Because its summer, I keep leaving town and neglecting the blog. Sorry. But I am thihnking it is good for you all to get used to it, because I am officially going to Australia. On October 11th. I will be doing my damndest to keep up here, but I suspect blogging will be spotty at best.

In the mean time, a new book from one of my favourite picture book authors came in this month. Meerkat Mail is the story of Sunny the meerkat. Sunny is a little tired of his life in the Kalahari Desert. So he decides to go travelling, visiting relatives all over the world. each page has a postcard sent by Sunny to the family he left behind. As the book progresses, you can see Sunny enjoying himself less and less, and missing home more and more. Its really cute, because its Emily Gravett, who I think is incapable of putting out a book that's not cute.

However.... I hated that Sunny went all over the place, and stayed with various animals related to meerkats, but that I never knew who they were, and where they were. This book could have greatly benefited from a little afterword that could have described the various species Sunny visited, and their habitats. A little bit more information could have led to this being a great book, a book that librarians and teachers would have been all over. Instead, its a good book, that will probably never be used in a classroom.

Meerkat Mail written and illustrated by Emily Gravett
ISBN 1405052155
32 pages