This is the image under the dust jacket!
The endpapers in 102 are intriguing. They are filled with 102 beans but while you will recognise some as real beans such as borlotti bean, pinto bean, lima bean and fava bean. Others are quirky such as morning bean, owl bean, Frisby bean, Lobel bean, Poppy bean, Cornbread bean, Sendak bean, and Steig bean. There is even a coffee bean!
The number 102 is the title of this book but it is so much more. The boy's temperature rises to 102; at 1.02am he wakes up and follows the cricket into a different world; the ant has 102 babies; and George's destination is 102 Acorn Hollow and there is a surprise on the last page which refers to 102 again. AND you need to look closely at many pages to find more references to 102 in the illustrations on labels, on a rug pattern, on George's wall and so on.
Watch the way Matthew Cordell creates his illustrations for this book using a multicoloured, multiscented ballpoint pen. "He liked it so much, he went on to draw 102 with it, layering many lines of one colour over another. It took sixteen of these pens to draw all forty-eight pages of this book."
It's time again for more process talk about my new picture book, 102. One of the earliest points of origin for the story, that I can remember, happened way back in 2019. While working in my basement studio, I noticed one afternoon that a frog had gotten trapped in one of our window wells. Rather than save it myself (or, frankly, let it die in there). I waited for my then 1st grade son, Dean, to get home from school and we could figure it out together. He suggested we lower a bucket down and we'd pull it up and out. It took a bit of encouragement (I had to broom the frog into the bucket), but ultimately, we were able to save our new wee green friend that day, father and son! That little blip in our lives was all it took to spark the beginning of 102, which is, at its heart, an animal rescue story. In 102, a mouse is captured in the family kitchen, and young George hopes to keep it as a pet. Without spoiling too much, one outrageous thing happens after another where George shrinks down to the size of a mouse and begins a nighttime adventure, where he learns about the life of that mouse he's captured. This convinces him that it's only right that he release the mouse to get back to his own life and family. It took years for that beginning spark to unfold into the story that became 102, but sometimes that is how these things take shape. Matthew Cordell
Publisher blurb: Sent home from school earlier in the day with a fever, George awakens in the middle of the night to discover a cricket beckoning him on an adventure and soon finds himself shrunken down in size. He follows the insect guide through a crack in his bedroom wall, through the moonlit yard, and into the home of a family of mice at the base of an oak tree. There, in a tiny, cozy kitchen, George discovers the meaning of his quest: he must help the Mama mouse complete her special 102-bean soup for her sick young son.
Here are some review comments:
"Tender and imaginative." —SLJ, starred review
"Graceful, cozy." —Booklist, starred review
"A weird and wonderful story." —Horn Book, starred review
"Pulses with warmth and inventiveness."—PW, starred review
The Kirkus Star reviewed likened 102 to The Borrowers. I also thought of A Cricket in Time Square.
I discovered Matthew Cordell from his Cornbread and Poppy series many years ago. I adore these little beginner chapter books.
Sadly, not many of his picture books have made it to Australia. I am keen to read these two picture books below. I have also added images of the case reveal - we don't do many picture books here in Australia with dust jackets. A different image under the dust jacket adds something a little bit magical to a picture book. US illustrator Matthew Cordell often adds this extra surprise:
Matthew Cordell is the author and illustrator of many celebrated picture books for children, including the Caldecott Medal winner Wolf in the Snow, Evergreen, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, Hello Neighbor!: The Kind and Caring World of Mr. Rogers, a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year, and the Cornbread and Poppy series, which Booklist in a starred review has called “a rewarding choice for young readers.” Matthew lives outside of Chicago with his wife, author Julie Halpern, and their two children.
I have also previously talked about these:
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