Annette Bay Pimentel

I love to read nonfiction picture books by other people. Unless otherwise stated in a post, I do not accept any books for the purpose of review. I check books out of the library or buy them before I review them.

Recent Posts

10Aug

Moving past “No”

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Storytime lists

Today is #pb10for10. Talking about Girl Running with kids has made me think about the remarkable people in real life who find a way to move beyond the “No!”s that they encounter. Here are ten picture book biographies about people who helped us all move past unjust “No!”s. Jackie Robinson faced lots of “no”s before he […]

8Aug

Up in the Leaves

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It’s good to be home! After a summer of adventures, I loved finding Up in the Leaves: The True Story of the Central Park Treehouses at our library. It’s a nonfiction picture book about a city boy, Bob Redman, who doesn’t feel at home in the city crowds, but finds his own kind of home in […]

Tags: biography family history Sterling

27Jun

Summer travels

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

We’re off to Guatemala to work on our Spanish and then to family reunions to nurture those relationships. I’ll be back in August. Happy summer!

20Jun

Grandma Gatewood Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Grandma Gatewood Hikes the Appalachian Trail is a wonderful summer book. It’s about a gutsy grandma who in 1955 decided she’d like to be the first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail. So she did! The back matter explains that the 1955 hike was actually her second attempt–the first time she tried she got lost […]

Tags: Abrams nature women women athletes

13Jun

The Brilliant Deep

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World’s Coral Reefs by Kate Messner is a beautiful book about one man’s commitment to restoring imperiled coral reefs. It follows Ken Nedimyer through his growing passion for the ocean and his commitment to improving its ecology. It’s a hopeful book about the ways humans can work to reverse damage wrought […]

6Jun

Who Says Women Can’t be Computer Programmers?

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The library is suddenly full of Ada Lovelace books: Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science; Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine; and Ada’s Ideas. So I was surprised at how much I liked the new one, Who Says Women Can’t Be Computer Programmers? The Story of Ada Lovelace, by Tanya Lee Stone. Successful nonfiction picture books have a tight focus […]

Tags: 18th century women Christy Ottaviano Books women in science

30May

Memorial Day Picture Books

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Memorial Day marks the end of the school year and the beginning of summer for me. I’ve been trying to think of Memorial Day picture books, though, that actually commemorate Memorial Day as Memorial Day. Rolling Thunder by Kate Messner explains in the Author’s Note: Every year on Memorial Day weekend, veterns and their supporters gather […]

Tags: Candlewick family history Scholastic

23May

Finding a title for my (almost) true book

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

I’m working on finding a title for my (almost) true book. It’s a picture book about a gutsy woman in 1855. She wasn’t famous, and there isn’t a lot of solid documentary evidence about her life left. What I do have is all the documents about the big historical events she lived through and a […]

Tags: title

16May

Bloom

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

If a biography is written in first person, I guess it’s not technically a biography. But Bloom, a picture book about the life of Elsa Schiaparelli, manages to tell the story beautifully with that first person frame. On the opening pages we learn that Schiaparelli was not the baby boy her parents had been hoping for: […]

Tags: fashion Harper Collins

9May

All That Trash

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I love Meghan McCarthy’s new book, All That Trash. It’s about the 1987 New York garbage barge scandal. That year, a barge full of garbage floated around the Atlantic Ocean, looking for a place to dump it. Eventually, it ended up back where it started, but in the process it illuminated for the entire nation both […]

Tags: environmentalism Paula Wiseman Books

2May

Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Joan Procter, Dragon Doctor tells the story of a self-taught herpetologist who transformed the ways reptiles are displayed in zoos and helped introduce the Komodo Dragon to the Western world. The book starts and ends with proper British tea parties, but since these are parties that Procter participates in, they are also reptile tea parties. […]

Tags: Alfred A. Knopf animals female scientists women

25Apr

Anybody’s Game

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

When you read Anybody’s Game, I think you should start with its back matter. There, waiting patiently at the end of the book, is a wonderful essay that contextualizes the story. In 1950, Kathryn Johnston loved playing baseball, but no girls played on Little League teams. She sneaked her way onto a team. But the next […]

Tags: sports Whitman women

18Apr

Boston Marathon!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

For years now I’ve been immersed in all things Boston Marathon while writing and promoting Girl Running, my biography of Bobbi Gibb, the first woman to run the famous race. But I’d never actually seen, in person, the Boston Marathon! This week I had the incredible privilege to travel to Boston for the marathon, and the […]

Tags: sports

11Apr

Alabama Spitfire

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Alabama Spitfire tells the story of Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Roughly the first third of the story tells about her childhood. It does a good job of contextualizing the segregated town she lived in and devotes a lot of time to her friendship with–and spirited defense of!–Truman Capote. The next third […]

Tags: Balzer & Bray writers

4Apr

Miguel’s Brave Knight

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Miguel’s Brave Knight is picture book biography in verse by the National Young People’s Poet Laureate, Margarita Engle. It tells the story of Miguel Cervantes, the sixteenth century writer, famous for Don Quixote. Any picture book biography, but especially one in verse, has to be particular about what story it tells. A picture book doesn’t give […]

