Weekend Stubble

After giving a reading in Boston on Thursday night at the Brookline Booksmith, I perused the children's book section for a while, buying for my toddler an utterly charming board book edition of Ruth Bornstein's 1976 tale Little Gorilla. But there was another book back there that startled me with its power: Seonna Hong's newly released Animus, a moving picture book about a girl spooked by a mean dog in her neighborhood.

I'm not sure I'd really call Animus a children's book -- if it is, then you have one spooky kid. But it's one of the most elegantly realized moving picture books I've ever seen: if you care about books as beautiful objects, then this is surely one to get. You can see its artwork from this Hong exhibition last year in Manhattan's Gallery 5BE, and Hong's home page is here.