Annette Bay Pimentel

Review

27Sep

Shark Lady

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It’s sometimes tough for kids–and adults!–to look at successful adults and figure out what their success has to do with the day-to-day life they had as children. In Shark Lady Jess Keating does a wonderful job of showing how childhood interests and passions led to Eugenie Clark’s important discoveries as a marine biologist. Clark is […]

Tags: scientists Sourcebooks women

20Sep

The Skydiving Beavers

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The Skydiving Beavers is a great title–especially when you know it’s also a nonfiction story. (The only thing that I, as an Idahoan, think might have made it better would have been to keep it in its original form–The Skydiving Beavers of Idaho.) This is the story of airlifting beavers, but it’s also the story of […]

Tags: back matter refrain scientific process Sleeping Bear

13Sep

Noah Webster’s Fighting Words

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

There has been a lot of Noah Webster love in kid lit lately. In 2015 there were two Noah Webster picture book biographies, Noah Webster and His Words and W is for Webster. And now comes a third, Noah Webster’s Fighting Words. I wouldn’t have thought there was room for yet another Webster biography, but I was thoroughly […]

Tags: American Revolution Millbrook

6Sep

Becoming Bach

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Nonfiction can’t be in first person unless it’s an autobiography. But historical fiction can use a first person speaker. In Becoming Bach Tom Leonard uses a first person speaker–Bach himself!–to explore the emotional roots of the world’s most beloved music. The events depicted in the story are all historically accurate, but Leonard uses his imagination to […]

Tags: 17th Century musicians Neal Porter Books

30Aug

Caroline’s Comets: A True Story

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Our family traveled to see the complete solar eclipse. An adventure story for another day! But that has had me thinking about the heavens and the people who explore them. One of those people was unlikely indeed. Caroline Herschel was an aristocratic woman, a spinster, in the eighteenth century. She spent most of her life […]

Tags: 18th century women scientists

23Aug

Waiting for Pumpsie

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I thrill to books about triumphal firsts in human rights–stories about the Emancipation Proclamation, stories about universal suffrage, stories about breaking the color barrier in sports, stories about making inter-racial marriages legal. Those are important stories that need to be told. But as recent events remind us, it takes time for society to change. Sometimes a […]

Tags: African American baseball

16Aug

Cover reveal for Girl Running

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’m thrilled that the cover reveal for my new book, Girl Running, is happening today on the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge. Hop on over to Mrs. Knott’s Book Nook to see it! Girl Running will be on bookshelves on February 6, 2018. The art in Girl Running is collage. There’s a rich history of collage art in picture […]

Tags: collage art

9Aug

The Hawk of the Castle

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Kings…princesses…castles. The Hawk of the Castle appeals to all of those fairy tale elements, but it’s full of nonfiction content. It uses a fictional narrator (“This is me. This is my father.”) to explain how falcons and hawks were used in medieval times for hunting. The text is in verse reminiscent of “This is the House […]

Tags: back matter Candlewick family history layered text rhyme

2Aug

Carter G. Woodson Award

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’m doing somersaults of joy that my book Mountain Chef, has been named the Carter G. Woodson Award winner at the elementary school level by the National Council of Social Studies. The award is intended to highlight books that depict the real lived experience of ethnic and racial minorities in the […]

Tags: award winners

26Jul

John Deere, That’s Who!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Until recently I’ve always lived in big cities or their suburbs. A few years ago, though, our family moved to the country. We don’t live on a farm, but I quickly learned that farm machinery, farm tools, and farm concerns (is the rain going to let up long enough for the wheat harvest?) loom large […]

Tags: Henry Holt inventor refrain

19Jul

Pedal Power

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’m on the wonderful Kirby Larson’s blog talking about nonfiction back matter. Please visit! Our family lived in the Netherlands for several years. We owned a car but seldom used it. It was much, much easier to navigate our ancient town by bike than by car, and with bikes parallel parking was never an issue […]

Tags: activism environmentalism Farrar Straus Giroux

12Jul

Keith Haring The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Keith Haring: The Boy Who Just Kept Drawing is a picture book biography of the contemporary artist by an author with unmatched access to information about his childhood. It’s written by Haring’s younger sister. The book takes full advantage of that family knowledge, focusing on his childhood. The first third of the book is about him […]

Tags: artists Dial Books for Young Readers family history refrain

5Jul

Rhino in the House

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Rhino in the House tells the story of an environmentalist I’d never before heard of. Anna Merz found her retirement to Kenya took an unexpected turn when she began to worry about the safety of the rhinoceroses around her. They were being poached and becoming more and more endangered. So she set up a rhinoceros refuge. […]

Tags: Abrams animals research

28Jun

I Like, I Don’t Like

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I Like, I Don’t Like, an imported nonfiction picture book from Italy, is a brief (85 words), elegantly designed book inspired by the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every spread has, on the left side, a child doing some normal childlike activity. On the right side of the spread, a child in poverty is […]

Tags: compare and contrast Eerdmans

21Jun

Martina & Chrissie

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“History” means something different to an 8 year old than to a 58 year old. What is “memory” for me is definitely “history” to him. Martina & Chrissie: The Greatest Rivalry in the History of Sports fits into that gap nicely. It tells the story of the rivalry between tennis greats Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert […]

