Childhood is full of firsts. For instance, this picture book could just be a kiddo’s first introduction to the term “hootenanny.” My Big Book of Texas – from Austin-based children’s book author and illustrator C.S. Jennings, himself a seventh-generation Texan – offers a fun primer to the state’s richly diverse landscape and people, filtering the ABCs, animals, colors, and shapes through a distinctly Texan lens. To wit: “N is for newt in a neckerchief noshes nachos at NASA.” That’s a sentence that makes sense only in the wild and wonderful hootenanny that is Texas.
