Young Children

Something strange happened on an unremarkable day just before the season changed.

Everybody who was OUTSIDE . . . was INSIDE.

Outside was quieter, wilder, and different.

INSIDE, we laughed, we cried and grew.

We remembered to protect the ones we love and love the ones who protect us.
While the world changed outside, we became stronger on the inside and believed that someday soon, spring would come again.

It took my mom and me until page five to realize that this story takes place during the Covid-19 2020 pandemic lockdown.

When the lockdown happened, I didn’t think much of it. Since I work at home, I didn’t have to make as many changes. I’m an author and illustrator, so I suddenly got plenty of time to write and draw my latest book. I even started illustrating for another author. The biggest bummer was that with all the schools closed, I couldn’t do any of the school readings I had scheduled for 2020. You never really appreciated the act of freely going out into public until you aren’t allowed to.

2020 was definitely a strange time. On the plus side, the whole experience gave people a chance to find creative ways to entertain themselves.

I suggest reading this book multiple times. Each time through, you’ll find more things to look at. You can play a game of I Spy and try to find as many tiny details as you can.

Here’s a list of things to find:

• all the different faces in the windows
• a paper airplane
• three teddy bears in the window
• the black cat (I had way too much fun finding the black cat on each page)

This will be an excellent book to read for a long time to come, especially in twenty years when our generation of kids want to explain what life was like in 2020.