Daddy Mojo

The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles lingered on my bookshelf for a little bit. It lingered there because it’s co-written by Jake Gyllenhaal. I don’t need to review an illustrated book with an impossible-to-resist cover that’s co-authored by a famous movie star. Stay in your lane actor man. Still, The Secret Society of Aunts & Uncles beckoned me like a siren from the steep cliffs. I was in my boat of pointless bias and the land was the area of great illustrated books that I hadn’t read yet.

Monsters Never Get Haircuts is a fabulously strange book that looks like it’s from another dimension. In this universe, children’s drawings are the currency of the wealthy and each illustration is handled twice by two masters who manage to make it freakier, yet more accessible. It’s a series of one-upmanship where the first artist dares the second one to improve upon it, and they do. All of this could be true about Monsters Never Get Haircuts except there’s only one artist in play, although they might have multiple personalities, I don’t know, and the text is refreshingly brief. Pre-K and early elementary school audiences will love this book for those reasons and the fact that it’s utterly original, yet familiar to their young souls.

Dogs are the Rodney Dangerfield of the internet. If your local human society is holding a newspaper collection drive they might say, we need your old newspapers to line the dog’s cages and the cats need something to read. * Having said that, dogs are awesome and although their meme appeal isn’t as high as cats online, their real-life presence is just as strong. 10 Dogs is the sibling to 10 Cats, one of the best counting books we’ve seen recently. When I saw 10 Dogs I did squint just a little bit because I feared that the clever premise would be used once too often. Instead, 10 Dogs goes in an entirely different direction that takes inspiration from cats but is its own funny, clever creation.