The Books

Come a Tide

by George Ella Lyon
Illustrated by Stephen Gammell

One Potato Review

Grandma forgot to take her medication. As in a lot of books illustrated by Stephen Gammel, the characters here are about as compelling for all of their electric exclamations (even their bodies seem charged by private generators) as for their sense of community. There’s a real jolliness finally about rising to the occasion of a storm, a sudden flood, indeed you kind of get the feeling the emergency in these pages represents an opportunity – “to make friends with a shovel,” as the author describes it – rather than a chance of natural disaster. Because what would they do with all of that excess energy otherwise? Probably drive each other crazy.