Everyone Gets a Say

by Jill Twiss, EG Keller (Illustrator)

Overview

Don't miss this picture book about voting, just in time for the 2020 election season, from the #1 New York Times bestselling team behind Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo and The Someone New. 

Pudding the snail and his friends can’t seem to agree on anything. Whatever Jitterbug the chipmunk wants, Geezer the goose does not. Whatever Toast the butterfly wants, Duffles and Nudge the otters are absolutely against. And if somehow Toast and Duffles and Jitterbug and Nudge all agree on something, then Geezer is not having it.

So when Toast suggests they need a leader, the friends try to figure out the best way to pick someone to be in charge. Should that someone be the fastest? The fluffiest? The squishiest? Or can Pudding show his friends that there just might be a way where everyone gets a say?

In this follow-up to The Someone New, Jill Twiss and EG Keller cleverly underscore the importance of speaking up and using your voice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062933751
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	675,065
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Jill Twiss is the author of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a New York Times #1 bestseller. She is also a comedy writer who has won multiple Emmys, WGA Awards, and Peabody Awards for her work as a staff writer on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. In her not-so-spare time, Jill writes sentences for the Scripps National Spelling Bee on ESPN and is working on a musical about the women of the Seneca Falls Convention.

EG Keller is the illustrator of the New York Times #1 bestseller Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents: A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo and the picture book His Royal Dogness, Guy the Beagle: The Rebarkable True Story of Meghan Markle's Rescue Dog. As Gerald Kelley, he illustrated documentarian Ken Burns’s New York Times bestselling book Grover Cleveland, Again! and wrote and illustrated the picture book Please Please the Bees, which won the 2017 Frances and Wesley Bock Book Award for Children’s Literature and was read aloud for Storyline Online by Rashida Jones. Keller lives in Colorado with his husband.

Editorial Reviews

We vote yes.  — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2020-06-30
Democracy comes to the forest.

When a diverse group of forest creatures starts to squabble over an unused patch of land, a quiet snail named Pudding introduces the idea of democracy, specifically through voting. The story’s tone emphasizes cooperation and inclusion, but it also has nuanced layers that provide educators or caregivers room to introduce additional themes and interweave contemporary moments into the tale if they so choose. Opportunities also arise to talk about the food web and biology, as the various friends want to use the land for legitimate, if somewhat self-serving reasons: Toast the butterfly wants to grow flowers, and Jitterbug the chipmunk wants to plant acorns in order to increase the nut supply in the forest. Meanwhile, otter twins Duffles and Nudge want a mudslide to the lake, and goose Geezer wants land for edible greens. The text is enhanced by illustrations that have the look of watercolor, and the balance of white space on some pages against lush colorful spreads allows the book to work well whether it’s read aloud to a group or studied closely in a lap. The ending, which shows an equal division of the land and no sore feelings, is hopeful if a skosh on the simplistic side for realistic readers, and Twiss’ habit of capitalizing significant words (“The Yells got louder. And the Shouts got shoutier”) has a patronizing whiff to it. Still, young children will see the value.

We vote yes. (Picture book. 4-8)

Kirkus Reviews