Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 05/01/2025 Based on characters from Hunt’s best- selling middle-grade novel Fish in a Tree (2015), this picture book brings neurodiversity to a younger audience. While his peers sit still at their desks, completing their assignments dutifully, Oliver fidgets and his “brain blazes” as he imagines his yellow no. 2 pencil as a rocket and questions zoom around his thoughts. Digitally enhanced photo-collage illustrations that feature childlike doodles and schoolthemed media, such as finger paint, a variety of writing papers, and real school supplies, relate Oliver’s unspecified neurodivergence and the isolation he feels after classmate Shay taunts him. Like the original novel, this story uses a metaphor to help readers understand and appreciate Oliver’s unique way of thinking. In this case, it’s his love of ants and how they all have a colony in which they belong. Although some students occasionally talk like adults (“I would relish a brain like yours”), they also acknowledge Oliver’s gifts and welcome him into their “colony.” Once again, Hunt encourages compassion and self-acceptance in all readers. - Copyright 2025 Booklist.