Posts

Showing posts with the label Marta Dorado

Review: I Am Not Afraid

Image
I Am Not Afraid: Psalm 23 for Bedtime by Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, illustrated by Marta Dorado Beaming Books, 2023 Category: Picture Books Reviewer: Jeff Gottesfeld Buy at Bookshop.org I first encountered Psalm 23 as a boy, reading a paperback World War II memoir I am sure was called "10,000 to 1," about an American B-17 navigator who was shot down and found himself wounded and alone on a Japanese-controlled island. The psalm gave him solace. In I Am Not Afraid , veteran author Sasso uses that famed, powerful, and comforting psalm for a short and simple text that is a variation on its timeless themes. She centers a young girl (Dorado's captivating art has her old enough to be in a regular bed and grown enough to have her toes touch the floor when she sits on the bed, old enough not to cry out instinctually to the mother we see at the book's outset, but young enough to sleep with a stuffed lamb, so...maybe age 10? 11?) who goes to bed, counts sheep, and then is beset by i