Letters to Anyone and Everyone by Toon Tellegen

TITLE: Letters to Anyone and Everyone
AUTHOR: Toon Tellegen
ILLUSTRATOR: Jessica Ahlberg
PUBLISHED BY: Boxer Books
ISBN: 978-1906250959
PURCHASE: Amazon, IndieBound

You will no doubt remember my excitment over Toon Tellegen's whimsical, enchanting, charming The Squirrel's Birthday, and Other Parties. It is fair to say that I was absolutely smitten with the book.  Toon Tellegen is one of Holland's most renowned and loved authors, and The Squirrel's Birthday was the first collection in English of his hundreds of animal stories, so loved all through Europe.

Letters to Anyone and Everyone is the second volume to be translated (the third, Far Away Across the Sea will be released in September).  These stories concern the writing of letters (a practice I am always in favor of), and some are wonderfully charming and delightful.  Others--like the "letter to a letter" are very odd, and require a great deal of stretching for the imagination.  Not entirely to my taste, but I do think kids could really love them.

Tellegen's a form of writing for Children that is all but dead here in the US.  It celebrates friendship and whimsy; it represents simple pleasures and enduring virtues.  And, like The Little Prince, he has created a world in which the strange and wonderful imagination of a child (for a child's imagination is strange) can run free.  So while I didn't enjoy this volume as much as The Squirrel's Party, I do still recommend it.  And I can tell you, I've already pre-ordered Far Away Across the Sea.  September seems like a long time to wait...