Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Children’s picture books

THE STACK

Vanessa Roeder

From the creator of The Box Turtle comes a clever and stunningly illustrated bedtime story about doing (and building!) whatever it takes to reach for the stars.

Luna begins her stack with a single chair. But it's not quite tall enough. So she adds a stool, then some books... and her bed... and before she knows it, she's thrown a pile of plates, a bathtub (currently occupied), and a whale up there too. And yet the stack still isn't tall enough. Finally, after she flings and slings bigger and wackier things into the stack, and then climbs and stretches just so, she is able to reach into the sky for just what she wants: a star of her own to use as a night light!

Key selling points
- Perfect bedtime read: This story starts out silly but winds down to Luna comfortably sleeping with her new night-light star, making it a great way to match a reader's pre-bedtime energy and slowly bring them down to sleep.
- Humor: The stack grows more and more absurd and readers will love the interjecting comments from the unwitting stack participants.
- Small details everywhere: Vanessa's collage illustrations are chock-full of details that kids will want to pore over, and is a great way to introduce kids to collaging.

Vanessa Roeder is an author and illustrator whose work has been featured in Highlights magazine and on Apartment Therapy. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three kids.

Available products
Book Published 2022-02-15 by Dial Books for Young Readers

Comments

Roeder's mixed-media art combines a miniaturist's precision with a playful sense of scale and perspective. Readers can fully appreciate every item Luna employs to reach her goal, and see how her achievement stacks up against her diminutive, footed-pajama stature.

This fanciful picture book has a charming nighttime setting made of intricate mixed-media art, and Roeder's night sky is resplendent with multi-colored stars and a glowing crescent moon. Rhyming verse gives this story a lulling, peaceful effect, but viewers will have a lot to watch for in background details... There's an element of mischief here that will please antsy viewers... a welcome distraction for sleepless kids.

Roeder has written and illustrated a fun story about a young girl's fear of the dark - and how she uses her imagination to soothe her fear. Using shifting perspective in the illustrations to emphasize just how high Luna has to climb, the colorful artwork captures the creativity and movement of her tossing funny, unexpected objects onto the stack. The text and art take on a momentum and direction, moving readers along, up, and down, and all around.