Things to Look Forward To

Description

Everyone needs things to look forward to: big things and small things, on good days and on bad days, whether we actively create delight for ourselves or simply allow it to enter our lives. In these pages, beloved author and illustrator Sophie Blackall has gathered a collection of joys for all of us - reminders that every day the sun comes up and new babies are born. She includes suggestions that you bake muffins for a friend, or draw a face on an egg and put it in the fridge where it will smile at you each time you open the door. With wisdom, whimsy, and compassion, the 52 illustrated ideas in this book offer moments of uplift and serendipity for yourself and your loved ones. A message of hope and solace in hard times and of joyful anticipation at times of new beginnings - whether you're grieving a loss or starting a new chapter - and for all the days in between - Things to Look Forward To is full of gentle reminders of the objects, occasions, gestures, and ideas that warm our hearts. There is always something bright on the horizon, and sometimes that horizon can be a lot closer than we think.

Sophie Blackall is an Australian illustrator based in New York. Blackall has illustrated more than forty children's books, including Finding Winnie, for which she won the 2016 Randolph Caldecott Medal, and Hello Lighthouse, which won the Caldecott Medal in 2019. She is the illustrator of the long-running Ivy & Bean series of early reader chapter books, and the author of the picture book If You Come to Earth, also from Chronicle Books.

"Things to Look Forward To serves as a kind of guide to living on a planet that is, at once, filled with pain and pleasure.... Blackall's own story unfolds over the course of the book, as each item on her list offers a graceful invitation to pay attention to the small moments that make a life." --Cup of Jo "A full moon, a new word, coffee . . . children's book illustrator Blackall shares some of her favorite small pleasures, reminding grown-ups there's always something good ahead." --People "Infused with whimsy and hope, each page serves as a heartening reminder that even the smallest moments can be rewarding. This is the perfect pick-me-up."--Publishers Weekly "What makes the book so wondrous is that each seemingly mundane thing on the list shimmers with an aspect of the miraculous, each fragment of the personal opens into the universal, each playful wink at life grows wide-eyed with poignancy." --The Marginalian "You can't page through this book without feeling a renewed sense of appreciation for the everyday." --BookPage