Words and Your Heart

Newcomer Neal entreats readers to recognize the power that words possess. “You see, the words that go into your ears,” she explains, “can actually affect your heart! (The little bit inside of you that makes you, you!)” Most of the book focuses on how words can encourage and inspire, but Neal doesn’t avoid the fact that “sometimes words can be like a deadly arrow... that can pierce someone’s heart.” Red accents are the only color in Neal’s gestural ink drawings, which feature a roundheaded child and a cat acting out the story’s emotional lows and highs; in one scene, the child cheers on the exhausted cat from the sidelines of a race (“If someone wants to give up, your words can help them keep going”). An earnest plea to choose one’s words with care and to use them for the greater good. Ages 2–6. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management. (Dec.)