Jumping into Fall with a Little Leap Forward!

I just received a box of Barefoot Books in the mail...this sentence makes me happy in so many ways. Beyond the obvious, that I love books, I'm also really excited about what Barefoot Books can mean to our children and our communities. Living Barefoot is about so much more than buying or selling books. Living Barefoot can also mean encouraging a budding poet or artist, not just in our children, but within ourselves. Our new chapter book in the young fiction category is a read that will inspire musicians, artists and cultural revolutionaries, alike. Little Leap Forward: A Boy in Beijing is about a young boy growing up during the cultural revolution when it must have felt that the world had turned upside down. The New York Times Sunday Book Review did the book justice by recognizing "how Little Leap Forward bears witness with the eye of a poet, the ear of a musician and the transformative imagi­nation of a storyteller."

This book is more memoir than fiction, and author and musician, Guo Yue, tells a beautiful story of a young musician feeling his way through a tumultuous cultural song.

Barefoot Books continues to stun me with it's cultural awareness, environmental consciousness, and an inexorable eye towards what children love, and always within the framework of amazing art and well-told story. As always, you can find these books and much more on our website.

Here's a video of Guo Yue reading an excerpt of the book and talking a little more about his childhood. Enjoy!