The Books

All Kinds of Families

by Mary Ann Hoberman
Illustrated by Marc Boutavant

One Potato Review

Try to ignore the exclamation mark in the title; this is a story about the ways that we go about classifying things – from bottle caps to gingersnaps to parents – that appears to pick up where Margaret Wise Brown’s The Important Book left off. Children are daily introduced to such a flood of epic concepts, sometimes it’s probably hard to tell the daydream from the day. This book does a pretty great job of reproducing that viewpoint, and may have particular resonance for city folks who are in the habit of boxing and batching and tracking all the stuff we do not want to forget. The simple assortments and unobtrusive verse make this accessible for younger readers, but there’s something finally sophisticated about its larger aspirations.