Kudos to Ame Dyckman and Dan Yaccarino for BOY + BOT

Everyone is so excited for our Ame Dyckman. Her book, BOY + Bot hit the book shelves this month and it has been greeted with rave reviews. In the very beginning, before it was touched by agent or publishers hands, Ame asked me to read her manuscript and immediately, I knew it was a winner. It was a perfect picture book, so I knew it would be snatched up and it was. It is pretty thrilling to see it written up in the NEW YORK TIMES Children’s Book Section.

I thought I would share the article written By PAMELA PAUL about BOY + BOT:

Children’s Books

My Friend the Robot

‘Boy and Bot’ and ‘Beep and Bah’

Beyond its pointed social message about the perils of earthly overabundance and human passivity, the movie “Wall-E” made one thing clear: Being friends with a robot would be awfully fun.
Small children know this already, which is what makes two new picture books, “Boy and Bot” and “Beep and Bah,” so appealing. In “Boy and Bot,” Ame Dyckman’s sweet and playful tale, with deceptively simple gouache illustrations by Dan Yaccarino (“All the Way to America”), a nameless boy is collecting pine cones in his red wagon when he meets a robot. “Want to play?” the boy asks, to which the robot, quite naturally, replies, “Affirmative!”

Boy and robot, who looks like the Tin Man crossed with a squat red rocket ship, gambol about outside until the robot mysteriously stops functioning. Unable to revive the bot, the boy brings him home to offer him care. Later, when the boy goes to bed, the robot (easily revived, it turns out, with the flip of a switch) is shocked to find the boy now malfunctioning (asleep).

The trouble, of course, is a failure in communication, perhaps inevitable, between man and machine. But this is easily remedied, and the two friends reconvene for further play dates. Boy affixes a drawing of Bot to the refrigerator; Bot sticks a picture of Boy on his torso. Boy sips chocolate milk from a straw; Bot chugs oil from the nozzle of a can. It’s a perfectly adorable, age-appropriate friendship. And it’s simply impossible to imagine a 4-year-old boy not wanting to be friends with this book.

Read the rest of the article about Beep and Bah

BOY AND BOT

By Ame Dyckman

Illustrated by Dan Yaccarino

32 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 2 to 5)

In less than a week BOY + BOT’s Amazon Ranking has pushed it’s way higher and higher.  It is the perfect combination of fun story and entertaining illustrations by Dan Yaccarino.  You can meet both Ame and Dan at this years, NJSCBWI conference. www.regonline.com/njscbwi2012conference  Hope to see you there.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy