Annette Bay Pimentel

Review

28Apr

As an Oak Tree Grows

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The oak tree is the main character in this book. We see it sprouting as an acorn and continuing to grow while the landscape around it transforms dramatically. At the end of the book, a terrific thunderstorm topples the tree, but a tiny sprout pops up next to the stump. The illustrations are beautiful and […]

Tags: Nancy Paulsen Books Native American nature timeline

20Apr

Gordon Parks

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This book tells the story of the photographer behind the iconic photo American Gothic and how he came to shoot it. It was an image I recognized, but I hadn’t known anything about Gordon Parks before I read this book. The story is written in present tense and moves briskly and passionately. The story starts with […]

Tags: Albert Whitman biography civil rights

7Apr

Tricky Vic

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

I’m a sucker for heist movies, and Greg Pizzoli wisely realizes, with this book, that kids may find themselves unaccountably drawn to clever bad guys, too. Without glorifying him, Pizzoli tells the story of Robert Miller, aka Count Victor Lustig, the man who tricked the wealthy into giving him thousands, sold the Eiffel Tower, […]

Tags: biography crime Viking

2Apr

Gingerbread for Liberty

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is an inspiring story about a Revolutionary War patriot who fought by firing up his ovens and feeding the troops. The back matter tells a bit more about how his generosity and commitment to the American cause probably helped woo Hessian mercenaries over to the side of the Americans. Vincent X. Hirsch’s illustrations wonderfully […]

Tags: American Revolution biography Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

31Mar

100 Snowmen

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This clever rhyming text explores an interesting addition problem. It was delightful to read aloud, the pictures are fun to look at, and the last page is deeply satisfying as you figure out what all those preparatory addition problems were about! 100 Snowmen by Jen Arena, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin. Scholastic: […]

Tags: mathematics Scholastic

24Mar

Rags Hero Dog of WWI A True Story

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is a surprisingly sad story about a dog whose master is killed in World War I. The story is told mostly from Rags’ point of view in a straightforward, unsentimental way. The dialogue is invented, but the story gives a dog’s-eye-view of the ways one dog helped the war […]

Tags: animals Sleeping Bear Press World War I

19Mar

Strongheart

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is a straight-up biography of the German Shepherd who became the first canine movie star, back in the days of silent moview. Along the way it suggests a bit about the biography of the couple who adopted him and trained him to act in the movies, but the focus […]

Tags: 1920s animals biography Henry Holt movies

12Mar

On the Wing

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I loved this collection of poems, each about a different species of bird. The language was vivid and evocative, the rhythms and rhymes surprising and satisfying. Plus, all the poems were short. This would be a great read-aloud, both at home and school, and a great mentor text before going […]

Tags: animals Candlewick nature poetry

10Mar

Mr. Cornell’s Dream Boxes

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This lovely book gives us a child’s-eye glimpse of the process that folk artist Joseph Cornell followed in creating his assembled boxes. Winter builds the story around a special exhibition especially for children that Cornell set up at the end of his life. In addition to examining the magical boxes, […]

Tags: artists Beach Lane biography

5Mar

Tiny Creatures

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Tiny Creatures introduces us to the world of the microbe. What are microbes? Where are they found? What do they do? Nicola Davies’ text answers these questions in an engaging, accessible way that left me filled with wonder. She’s particularly good at finding wonderful similes to help us understand this world-under-a-microscope. […]

Tags: biology Candlewick metaphor structure

3Mar

The Iridescence of Birds

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This astonishing book is in the same tradition as Viva Frida: a biography less concerned with biographical fact than with conveying the heart of the painter’s art. The book is three sentences long. The first sentence–in the subjunctive!–starts, “If you were a boy named Henri Matisse who lived in a dreary town […]

Tags: artists biography Neal Porter Books tense

24Feb

Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This inspiring book tells the story of how an eighteenth century slave used the legal system to gain freedom for herself and many others. The narrative uses the word “owned” in many different contexts to explore the ideas of freedom and slavery: we read about people owning property, owning slaves, […]

Tags: back matter biography Carolrhoda civil rights Revolutionary War

19Feb

President Taft is Stuck in the Bath

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Too bad I didn’t read this book until after President’s Day. For one thing, in it, the President of the United States Never. Wears. Clothes. Not once. The story is a tall tale, slightly reminiscent of King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub, but I was impressed by all the good nonfiction research […]

