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The Secret Life of Lilykins by Max Goodman, illustrated by Erik Mace

Source: Smith Publicity
Paperback, 28 pgs.
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The Secret Life of Lilykins by Max Goodman, illustrated by Erik Mace, is a charming story about imagination, defeating boredom, and learning to enjoy siblings. Lily is a cat with two dads and a brother, but she also has a vivid imagination. Rather than merely wash her own fur, eat, and nap, Lilykins is a queen and a scuba diver, as well as a huntress.

The illustrations are colorful and kids will enjoy following this cat on her adventures, even if many of those adventures are in her mind. The book reads like poetry, with a gentle rhythm that will keep kids listening. There are context clues for the larger words used, so it also strives to expand kids’ vocabularies. Lilykins can be calm, but she also can be wildly crazy.

The Secret Life of Lilykins by Max Goodman, illustrated by Erik Mace, is an adorable children’s picture book about the power of imagination as a tool against boredom. It also strives to demonstrate that we can be anything. Our limitations are only as high as the skies and as narrow as our own imaginations.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Max Goodman lives in New York City with his husband and two very important cats. By day, he works as an advertising copywriter. The Secret Life of Lilykins is Max’s first book.

 

Mailbox Monday #405

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has a permanent home at its own blog.

To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links. Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Vicki, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what I received:

The Secret Life of Lilykins by Max Goodman, illustrated by Erik Mace, for review.

On the surface, Lilykins lives the life of a typical house cat. But Lilykins has another life – a secret life – that transports her to a world of incredible adventures. “The Secret Life of Lilykins” is a story filled with animals, adventure and absurdity. But at its core, it’s a story about the power of imagination.

Doctor Who Psychology: A Madman with a Box by Travis Langley and Katy Manning, a surprise from Sterling Publishing.

If a person could travel eternally through space and time, how would this power affect him, psychologically and emotionally? In a fun and accessible way, Doctor Who Psychology explores this question through an analysis of the longest-running sci-fi TV series of all time. This fascinating in-depth academic study, edited by Travis Langley, contains 20 essays delving into the psychology behind the time-traveling Doctor in his many iterations, as well as his companions and his foes.

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck from Diary of an Eccentric.

Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined—an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times Notable Book The Hazards of Good Breeding

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resistor murdered in the failed July, 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

First, Marianne rescues six-year-old Martin, the son of her dearest childhood friend, from a Nazi reeducation home. Together, they make their way across the smoldering wreckage of their homeland to Berlin, where Martin’s mother, the beautiful and naïve Benita, has fallen into the hands of occupying Red Army soldiers. Then she locates Ania, another resistor’s wife, and her two boys, now refugees languishing in one of the many camps that house the millions displaced by the war.

As Marianne assembles this makeshift family from the ruins of her husband’s resistance movement, she is certain their shared pain and circumstances will hold them together. But she quickly discovers that the black-and-white, highly principled world of her privileged past has become infinitely more complicated, filled with secrets and dark passions that threaten to tear them apart. Eventually, all three women must come to terms with the choices that have defined their lives before, during, and after the war—each with their own unique share of challenges.

What did you receive?