This Is Sadie

Of course, I’m going to have some picture books on this list, and This is Sadie is one of my all-time favorite books. It makes me feel like a kid again.

With spare yet thoughtful words from O’Leary and whimsical illustrations by Morstad, you are transported to a time and place where adult worries and preoccupations don’t exist. Sadie is a hero, a mermaid, an archer in a fairy tale, and was also raised by wolves.

Oh, and she has wings! It’s a magical and powerful portrayal of childhood imagination.

A little girl with an active and playful imagination is why I love this book so much. Sadie spends her days in her own make-believe world with the hours never being long enough for all she wants to see and do. She builds and explores, climbs and reads, having both nature and books as the catalyst to her always brimming imagination. Sadie is what I hope all little boys and girls become – full of big ideas and even bigger possibilities – as they play and grow through the world around them.

Sadie sees possibility everywhere she goes. She transforms boxes into ships, lives inside stories, and (of course) she has wings. This book is filled with imagination and the best kind of play. Plus, there are foxes and wolves! Horses! Mermaids! I want to be Sadie when I grow up.