My Never Ending List

When his father doesn’t show up for their morning ritual, this young boy lists all the things he misses his Papa doing with him from making his favorite scrambled eggs to telling him that he loves him. He then lists the things his Papa will not be able to help him with when he gets older from fixing a car to shaving. He writes his Papa a letter telling him to come home, and after months of waiting he gets a return letter. His Papa writing down his words of wisdom as he himself cannot tell the boy in person. These words come from the heart touching on everyday subjects and reaching to intellectual advice, a father’s voice reaching out. The author’s own father was incarcerated so the author writes from the heart; you can feel in the writing the confusion and pain as the child comes to grip with his new reality. Some of the illustrations are remarkable and others were very interesting. I had to stop and analyze them to see everything that was occurring on the page. The depth of the illustrations, layers built on top of each other and images set upon one another, striking and precise. The illustrator used watercolors and collage to deliver this emotional book.