At first this post was just pictures, but then I went back and added words.

Some tempting new review copies arrived: The Water Castle, a middle-grade by Megan Frazer Blakemore, and Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle—gorgeous art on that one, reminiscent of the German illustrator Nikolaus Heidelbach, whose name I was recently wracking my brain to recall.

Simple Pictures Are Best (illustrated by Tomie de Paola) is a book I remember giggling over with my little sisters long ago. Now I get to hear my kids giggle over it. And The Little House remains at the tippy-top of Huck’s best-loved books list.

Rose likes baking. I like cookies. We’re a good match.

This time last year I was heading into a garden-lit binge: that wonderful collection of letters between Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence, which led to more books (rereads and first-time reads) by each, and some new bulbs in my garden. This year, oh joy! Netgalley delivered to my Kindle a new collection of Eudora Welty’s gardening letters, Tell About Night Flowers, forthcoming from University of Mississippi Press. This is the sort of thing that makes me giddy. This publisher is also responsible for the fascinating (so far; I’m not finished) book Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss: How an Unlikely Couple Found Love, Dodged the FBI, and Transformed Children’s Literature. I have many treasured books written and/or illustrated by these two, and until this book I had no idea they were a couple. I love literary couples.

What are you reading right now?