Customer Reviews

Billy's Mountain

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My son regularly checks this book out from the school library. He says it's his favorite book. I decided to read it as well and found it one of the better children's books I have seen lately. While my son enjoys the idea of actually building a snow-capped mountain that would eventually have tall trees, streams with trout and other wild animals, I found the book to be very inspiring for an adult as well. It has very powerful messages about reaching for the impossible and the write up in the back of the book about the founding father's vision was very educational. It has incredible depth for a children's book and combines things kids enjoy such as construction, mountains, animals, fishing with a powerful message about having the vision to achieve things that most people think are impossible. The illustrations are stunning and make you want to head to the mountains!

Inspired by the quest for the impossible dream as written in the literary classic Don Quixote, Billy's Mountain is a picturebook about a young boy whose passion is the idea of creating a vast, snow-capped mountain amid Kansas' seemingly endless flat plains. At first he tries to build a mountain with dirt and rocks; he persists long after his friends tell him to give up, and a reporter puts his story in the paper. Amazingly, a wealthy and determined old African-American man named Jim learns of Billy's dream and decides to help make it come true. It takes bulldozers, railroad cars, and an immense amount of labor to create the mountain - but once risen the mountain blends with the landscape as the seasons pass and even attracts wildlife to its slopes. Utterly captivating, full-color illustrations done in a somewhat impressionistic style bring this beautiful and heartfelt picturebook to life. The final page of "Billy's Mountain" offers a simple lesson plan for teachers to use, offering questions to ask students such as, "Building a mountain is an almost impossible task. What are some things from the past that people thought were impossible but turned out not to be impossible?"