The Phantom Paragrapher

Review: The Christmas Blanket - Ed Damiano - December 2018 As a former children's librarian, I miss reading picture books and so I have decided to start reading and reviewing them on my blog The Phantom Paragrapher. This book coming up to Christmas, it called me to read it. In The Christmas Blanket, we have our main male lead - a young boy EJ who lives in New York. It is the start of the Christmas season and EJ and his mother are headed to the Rockefeller Centre to see the Tree lighting. This is one of the biggest Christmas trees in the states. When I was in America in December 2013, the end of our trip was in New York and we got to see the tree in Rockefeller Square. The Christmas tree is supposed to be the tree of Christmas wishes and miracles.  On the ferry towards the tree, EJ sees a bully from his school who tells him that Christmas is all about presents. This starts to worm into EJ's mind and he starts to think maybe he has been wrong about what Christmas means. However...

Review: The Red Fence - Ed Damiano , Illustrated by Jen Polk- July 2021 This cute picture book was an easy read and reminded me so much of the Dr. Seuss stories that the majority of us grew up on. From the creation and artwork of the characters to the rhyming and the crazy made-up names of the race which in the book The Red Fence are called Vanderloos. In this book, a family moves into the village and decides to be different and paint their fence - red when every other fence is white. The townspeople and mayor try to sway them and get them to change their mind but they stand firm. Slowly the rest of the town of Vanderloos see the family standing strong and accepting their differences and eventually the town is filled with colorful fences.  The Red Fence was a great picture book and aimed at children aged 4-6 years old and filled with bright and beautiful illustrations. Fans of Dr. Seuss’s stories will love Ed Damiano’s The Red Fence as it brought back those wonderful memories of ...