Tags: Candlewick narrative voice sports

14Jun

Fancy Party Gowns

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In Fancy Party Gowns I loved learning about one of those fascinating people from the corner of history–someone who changed a little bit of the world but who isn’t widely known. This is a book about a fashion designer, Ann Cole Lewis, who created a career for herself out of designing and producing high end dresses. […]

Tags: African American biography fashion little bee books

7Jun

Strange Fruit

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is one of those books I wish I’d written. It’s the powerful account of a song, “Strange Fruit,” how it came to be written, how it came to be sung, and the power it exerted on its audience. I first heard “Strange Fruit” when my husband, a law professor, was preparing a lecture on […]

Tags: civil rights Millbrook music

31May

Lighter than Air

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Balloons! Fancy hats! Napoleon! All this plus female empowerment. Lighter than Air: Sophie Blanchard, the First Woman Pilot is a biography of an eighteenth century woman balloonist. As Matthew Clark Smith warns in the back matter, “I was forced to use my imagination in describing Sophie’s childhood.” But he grounds it in real events of […]

Tags: aviation biography Candlewick women

A boy sits under a tree conversing with a dragon. The dragon appears to be part of the tree.

24May

John Ronald’s Dragons

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

John Ronald’s Dragons is a biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, focusing on the parts of his life that inspired his fantasy writing. The book invites you to see Gandalf in a headmaster who smoked a pipe, dragon’s smoke in the smoke pouring out of smokestacks in an industrial city, and the frightening Mines of Moria in World […]

Tags: back matter Roaring Brook Press writers

17May

Martin’s Dream Day

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

[My publisher is giving away my book, Mountain Chef along with John Muir Wrestles a Waterfall over at Page Through the Parks on Facebook. There will be five winners–so go comment on the giveaway post to enter!] I had seen Martin’s Dream Day mentioned on a few lists, so I was happy when my library got it, but […]

Tags: civil rights photographs

10May

The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

There are plenty of dinosaur books that explore the natural history of extinct creatures. But The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk explores, in greater detail and with much greater authority than dinosaur books ever achieve, the natural history of a creature tht went extinct in 1844. It explores with heartbreaking specificity why it went extinct […]

Tags: animals Groundwood Books science

3May

This House, Once

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Deborah Freedman’s book This House, Once speaks to that human desire to know how stuff is made. In spirit, it’s a lot like the wonderful book Where Did My Clothes Come From? by Chris Butterworth. But that books revels in the intricate details of cloth- and clothes-making, while This House, Once is atmospheric and poetic. The book begins with […]

Tags: Atheneum science

26Apr

Mickey Mantle, The Commerce Comet

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Last week I looked at a deeply serious book by Jonah Winter. Today I look at another of his books, Mickey Mantle, the Commerce Comet, which has a completely different tone. This is an enthusiastic biography of a famous baseball player. As Winter notes in the front matter, Mantle “had a rough childhood” and is “famous […]

Tags: biography narrative voice Schwartz & Wade sports tense

19Apr

The Secret Project

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I was excited to get my hands on The Secret Project. Who could resist that mysterious cover? And I love nonfiction picture books that interpret tough moments in history for kids. What could be a tougher moment to interpret than the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb? The book is gorgeous and carefully […]

Tags: Beach Lane World War II

12Apr

Trudy’s Big Swim

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Sue Macy writes big, bold picture book biographies of female athletes. Trudy’s Big Swim: How Gertrude Ederle Swam the English Channel and Took the World by Storm is a gorgeous book that begins with Trudy in the Channel and follows her swim, hour by hour, to a new world record. I loved the details of her […]

Tags: back matter Holiday House sports

5Apr

Dorothea Lange

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Recently I talked with a writer friend about a new project, her first attempt at a picture book biography. She started telling me all sorts of fascinating details about her subject’s life, and then stopped and asked, “How do you decide what to keep in?” Carole Boston Weatherford’s new picture book biography, Dorothea Lange: The Photographer […]

Tags: Albert Whitman biography theme

29Mar

Bravo! Poems about Amazing Hispanics

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

One of my favorite questions to ask teachers and librarians is what books they wished they had to put in kids’ hands. A school librarian who works near San Diego told me she desperately wants more books with Hispanic protagonists. She worries that her kids don’t see themselves often enough in the books she has […]

Tags: biography Hispanic poetry

22Mar

The Search for Olinguito

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The Search for Olinguito: Discovering a New Species is aptly named. Sure, it’s about a big-eyed, cuddly mammal. And the book is full of photos that will make you fall in love with the olinguito. But the emphasis in the book is on the scientific work that went into that discovery. The book tells the […]

Tags: animals Millbrook scientists

1Mar

The Great Doodler

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Who doesn’t love Dr. Seuss? His pictures and his rhymes are funny, inventive, and memorable. I usually write about traditional nonfiction picture books, but today I’m joining Michele Knott and Allyson Beecher in their #Road2Reading Challenge. Dr. Seuss: The Great Doodler is an early reader biography that explores the life of the author/illustrator everybody knows. I […]

Tags: Random House writers

22Feb

2016 Round-up Post

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It’s nearly March and my stack of 2016 books seems not to be dwindling. So here’s a round-up of books from last year that I liked but still haven’t gotten around to writing about. Beautiful, watery illustrations tell the story of a female shark researcher who followed her passion despite discrimination. Swimming with Sharks: […]

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