A Potion, A Powder, and A Time Traveling Chicken
A few months ago, I was cleaning the house and had podcasts queued up to just keep playing. Reading in the Middle was the first podcast in the queue, and Annisha Jeffries was interviewing Philip Stead about his book, A Potion, a Powder, and A Little Bit of Magic or Lightning in an Umbrella Storm. I thoroughly enjoyed the podcast, immediately put the book at the top of my TBR list, and then went back to cleaning.
The very next podcast to start was Shannon Balloon’s Middle Grade Matters episode on Writing and Illustrating Whimsical Stories with Philip Stead. I actually stopped to check and make sure I wasn’t just relistening to the podcast I’d just finished. After getting over my initial confusion, I laughed out loud, shrugged, and decided it couldn’t hurt to hear another interview.
By the time the second podcast was over, my house was clean, and I was on fire to go write…or go to the bookstore and grab a copy of Philip’s book…or go tell every one of my school teacher friends that they should get this book for their classroom libraries.
I opted for working on my own project, and unfortunately, I did not make it to the bookstore until THIS WEEK, when I went to an author event at the Boulder Bookstore for Kaz Windness and David Deen’s Time Traveling Chickens: Bawk to the Future.
Y’all, this has been a FUN reading week. My whole family piled onto our “snuggle couch” — the couch our kids picked out when they were like 5 and 6 specifically because we could all snuggle together in — the night we got back from the bookstore with books or homework. My 16-year-old son grabbed Time Traveling Chickens and was cracking up within seconds. I had my copy of A Potion, A Powder… (I’m way too lazy to type out the whole name again…) and didn’t even make it past the cover sleeve before I was giggling and geeking out over the awesome illustrations. My husband and 15-year-old daughter both kept looking at us and asking why we were laughing.
Our evening ended with my son giving a recap and calling out some of his favorite characters as we passed the book back and forth and took in the artistry put into the graphic novel. I was then coerced into doing a read-aloud of the opening chapters of the book I’d been reading. None of us wanted to stop, but obligations of school and work the next morning, and our grumpy dog barking in our faces, telling us he was ready for bed, forced us to put in a bookmark and halt for the night.
Thank you to both Philip Stead and Kaz Windness, who have produced delightful, slightly silly, and light-hearted books that have earned top spots on our overflowing bookshelves. My kids are older than the target audiences, but decided these books are wonderful breaths of fresh air as breaks from AP Government, busy extracurricular schedules, and the general strain of high school life.
I’m hoping all four of us can get back to the snuggle couch soon to enjoy a little downtime with our next fun Middle Grade adventure.
Looking forward to figuring out what our next great read will be!
