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

18Nov

Doyli to the Rescue

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Babies! Monkeys! Girls! This true life story of a Peruvian tween who works with her family to save monkeys will win over any kid or adult who picks it up. It’s heart-tugging, inspiring, amazing! The story opens with a sympathetic portrait of a native Indian hunter who is looking for meat to feed his family. […]

Tags: animals biography Crickhollow Books nature South America

11Nov

The Blue Whale

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Blue whales are fascinating creatures. Threats have recently thrown them into the news and Robert Burleigh just published a riveting book about the rescue of a blue whale. This title by Jenni Desmond would pair beautifully with Burleigh’s suspenseful page-turner. This book couldn’t be more different in tone. Its voice is very quiet, almost dry and […]

Tags: Enchanted Lion Books narrative voice nature

4Nov

Firebird: Ballerina Misty Copeland Shows a Young Girl How to Dance Like the Firebird

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In this lyrical autobiography, ballerina Misty Copeland speaks to a young, uncertain dancer, encouraging her to prepare, to practice, and mostly to believe in her ability to dance. The text has none of the dates or places of the birth-to-death biography but is instead a spiritual account of the internal process needed to succeed in […]

Tags: African American autobiography back matter ballet dance G P Putnam

28Oct

Funny Bones

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

For Thanksgiving there are picture books about Sarah Josepha Hale, and for Veteran’s Day, there’s a picture book about Arlington Cemetery. But how do you satisfy your yen for nonfiction on Halloween? Duncan Tonatiuh swoops to the rescue with his new biography. He takes us to nineteenth century Mexico and introduces us to Lupe Posada, […]

Tags: Abrams Books artists biography halloween holidays Mexico

20Oct

Cybils Nonfiction Nominations

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Links

The Children and Young Adults Bloggers’ Literary Awards’ nomination lists are now available. The Early and Middle Grade Nonfiction List has some great titles–many that I’ve already reviewed, and many that just vaulted onto my to-read list. Check it out here.

19Oct

Trapped!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“The huge humpback whale dips and dives. Her sleek black sides shimmering, she spyhops, lobtails, flashes her flukes.” Robert Burleigh’s vivid language drew me into his book. Quickly, his beautiful descriptions of everyday life in the sea shift into a suspense filled drama. The humpback whale becomes entangled with fishing nets. Can she survive? We […]

Tags: animals Charlesbridge nature Page turn word choice

12Oct

John Muir Wrestles a Waterfall

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Biographers face an alluring temptation: to tell an entire life. In this book, Julie Danneberg resists the allure and instead tells the story of one intense night in her John Muir’s life. And in the process, we learn all about who the man was. John Muir settled in Yosemite early, early. He lived in a […]

Tags: biography Charlesbridge layered text narrative voice nature

5Oct

Out of the Woods

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Here in Idaho, our air has been choked with smoke from the out-of-control wildfires around us. So this strange and beautiful book is timely. It is a family story, retold. When the author’s grandfather was a child, he was caught in a forest fire. He and all the other people from the lodging house in […]

Tags: family history Farrar Straus and Giroux Margaret Ferguson Books natural disaster nature sentence structure

28Sep

The Potato King

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I loved this elegantly simple story of how King Frederick the Great of Prussia convinced his subjects to start planting and eating potatoes. The language is simple and direct. “There was once a king called Fritz. One day he heard about a new wonder plant from South America: the potato.” I also loved that the […]

Tags: cooking and food crafts European history food historical fiction kings Owlkids Books

21Sep

Fannie Lou Hamer Voice of Freedom

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This book may be shelved with picture books, but it is written to children old enough to grapple with the ugly pain of America’s historic inequities and injustices. The language is rich and nuanced, written in first person, as if Fannie Lou Hamer were telling the story of her life. Quotes (which are very helpfully […]

Tags: biography Candlewick civil rights quotations

14Sep

Marvelous Cornelius

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Sometimes everyday people are the true heroes of history. Here’s a book that celebrates one of those heroes. Cornelius Washington was a New Orleans trash collector. After Hurricane Katrina, despite the devastation and discouragement, he stayed in his job. Trash collectors like Cornelius were vital to making it possible for others, people from New Orleans […]

Tags: African American alliteration back matter Chronicle Books natural disaster New Orleans onomatopoeia

7Sep

In the New World

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This fascinating book, about emigration from Germany, immigration to the US, and genealogical research, was originally published in Germany. Charlesbridge Publishing has brought the English translation out this year. The design of the book feels different than other American books–it’s a narrative story but it’s laid out on the page more like a Dorling Kindersley […]

Tags: Charlesbridge family history homesteading immigration translations

31Aug

Elvis

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The language in this picture book biography of Elvis Presley echoes the sound of his music–it’s colloquial, fresh, and not above leaving out a few nouns and verbs here and there. But the meaning still makes it through just fine: “Shy, shaky Elvis sang his ballad about a dog. Didn’t even have a guitar, just […]

Tags: biography Christy Ottaviano Books musicians rock and roll

24Aug

Lillian’s Right to Vote

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It has been 50 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. This book looks at the history of US voting rights through the lens of personal and family history. We follow a one-hundred year old woman, Lillian, as she walks up the hill to her polling place and thinks back to how her […]

Tags: civil rights Schwartz & voting rights

17Aug

Emmanuel’s Dream

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

I love inventive picture book rhymes, snappy refrains, and fantastical figurative language as much as anyone, but sometimes a story works best just simply told. In this book, Thompson tells us the story of a disabled Ghanaian man beautifully but without any bells and whistles. It’s unadorned storytelling: “In Ghana, West Africa, a baby boy […]

