2025 Schneider Family Awards: A Little Like Magic and Popcorn

In A Little Like Magic, a wheelchair-bound girl finds enchantment during the winter ice festival.

A Little Like Magic by Sarah Kurpiel. Rocky Pond Books, 2024, 38 pages

Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 0-4

Recommended for: ages 2-6

Mom has a special outing planned, but the little girl doesn’t want to go. It’s winter, meaning heavy coats, itchy hats, stiff boots, and cold wind. And it’s not mentioned, but going anywhere in a motorized wheelchair is difficult. Once they reach their destination, our protagonist still doesn’t see the point—it’s just a bunch of people using chainsaws, chisels, and blowtorches to sculpt ice. “I wonder why anyone would make a sculpture out of ice. I don’t think it’s worth it.” Even worse, her special little plastic horse falls out of her pocket and she doesn’t notice it’s missing until they get home. Why did they even go?

That note of suspense will keep little ones engaged, even if they’ve never experienced life in a wheelchair. They can relate to losing something precious to them and rejoice at a happy ending. But to recover the horse our protagonist must return to the scene she rejected earlier, to see the finished sculpture illuminated “a little like magic.” And now it makes sense: though they will melt, their beauty remains with her, something no disability can take away. Soft illustrations in cool-toned colors communicate emotion with broad strokes and simple lines.

Bottom Line: A gentle story about loss and recovery.

Popcorn charts one no good, very bad day in the life of a 6th-grade anxiety basket case.

Popcorn by Rob Harrell. Dial, 2024, 269 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages 10-14

 It’s picture day at school, and Andrew Yaeger has a lot riding on a perfect shot—or at least his mom does. She’s starting a new, higher-income job that will hopefully help them pay for residential care for Andrew’s grandma, now in the mid-stages of Alzheimer’s. Then he can at least get his bedroom back, even if he’ll never get his fun-loving, rational grandma. But one day at a time: Today he looks pretty good and the usual pre-school butterflies aren’t kicking up too much of a fuss. The bus ride to school with his best friend Jonesy isn’t overly traumatic, and if he can just get the picture out of the way first thing it won’t matter much what happens after that. But alas, it’s not to be.

Everything that can happen, happens, from Andrew’s running afoul of the class bully to a rogue ketchup bottle in the school cafeteria to a science experiment gone seriously awry. In the meantime Andrew ruins two shirts, acquires a black eye, breaks his glasses, loses his grandma, and experiences his absolute worst nightmare, which is a full-blown panic attack at school. This is the “Popcorn” of the title, as Andrew pictures himself as a single kernel in the pan with the heat going up and up and pressure building until he finally explodes all over the art classroom.

Readers with anxiety issues may have a hard time getting through this traumatic day with him, but all others will come to sympathize. Graphic drawings accompany the narrative, mostly symbolic representations of Andrew’s worsening state of mind. When the story begins an upward turn at the end, it’s not a moment too soon/

Consideration: a few misuses of God’s name.

Bottom Line: A humorous but harrowing account of juvenile anxiety disorder, from someone who knows.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Review: Rob Harrell is the author of Wink, another first-person account of middle-grade trauma (eye cancer, which the author also experienced).
• Review: Twelve Kinds of Ice (starred review) is another description of winter magic.
• Reviews: See our roundup of Schneider Family picture books from 2022.

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