Pamela Paul | Official Site | Author of Parenting Inc., Pornified, The Starter Marriage

I am just back from Los Angeles, where I always take time to visit the wonderful shop of children’s books and children’s book illustrations, Every Picture Tells a Story, which has just moved into a larger space on Montana in Santa Monica.

It’s heartening to see a book store, especially a children’s book store, enlarge rather than shrink in these trying times. And this is a very good one. Though short on books (one could call it “heavily curated” as the marketing-speak tendency goes these days), the books are well-chosen and include some underappreciated authors, most particularly, Bill Peet. I almost purchased (and will likely do so soon) a lovely print of Bill Peet’s work from the charming tale-in-rhyme, The Caboose that Got Loose. There were also some glorious prints by the incredibly gifted David Wiesner.

My immediate purchases, however, included two Peets (Huge Harold and Cowardly Clyde), a beautiful hardcover edition or Rapunzel, and the pleasingly silly, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat. Imagine that!