These two new picture books deal with reading in radically different ways. In The Girl Who Hated Books, Meena lives in a house crammed with books of all kinds. Her parents are obsessive readers, and their books are everywhere; Meena even has to move books out of the sink to brush her teeth! The tallest stack in the house contains all the unopened books that Meena’s parents have bought for her. One day Meena’s cat Max gets stuck on top of this stack and as she tries to save him, it collapses under her. The books fly open as they fall, releasing animal and human characters like Humpty Dumpty, Mother Goose, and a whole assortment of rabbits. Soon the room is filled with noise and confusion. Meena asks the characters which books they belong in, but some of them don’t know – and because she has never read any of the stories, Meena doesn’t know either. The only solution is to read each book aloud. As Meena reads, the lost characters recognize their own stories and slip back inside them.

This is a playful and satisfying story that explores the pleasures of reading with humour and wit. Pawagi’s text never takes itself too seriously, and even erupts into rhyme when the stock characters of picture books come rolling out: “There were princes and princesses, fairies and frogs. Then, a wolf and three pigs and a troll on a log.” Pawagi even plays with familiar stereotypes, as when the sobbing wolf admits that he can’t remember if he belongs in Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Little Pigs. Leanne Franson’s rollicking illustrations capture the chaos of the hodge-podge of characters as well as the magic of their quiet, intense listening as Meena reads their books.

Someone Is Reading This Book is more daring and ambitious, but ultimately less successful. It has two narratives: the short fairy tale about a prince who wants to fly (printed on the end-papers) and the story of how the book’s narrator tries to tell this tale to the reader, only to be constantly interrupted. She begins the tale of the prince, and for a couple of pages the narrative and illustrations proceed normally. Then the narrator breaks off to address the reader: “Did you hear something? This place makes me nervous too. Come on. We’ll hurry through to the lake.” After this, we get only snippets of the prince’s story because a flock of seagulls is protesting the way the story ends – they must share the sky with the prince when he is granted a magic flying bicycle. The narrative is saved only when a friendly giant convinces the sea-gulls to let the story end as it should.

Priestley’s beautiful illustrations glow, and the cut-outs in some of the pages – windows that open, a giant’s hand emerging from the sea – add extra interest and highlight the experience of book as object. Someone Is Reading This Book forces the reader to confront the process of narrative and the ways in which a story depends on each character playing his or her part. This self-consciousness is intriguing, and could be more effective if the interruptions didn’t overwhelm the prince’s story. As it is, many children in the target audience will likely find the digressions frustrating and beg to be read the real story.