Bound To Stay Bound

Other - 08/18/2025 "Today I go outside to map my world all by myself for the first time," writes young Ruby in a brand-new birthday journal. As the protagonist, portrayed with dark hair and pale skin, charts her neighborhood and park (her mother, a cartographer, and dog, Magellan, follow at a distance), measured text by Yolen and reportorial watercolor-textured digital illustrations by Phumiruk convey a knowable and approachable landscape. But Ruby’s notes are about more than charting paths; insets show that the journal is "crowded with interesting observations" about both natural and human-made geography. After Dad meets up with the trio, Ruby heads to "her other house," where she’ll map more of her "always interesting world." With its reliance on an individual’s renderings, the book offers a lovely revelation: the best maps don’t just show where one is, but also how one relates and what one perceives. Resources conclude. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4-8. (Oct.) - Copyright 2025

School Library Journal - 09/26/2025 Gr 2–4—Prolific Yolen conflates children's mapping books, old and new, in her sweet take on the process. With nods to Sara Fanelli's 1995 My Map Book and its eccentric art and point of view, the author tweaks her version into a divorce story and the route between Ruby's two homes. There is little new here, with winks at older readers, such as the stars stuck to Ruby's bedroom ceiling and her dog's name, Magellan. Given the gift of a new journal and five markers, Ruby leaves one home with her mother—a cartographer—and dog in tow, headed for the birthday party thrown by her father across town (where there is a second gift of a new journal and markers). She maps not just places and paths, but every observation, from an old man walking with the support of two ski poles to a cyclist in bright pants, from the starlings that fly overhead to the "Woof! Woof! Woof!" of Mags on the walk. She looks far younger in the blocky, bright illustrations than her perfect handwritten notes in the journal indicate. Readers looking for a story or suspense will find they are simply on a walk, with notes in the back matter about different kinds of mapping and a wonderful bibliography that may send them out to research more. Ruby is mixed race; her mother cues white and her father is Asian. VERDICT Educators have plenty of other books to choose from, so place this in Yolen collections or where there is a need for more poetic, loosely defined looks at cartography.—Kimberly Olson Fakih - Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.