The Big Book for Peace

A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books

This picture is from BookMine – the one I took at GBITW didn’t take.

Title: The Big Book for Peace

This is where I normally list the authors and illustrators of a book… there were so many involved with The Big Book for Peace that I opted to take a picture of the title page instead:

I’ve been eying this for awhile now.  It’s been perched on display in the kid’s section at Good Books in the Woods for months now.  Why has no one picked it up?  Why is no one buying this.  It’s in a nice slip cover, it’s been taken care of.  There’s some slight water damage that – as a book collector – I see no problem with, it’s ever so slight and does not take away from the magic of the book.  It’s a nice, clean copy.  It’s only $12.

I know why I haven’t purchased it – I’m completely overloaded with books AND have NO money.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to read it until someone else does decide to take this treasure home.

So today, I sat down with the kiddo, in a bookstore, in another person’s home – and my home away from home – and read her the first story in the book.

Filled with castles and kings as any good Lloyd Alexander story should be, The Two Brothers follows a tale of two men who split the kingdom their father left them in half.  From the rubble of the fortress they grew up in, they build two separate castles.  What begins as a sweet story between the kindest brothers ever evolves into a competition of who can build the better kingdom, each man filled with greed and a medieval ‘keeping up with the Jonses’ mentality.

So many times, the reader can see where each brother makes an unwise choice, continuing the bitterness.  Until we arrive at this lovely illustration, which my camera has done little justice:

This story was kiddo approved (she’s three, but it is a nice tale for any age). I look forward to the next chapter of The Big Book of Peace.