Tags: Africa biography disability

10Aug

Growing Up Pedro

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

I’m the fifth child in my family and was always delighted to have teachers mistakenly call me by a sibling’s name–I knew it could only mean good things for me. So the central relationship in this book, two brothers who sometimes envy each other but always admire and help each other, resonated with me. This […]

Tags: baseball biography brothers Candlewick sports

3Aug

Draw What You See

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Illustrating a picture book about an artist can be tricky. What do you draw to depict what he or she drew? This unusual book neatly sidesteps the problem. The text recounts the events of Benny Andrews’ life in a straightforward way, but each spread is illustrated by a reproduction of one of his paintings. This […]

Tags: artists Clarion

27Jul

Water is Water

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This poem, a lyrical exploration of different phases of water, is a pleasure to read aloud. Paul uses vivid words and unexpected rhymes to help us think about all the different ways water can appear in our environment–far beyond that simple elementary school worksheet with lake, cloud, and rain. One of the most fun things […]

Tags: nature Neal Porter Books Page turn

20Jul

Daylight Starlight Wildlife

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Diurnal. Crepuscular. Nocturnal. This book pairs animals who are active at different times of day, implicitly inviting you to see similarities and differences between them (and explaining the technical chronotype terms in the back matter). The paintings are lovely–as one expects with Wendell Minor!–but the language was what most surprised and delighted me. It’s full […]

Tags: alliteration compare and contrast Nancy Paulsen Books nature

13Jul

Touch the Brightest Star

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Most nonfiction picture books are aimed at kids who are also reading chapter books and novels. Touch the Brightest Star, though, is a nonfiction picture book written for a picture book audience. This book gently shows what happens as night comes on and invites two to four year olds to participate on each spread–to wave, to […]

Tags: Greenwillow nature preschooler

6Jul

Trombone Shorty

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This brassy, bold autobiography is a book about New Orleans, about music, and about Troy Andrews, aka Trombone Shorty. The beginning spreads show how music was part of Andrews’ everyday life at home and on the streets of New Orleans. The next spreads show the author trying to make music–at first without even an instrument […]

Tags: Abrams Books autobiography musicians

29Jun

Big Tractor

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

We moved from a big city to a tiny country town three years ago (nearest WalMart 30 minutes away–Target is an unthinkable two hours away!). One of my favorite seasonal activities is watching with wonder the agricultural vehicles working in the fields and lumbering down our village’s roads. So Nathan Clement’s book, Big Tractor is written especially […]

Tags: Boyds Mills digital illustration machines word choice

22Jun

Mesmerized

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This elegantly-constructed story tells about Ben Franklin’s visit to France during the Revolutionary War and his encounter with the healer Franz Anton Mesmer. Along the way, we see the scientific method in action and see how every step applies to a real life experience, learn about blind studies and the placebo effect, and learn where […]

Tags: American Revolution Candle France science scientists

15Jun

With a Friend by Your Side

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

When I was a little girl, I spent hours mesmerized by the gorgeous photos of everyday life around the world in The Family of Man. This National Geographic photographic essay has the same feel. Beautiful full bleed images of people around the world playing together are paired with Kerley’s spare text, one sentence per spread. This is […]

Tags: National Geographic

8Jun

One Plastic Bag

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

This is the inspiring true story of how a Gambian woman finds a way to recycle plastic shopping bags. In the process, she earns money, creates bonds with the women working with her, improves the health of her community, and makes her village more beautiful. I especially loved that the refrain fit so seamlessly with […]

Tags: Africa back matter biography environment refrain

1Jun

In Mary’s Garden

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

This book is a lyrical tribut to the artist behind the quirky garden art at a Wisconsin beach home. The back matter tackles the community controversy the art created, but the main text of the book is a gentle celebration of the quiet, persistent vision of someone who didn’t see the world like everyone else […]

Tags: artists back matter biography Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

26May

A Fine Dessert

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A Fine Dessert has such a simple but absolutely perfect structure! It begins with four spreads showing a girl in 1710 working with an adult to acquire the ingredients, make, and eat a blackberry fool. Those four spreads are repeated four times, each set in a different century. The repetition invites–demands!–comparing and contrasting the experiences […]

Tags: cooking and food food history Schwartz & Wade social history structure

19May

Tía Isa Wants a Car

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is a family history book, based on Meg Medina’s experience with her own aunt. It’s a snapshot of an immigrant experience–extended family living together, working menial jobs, trying to navigate a new culture, sometimes using a child as the guide to that new culture. It’s also a triumphant, feel-good story about dreams, family […]

Tags: Candlewick family history immigration refrain

11May

The Case for Loving

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A picture book about a Supreme Court case? Selina Alko does a great job making this 1966 case, which made interracial marriage legal, accessible to young readers. The book starts with the familiar playground chant, “First comes love, then comes marriage” and then shifts to the viewpoint of the children of Mildred Jeter and Richard […]

Tags: Arthur A Levine civil rights

5May

The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This inspiring book works at lots of different levels for lots of different readers. First, it’s a simple cumulative story for preschoolers, like “This is the house that Jack Built”: “This is the tree, a mangrove tree. These are the trees, mangrove trees, that were planted by the sea.” And so on, we hear the […]

Tags: back matter cumulative story layered text Lee & Low nature scientist sidebars

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