Rosie's Magic Horse

Rosie's Magic Horse
by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake
Candlewick, 2012. Unpaged. Picture Book.

Although Maurice Sendak got all the press when he died, the world of children's literature lost as great a treasure when Russell Hoban passed away in 2011. In this, his last published work, a box of ice-pop sticks (collected in a cigar box by a girl named Rosie) think they are nothing with their sugary surrounds gone. One stick thinks he could be something, and what he wants to be is a horse. Then they all want to be horses so they dream about that, and when Rosie takes them out of the box to play with, she finds herself making a horse shape. When the clock strikes midnight, Stickerino the horse gallops out of his cigar box and takes Rosie on a wild ride to pirate treasure that helps her family pay her bills. There is not a greater collaboration in children's literature than Hoban and Blake. Rosie's Magic Horse is laugh-aloud funny, magical, witty, and heartbreaking because it is the last. Don't miss it.

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