What a wonderful Kirkus review!
(Paired here with my favorite improper contraction.)
"A thoughtful look at life, in all its beauty and strangeness.
...
This delightfully deadpan musing on life urges compassion for others. Howden’s straightforward text is on the philosophical side, though also rooted in the absurd. Hahn’s spare black graphite pencil watercolor, mostly set against a white background, are imbued with humor and empathy for the pickle, with the foodstuff’s expressive eyes conveying many emotions at once. "
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sarah-howden/the-wise-pickle/
THE WISE PICKLE
by Sarah Howden ;
illustrated by Sabina Hahn
RELEASE DATE: June 23, 2026
Look I give my cats when they pee or break something. It's like why? You have boxes and why you need to be breaking things? Half the time you don't want me. I don't own cats...they own me. I should have known this.
Words something so simple but yet so destructive. They become your inner voice, your torment they become the demons you try to appease. But when there is one that shines brighter than the others. It becomes charming, alluring, but yet the most destructive one of all. All you do...is feed it.
I made my golden calf in the arbour because it was a pagan place and a circle is always a good setting for sculpture.
It was very difficult to get the legs to stay upright but in the end they did and I nailed them to the socle just to make sure. Sometimes I stood still, listening for the first rumble of the wrath of God. But so far he had said nothing. His great eye just looked right down into the arbour through the hole between the tops of the spruce trees. At last I had got him to show some interest.
- Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson
#dailydrawing #tovejansson
