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PICTURE BOOKS
Levi, Taltal

Meet Me by the Sea

32 pp. | North-South | February, 2021 | Trade ISBN 978-0-7358-4432-2 $17.95
(2) K-3 Dad is on his computer, Mom is on the phone, and a little girl stands scowling in a doorway, wearing a coat and hat and a backpack with a rolled-up mat. Leaving an envelope on a cabinet, she slips out the door: "Sometimes I feel invisible to the world, so I go to my favorite place..." She walks over a hill, uses steppingstones to cross a stream, and enters a forest. She catches a glimpse of a fox, who disappears as the shadows get longer. "Everything looks different in the dark," she says, unrolling her mat and taking out a sleeping bag, "but I have come prepared." Each of Levi's delicate pencil and watercolor illustrations is set on a white page inside a rectangle with rounded edges, giving the pictures a cozy, safe feel. The fox emerges after the child falls asleep, and in the morning when she awakes she finds it curled up at the foot of her sleeping bag, "shy yet curious, just like me. Perhaps I am not invisible after all?" Continuing to the sea, on a high cliff, she shows the fox a snapshot of her "favorite people"--her parents--who then appear over the hill to bring the child safely home. Keen-eyed viewers may have spotted the girl's drawing taped to the cabinet at the beginning, making them wonder, Is there really a fox, or is she pretending? The highly relatable feeling of being invisible, the little girl's independence, and the loving conclusion all add up to a satisfying picture book.
Reviewer: Susan Dove Lempke | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2021

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