Book Description
for The Museum of Everything by Lynne Rae Perkins
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
“When the world gets too big and too loud and too busy, I like to look at little pieces of it, one at a time. / I put them in a quiet place, like museums do.” The child narrator goes on to talk about their pieces in different kinds of museums: a Museum of Things I Wonder About, a Museum of Islands, a Museum of Bushes, a Museum of Hiding Places (“What if we’re in one right now and we can’t even tell?”), a Museum of Shadows, the Sky Museum, and the Museum of Little Things. About each one, the child ponders and asks child-friendly existential questions. “Can a rock in a puddle be an island?” “Is a place between streetlights a place without shadows or a place with 100 percent shadows?” The mixed-media art is equally fascinating. Some of it is painting, sometimes with white sketches superimposed to break the fourth wall; some are shadow boxes; some are collages; and some are small sculptures, photographed. Each page is designed to make readers slow down and look at all the “little pieces, one at a time.” It’s the sort of book a child can return to again and again. (Ages 5-8)
CCBC Choices 2022. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2022. Used with permission.