Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 04/01/2025 *Starred Review* Author-artist James Marshall, who in 2007 was posthumously awarded the Wilder Medal (now the Children's Literature Legacy Award), created indelible characters like the viperish substitute teacher Miss Viola Swamp, friends and hippos George and Martha, and the catastrophe-causing Cut-Ups. Marshall also retold classic fairy tales (his Goldilocks and the Three Bears was a Caldecott Honor book). This picture-book biography is both a tribute to Marshall’s work and an overview of his life, with Connors using ink and watercolors, as Marshall did. The characters are all represented as cartoon animals, with Jim as a fox (resembling Fox from Marshall’s Fox and His Friends series). The biggest homage comes through in this book's format of six stories about “one great artist,” which echoes the George and Martha short stories “about two great friends.” The first five stories are funny and filled with Marshall’s friends and insights about illustrating, writing, and selling books. “Story Number Five: The School Visit” has Marshall revealing to an auditorium full of students how his second-grade teacher told him he could never be an artist (he later drew her as Viola Swamp). The last story focuses on Marshall’s early death and ends with him saying, “Kids are really smart these days.” Smart kids (and adults) love James Marshall, and they will love this biography. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.