Books Received

Imagination and Meaning in Calvin and Hobbes. By Jamey Heit. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.
Calvin and Hobbes, a popular syndicated comic strip created by Bill Watterson, ended its ten-year run in 1995, but it still has a strong fan base. In his critical study of this strip, Jamey Heit explores some of the reasons behind its enduring appeal. Of particular interest to Heit are the philosophical and theological themes that often run through the strip.

Have a Carrot: Hidden Messages in Margaret Wise Brown's Runaway Bunny Trilogy and Other Popular Picture Books. By Claudia H. Pearson. Birmingham, AL: Look Again Press, 2011.
Claudia H. Pearson is interested in the role that symbolism plays in picture books. In this study, she pays particular attention to the symbolic content and messages found in the work of Margaret Wise Brown. Pearson's study is informed by the ideas of several prominent psychoanalytic theorists, including Bruno Bettelheim, Nancy Chodorow, Erik Erikson, Melanie Klein, and D. W. Winnicott.

Picture Books for Children: Fiction, Folktales, and Poetry. By Mary Northrup. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2012.
Intended for librarians, preschool teachers, parents, and other adults who work with young children, this survey provides descriptive annotations of picture books published between 2000 and 2011. The annotations are arranged thematically under the following headings: My Family and Myself; In My Community; Out in the World; The World of Imagination; and Folktales and Fairy Tales.

The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared. By Alice Ozma. New York: Grand Central, 2011.
In this autobiographical work, Alice Ozma recounts her experiences listening to her father read aloud to her throughout much of her childhood. She discusses how they not only contributed to her love of literature, but also helped her to connect with her father in a meaningful way.

Treasure Island. By Robert Louis Stevenson. Edited by John Sutherland. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2012.
The Canadian publisher Broadview Press publishes a series of scholarly editions of classic literary works under its Broadview Editions imprint, to which this volume belongs. In addition to reprinting the text of Stevenson's classic, this edition includes a scholarly introduction as well as a wealth of information in its many appendices.