An independent editorial project dedicated to picture books, visual storytelling, and the people who make them.

Through reviews, conversations, and reflections on publishing and illustration, I explore books as spaces for imagination, cultural exchange, and connection.

Mama Reads

The Reading Journal

This is where you can find book reviews and occasional musings on life. If you have a picturebook suggestion to be featured, please send me a note here.

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The Reading Journal
Home
Home
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A Giraffe and a Half
A Giraffe and a Half
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The Webs of Life
The Webs of Life
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Dialogues

Conversations with authors, illustrators, and publishers shaping the world of children’s books.

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Dialogues
Featured Artist: Maria Nogueira Nössing
Featured Artist: Maria Nogueira Nössing
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Featured Artist: Emma FitzGerald
Featured Artist: Emma FitzGerald

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Why Picture Books?

Stories have the power to transport us and to paint the unimaginable. They also carry the potential to portray ways of life and worldviews, to open our hearts & minds to the diversity of human experience.

Picture books are timeless stories. They create connection, between images and words, reader and child, child and their deepest imagination.

I believe storytelling is both art and activism, and that a single picture book can affect the way we see ourselves in the world — and our sense of belonging in it.

FOLLOW ALONG

Books I’m reading, discovering, and revisiting.

@mama_reads_by_marina
When it comes to my writing about picture books, there is a pinch of magic to how it happens. It starts with a pull towards a story— the way I end up carrying a particular book in my backpack for days, wherever I go. Not knowing where I’m
To believe in something wholeheartedly and to design a life immersed in it… is the ultimate beauty • • • I’m delighted to share that I’ll be representing select titles from @ozeeditora an independent Brazilian publ
Nadar Voar • • • a meditation on the delicate dance of existence. Each time I read its pages, letting my eyes float through the dreamlike illustrations, I experienced something different. My stomach floating and flying in a visceral jo

  • "Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope."

    - Albert Camus -

  • "Picture books, in the present era, enjoy a status as a culture form to be enjoyed by people of all ages. It is a precious and versatile art that has already left the confines of paper behind, shattering the boundaries of its own genre and fusing with various other forms of art and imagery."

    - CJ Picture Book Festival in South Korea Manifesto -

  • "To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled is a spark."

    - Victor Hugo -

  • "I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."

    - Roald Dahl -

  • "Damn everything but the circus!"

    e. e. cummings

  • "There are three ways of writing for children... the third way, which is the only one I could ever use myself, consists of writing a children's story because a children's story is the best art form for something you have to say"

    - C.S. Lewis -

  • "The picture book, which appears to be the cosiest and most gentle of genres, actually produces the greatest social and aesthetic tensions in the whole field of children's literature."

    - Sheila Egoff -

Follow Mama Reads along on Instagram for stories about picture books and the creatives behind their making. This is also where I share occasional musings on life & inspiration I find.

Dialogues
Reading Journal
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