If Only! Memory Jars by Vera Brosgol

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ON A HOT, SWEET JULY DAY, FREDA WENT BLACKBERRY PICKING WITH GRAN.

THE BERRIES TASTED LIKE SUNSHINE.

THEY WOULD NEVER BE BETTER!

Still, Freda couldn't eat all those blueberries at once.

But Gran says she can save them for another time. They can put them in jars to preserve ALL the sweet goodness. Freda remembers Granpa eating blueberry jam on his toast when she was little..., and . . .

FREDA HAD AN IDEA!

She tries putting one of Gran's fresh chocolate cookies, hot out of the oven, in a jar, and when she opens the jar the next morning, the aroma of the cookie was sweet and fresh. Soon Freda sets out to save every good thing she loves--from beautiful music, a rainbow, and some stars she gathered from the night sky. When her best friend Jack was sad that he was moving to Arizona, she saves him in a jar. Finally, all of Freda's favorite things are saved in one jar or another! And Gran is almost out of empty jars. But one day, when they have eaten the last of the blueberry jam, Freda realizes that she has a problem!

Should Freda put the last hot toast with blueberry jam away in the jar? But then, she would never taste that warm crunchy toast with warm, sweet blueberry savor....

Maybe she should just live in the moment, in Caldecott honor-winning author-illustrator Vera Brosgol's latest, Memory Jars (Roaring Brook, 2021). There are problems, any way you go. Now, or later, which is best? And how many jars are there for all the things we love? Not enough! Vera Brosgol's endearing little preservationist is so charmingly cute that kids will delight in her little dilemma, which inspires us all to enjoy the moment, but also to see that sometimes it's best to just savor the memory.

Vera Brosgol's winning Caldecott Honor book is This One Summer.

Logophiliac at Large! The Word Collector by Peter Hamilton Reynolds

Some people collect stamps... coins... rocks... art.

And Jerome? Jerome collected words.

He liked to know the names for lovely things he saw....

Willow

Some words just hopped off the page and into his head-- words that sounded like their meaning, like glimmer, and words that tickled his tongue like kaleidoscope, and words that bounced around in his brain, like guacamole'!

Soon he got the urge to make things with his words. Jerome began stringing them together, side by side.

He used words to write poems and songs.

Jerome discovers that some strings of words have power with people.

Thank you!

He learned that knowing the right words make it easier to think clearly about things. And he learned that words have power!

And in Peter H. Reynolds' newest, The Word Collector (Orchard Books, 2018), Jerome also learned that words can't be kept in a box or a book. They have to be shared to be truly real.

All of us are word collectors, children especially. Communication is what we humans do best. and the ability to acquire and curate words, lots of them, is what makes us unique creatures. And who knows that better than an author like noted writer, Peter Reynolds, whose little books are each a sort of modern parable, illustrated in his signature style. In this latest book, Reynolds points out the joy of knowing words and that sharing words brings.

Jerome had no words to describe how happy that made him.

Other popular books by Reynolds are The Dot, Ish (Creatrilogy)., and Rose's Garden (read my review and see Peter Reynolds' personal comment about writing this book about the Rose Kennedy Garden in Boston.)