Once Upon a Book by Grace Lin (A Big Mooncake for Little Star) and Kate Messner (Chirp) is a fabulous (in both senses) adventure that earns a spot in the pantheon of picture books celebrating the transformative power of reading.
One rainy day, while stuck indoors with her mom, Alice grouses, "I wish I were someplace that wasn't so frozen and gray!" She hears the pages of a book flutter and picks it up. The story inside, which features colorful birds in a jungle setting, seems to be speaking to her: "Once upon a time, there was a girl.... She went to a place alive with colors, where even the morning dew was warm." The birds invite Alice to "turn the page and come in"; she does, and her book comes with her. Alice reads until it starts to rain, and she wishes she were "someplace that wasn't so steamy and drippy." She's at the part in the story where the girl "went to a place of sparkling sands, where the sun would dry her," which leads Alice to....
Illustrator Lin seems to dedicate a gloriously fresh palette to each new setting. In a beguilingly enigmatic touch, Alice's dress adapts with every adventure: it changes from a garment printed with text into a green frock that's impossible to see against the jungle's green backdrop, and so on. Not that Alice would notice: she can't get her head out of her book. The same may go for readers of Once Upon a Book. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author