves, me included. I love her red cowgirl boots (in fact I have some myself!) I love her movie star sunglasses and of course, any girl who can pull off a purple plastic purse, well she is tops in my book! Lilly is one of the first picture books I bought for my daughter when I found out I was having a girl. My daughter could recite the book by the time she was 2 1/2 and for her 3rd birthday I ran all over town to find a small pair of red cowgirl boots (which I finally special ordered at Nordstrom!)

This weekend the NYT Book review had a "review" of Kevin Henkes new book "A Good Day". The funny part about the review was, the author, Bruce Handy, doesn't even mention the book until the last 2 paragraphs of the review. While I think his other works outside of his "mouse" books are ok, nothing will ever top for me the mouse books, with their interesting characters and the great dialogue between the characters. I think that Mr,. Handy agrees with me on that one, which might be why his review is more praise for all Mr. Henkes has done rather than a great review of his new book (but he DOES give the book a good review eventually.)

The online version of the article has a link to an audio clip from one of his books (the clip SAYS it is from the book Lilly's Big Day, but it is actually from Weekend with Wendell) and there is also a slide show of drawings from his latest book.

Check out Kevin's website, he has lots of coloring pages and games to use if you are using his books in the media center or classroom. Now if only he would do a blog!!!