Book Description
for I Used to Be Afraid by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
Spiders, shadows, the dark. Making mistakes, change, being alone. These are all things the young narrator used to be afraid of. “But not anymore,” she notes. The spare yet essential text is almost a grace note to a story in which much is conveyed visually. Boldly colored, textured illustrations with die cuts show first a scene in which the girl fears each thing, and then a scene reflecting her current feelings about the object or idea. Sometimes, a scene of transition between the two is also provided, building a fuller story in which her family is seen leaving its old home and moving to a new one. One of the marvelous things about Laura Vaccaro Seeger’s picture book is that it leaves plenty of space to think and talk about what is happening. Seeger is masterful at offering just the right amount of information and leaving it up to young readers and listeners to decide how to fill in the blanks. (Ages 3–7)
CCBC Choices 2016. © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2016. Used with permission.