Lucy’s Book, by Natalie Jane Prior and Cheryl Orsini

This is one of my most anticipated reads so far this year. I started seeing this book through a great Australian blog I follow: Children’s Books Daily, by the wonderful teacher/librarian/mother Megan Daley. If you aren’t yet following her blog, perhaps you’d love it. Megan recently and tragically lost her husband, and I have been holding back this post until I felt like the time was right, and now I realise that for her the time will never feel right again. So in support of her love of books and promotion of children’s literature I have decided to go ahead with the post.

When Megan started being really excited about a new book release I paid attention and looked into it. ‘Lucy’s Book‘ is centred around Lucy who has a favourite library book. Her librarian, Mrs Bruce, is based on Megan Daley, down to the pink streak in her hair. A children’s picture book that focuses on a child who loves to read books from the library is something I want my kids to experience.

As you know I’m big on borrowing from the library as opposed to buying books for my own kids, so my immediate thought was to try get ‘Lucy’s Book‘ from the local library. I jumped onto the catalogue and could see that the book was not yet at the library, but it had been ordered. So I used one of my favourite functions of the library: the reservation system. I reserved one of the ordered copies ensuring that we would be the very first family to borrow it. Then a few days later on our regular trip to the library it was there waiting for us. I was so ridiculously excited, definitely more than the kids were.

When we got home and had a chance to read it we loved it. The illustrations are wonderful. They are soft and such a lovely colour palette. Lucy is a sweet character that I hope my kids can relate to: a child excited about ‘their’ library books.