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EVERY DAY A HOPE by marci

EVERY DAY A HOPE

by marci

Pub Date: May 19th, 2015
ISBN: 978-0990821816
Publisher: off to see pub.

This debut picture book for a general audience deploys text and drawings to showcase a series of musing, motivational messages.

At the outset, author marci notes that her stories “are for all audiences” and that her readers “have a front row seat to interpret them and make them your own.” The following “stories” typically consist of only a few sentences, always contained on a single page with black-and-white graphic illustrations. For example, the phrase “sometimes all we need is a good foundation” is accompanied by an image of some Greek columns. Some pages are more text-heavy than others, including the opening story, a poem that tees up the theme of this collection: “Every star a wish / every day a hope / every cloud a dream / every life a love / every door a window / every friend a smile / every laugh a light / every scraps of life.” The final page is a reprint of the Emily Dickinson poem “ ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers –,” illustrated with a starry-night border and floating feathers. In between, the author touches on a variety of other topics, including the value of friendship and personal resilience; for instance, one page offers the sentence “as she turned the pages, things just looked brighter and brighter” and an illustration of a page of a dark night sky turning into one of a sun. This debut has plenty of gentle charm and will certainly be accessible to a wide audience, as marci apparently intended. More background about the author and illustrator would have been a welcome addition, however. The stories also sometimes unfortunately border on being a bit too cutesy, as in the use of lots of lowercase (even for the author’s own name). Overall, though, this book is a harmless enough contribution to its category.

A sweet, simple roundup of illustrated inspirational thoughts.