Tags: 16th Century Peachtree poetry writers

28Mar

Timelines in Nonfiction Picture Books: Mentor Texts

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Craft

I love to ask librarians what they wish they had in their libraries. One librarian told me that her teachers are always looking for timelines. I realized that my children have all been assigned to make timelines for various projects in elementary school. I’m sure teachers are looking for mentor texts to examine how timelines […]

Tags: Calkins Creek Henry Holt Houghton Mifflin mentor texts timeline

21Mar

One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Words slide into the English language without our really thinking about where they come from. One Fun Day with Lewis Carroll points out, while telling the story of the author’s life, that sometimes those words are invented by individuals. The book starts in Carroll’s childhood and shows him playing with and amusing his younger siblings. When he […]

Tags: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt writers

14Mar

Nonfiction Picture Books about Three Women

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Nonfiction picture books about three women for Women’s History Month! Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen surprised me. Why would an elementary student be interested in Jane Austen? But Deborah Hopkinson convinced me with her sweet biography that focuses on how very ordinary Jane was, and yet able to develop her talent in an extraordinary way by […]

Tags: 19th century women Balzer & Bray Calkins Creek musicians women writers

7Mar

Who Wants to Be a Princess?

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I had the great pleasure of writing the dinosaur part of Amicus Publishing’s Do You Really Want to Meet… series. One of the tricky things about writing within an existing series is making your voice fit with other books in the series. At first I really struggled with the narrative voice for the dinosaur books–I was supposed […]

Tags: Henry Holt medieval

1Mar

How to Plan a Book Party

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

My hometown book launch for Girl Running was last weekend, and I thought I’d share some thoughts aout how to plan a book party. First, invite people! I set aside one afternoon the week before the party to hand-deliver invitations to friends and neighbors with kids. I reminded my critique group knew about the party via […]

Tags: book promotion

28Feb

Three American Stories

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Still working through my pile of 2017 books. Today I have three American stories. They’re from differen time periods, about different characters, and written in widely differing styles. Independence Cake by Deborah Hopkinson is another of her books inspired by fact but fueled by fiction. I love how she lays out the fictional aspect of […]

Tags: biography Capstone Press North South Books Schwartz & Wade

21Feb

STEM picture books

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Today I’m reading four STEM picture books published in 2017. They vary widely, but I enjoyed all of them. The Hidden Life of a Toad is a straightforward account of the life cycle of a toad, from egg to tadpole to toadlet to adult toad capable of reproduction. Every spread is headed by a date stamp: […]

Tags: argument Atheneum Charlesbridge Kids Can Press scaffolding STEM

14Feb

2017 Nonfiction Picture Books I’m Just Now Reading

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’m still scrambling to catch up with 2017 books (though maybe that will give my library time to get a few 2018 titles in…). Here are three 2017 nonfiction picture books I’m just now reading. All three titles have beautiful art depicting nighttime scenes: Nile Crossing is a surprising first-day-of-school book. The main character, Khepri, is […]

Tags: ancient civilizations artists back matter Eerdmans Holiday House Knopf slavery structure

7Feb

Happy Book Birthday!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Yesterday was Girl Running‘s book birthday! I couldn’t be a prouder mama. Girl Running by Annette Bay Pimentel, illustrated by Micha Archer (Nancy Paulsen Books: 2018).

31Jan

Robins: How They Grow Up

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Did you know that baby robins’ feathers are covered by a sheath when they first emerge and that the birds have to remove the sheath? Or that robin parents remove the baby’s feces from the nest with their mouths? Robins: How They Grow Up is full of fascinating natural history details like these. The book is […]

Tags: animals Clarion

24Jan

One Proud Penny

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

First person nonfiction picture books are hard to find. There was I, Fly. And now there’s One Proud Penny. This charming book, with the narration in the voice of a 1973 penny, imaginatively tells all about the life of a coin. We learn that coins are made in Philadelphia. We see how they are saved and spent […]

Tags: first person narration funny picture books Neal Porter Books

Cover of Girl Running shows Bobbi Gibb running, her blonde hair billowing behind her.

17Jan

Book trailers for Girl Running

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Book trailer

Less than three weeks until my next book hits the bookshelves! I’ve made a series of book trailers for Girl Running and I wanted to share them with you. Since the book is about a young girl’s love of running in the 1960s, I wanted to feature the voices of young girls today talking about […]

Tags: book trailer

10Jan

Books about Birds of Prey

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In my library stack this week were two picture books about birds of prey. Both books were written by the women who helped rescue them, and use the story of their experiences in helping create a life in captivity for their charges to show something about the basic biology of the animals. Hawk Mother tells […]

Tags: conservation female scientists Persnickety Web of Life wildlife

3Jan

Chef Roy Choi

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review Uncategorized

Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is another title about contemporary food producers by the Seattle publishing house Readers to Eaters. They’ve published nonfiction picture books about urban gardener Will Allen and celebrity chef Alice. This title is a biography of a Korean-American, Roy Choi, who cooked in haute cuisine restaurants until he […]

Tags: chefs Readers to Eaters

13Dec

Creature books

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I love Jess Keating’s series “The World of Weird Animals.” I’m not the only one. Recently I checked out Pink is for Blobfish to use in a presentation; many of the pages were stuck together from all the sticky fingers that had loved that book to death. The books are brilliantly designed with compelling photos, deftly-written facts, […]

Tags: Alfred A. Knopf animals Holiday House

Theme by Imon Themes

↑