Two children sit atop a tree making flying creatures with paper, glue, and scissors.
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Julie Benbassat, Illustration for There’s That Sun Again, by Mk Smith Despres (Neal Porter Books). © 2024 Julie Benbassat.

Special Storytime: Mk Smith Despres and Julie Benbassat

Artists & Authors
For Families
-
Reading Library

Free with Museum admission

Being a child can feel like being buffeted along by a huge force out of your control. At any moment, something incredible could happen—but so could something scary, or sad, or hard—and everything is always changing. Learning to cope means learning the cycles, the things you can depend on. There’s That Sun Again illuminates that cycle, showing that every day has its ups and downs and back agains—and empowers readers to meet this emotional turbulence with strength, self-knowledge, and wonder. 

Mk Smith Despres’s effortlessly poetic text soars and dips, capturing bliss, sorrow, calm and uncertainty with a crystal-clear lens. Julie Benbassat’s artwork is nothing short of unforgettable. There’s That Sun Again is cut from the best cloth of fantasy: the kind whose magic reflects the world exactly as it feels.

Book signing to follow program. Can’t make the event? You may reserve signed books online.

Who You'll Meet
Artist Julie Benbassat

Julie Benbassat

Julie Benbassat is an award winning illustrator and painter based in Philadelphia. After graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2019, she has gone on to amass a range of clients in editorial, publishing, games, and animation. Her work delights in the eccentricities and wonders of the natural world, indulges in the fantastical, mixes narrative and portraiture, and highlights the bridge between the cute and the horrific. In spare moments, she relishes reading sassy nonfiction, plein air painting on cloudy days, and watching bad (but good) horror movies.

Artist website
Author Mk Smith Despres

Mk Smith Despres

Mk Smith Despres is the author of There’s That Sun Again, illustrated by Julie Benbassat, Night Song, a 2024 New England Book Award Finalist, illustrated by Hyewon Yum, and the First Friends board book series, illustrated by Aya Watanabe and Libby Burns. They write, teach, and read lots of books with their family in western Massachusetts.

Author website
Visit the shop

In the Bookshop

Cover for There's That Sun Again by Mk Smith Despres, illustrated by Julie Benbassat

There's That Sun Again

Cover of Night Song by Mk Smith Despres, illustrated by HyeWon Yum

Night Song