Tags: back matter Candlewick historical fiction

10Feb

What a Wheel

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Every carnival has one now, but the first Ferris Wheel was an engineering marvel. Barbara Lowell tells the story of its invention in a straightforward way: George Ferris was an engineer who had big ideas. he turned his big ideas into bridges made of steel. Bridges that crossed high over rivers. Bridges that were strong […]

Tags: biography engineer invented dialogue inventor Penguin

6Feb

Skydiver

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I was fascinated by the structure of this story. The first half of the book seems to be a natural history of peregrine falcons. We see a pair return to their nest, watch the male display for the female, and see them hunt. We see the mother lay a clutch of eggs. Then, suddenly, there […]

Tags: animals environment nature Pajama Press scientists

4Feb

Electrical Wizard

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The story of Nikola Tesla’s life told here is pretty engrossing and the illustrations are good, but the back matter is fantastic! There’s an essay showing ways Tesla was ahead of his time, a bit about the rivalry between Edison and Tesla, and “Scientific Notes” giving scientific explanations for concepts mentioned in the book. All […]

Tags: back matter biography Candlewick inventor

2Feb

Neighborhood Sharks

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“Every September the great white sharks return to San Francisco. Their hunting grounds, the Farallon Islands, are just thirty miles from the city. While their 800,000 human neighbors dine on steak, salad, and sandwiches, the white sharks hunt for their favorite meal.” This opening catapults us into the hunt. And what are those great white […]

Tags: animals nature Roaring Brook Press scientists

30Jan

On the Wing

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This collection of short, accessible poems soars! Each spread features an illustration of a different species of bird and a poem about them. The longest poem is 19 lines, the shortest 3. There is rhythm and there is rhyme, but both are always subjugated to the brilliant images Elliott is painting with words. The Cardinal […]

Tags: animals Candlewick poetry

28Jan

Buried Sunlight

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A global warming primer for elementary school students, this book has a surprising narrator, who introduces herself right on the first page: I am your sun, your golden star. Even from 93 million miles away, I warm your land, your seas, your air, and chase the darkness from your days. My energy gives light and […]

Tags: persuasive writing Scholastic science

26Jan

Ballerina Dreams

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

You don’t find an easy reader memoir every day. This one’s a rare gem. It tells the story of a Sierra Leone war orphan who becomes fascinated with ballerina and eventually becomes a professional ballerina. It’s co-written by Michaela and Elaine DePrince, the ballerina and her mother. I was especially impressed by the way […]

Tags: autobiography dance easy reader Random House segregation theme

23Jan

Viva Frida

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Word counts in picture books are getting pushed down, down, down. Used to be, not so many years ago, picture books could be 1000 words long. Now some agents won’t even look unless they’re under 400 words. What does this do to nonfiction picture books? How do you recreate a world, provide historical context, and tell an […]

Tags: artists bilingual biography Roaring Brook Press word count

21Jan

Tillie the Terrible Swede

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This wonderful book could be a primer on ways to make a picture book glow. On the first page I already start to fall in love with the breezy, funny narrative voice: In the old days, most girls came to America with a dream, but all Tillie Anderson had was a needle. so she got […]

Tags: biography Knopf narrative voice Page turn sports word choice

19Jan

Friends for Freedom

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

Who knew that two icons of the fights for civil rights, Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, were dear friends? This inspiring book tells the story of how they defied social conventions to become friends, joined forces to fight for what the believed in, and weathered the storms when their opinions differed about the way […]

Tags: back matter biography Charlesbridge civil rights

16Jan

Ivan The Remarkable True Story

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I was hesitant to read this picture book as I expected it to be a cynical rewriting of the Newbery Medal novel, The One and Only Ivan. So I was surprised that the only reference to the novel appeared on the cover, and that was almost incidental (“by Newbery medalist Katherine Applegate). Even the illustrator […]

Tags: animals biography Clarion narrative voice

14Jan

If You Spent a Day with Thoreau at Walden Pond

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Many nonfiction picture books are written in the third person–he did this or she said that. A few are written in the first person–I did this. But it is the rare case to find one written in the second person. By using second person narration, Robert Burleigh makes the reader a character in the book. […]

Tags: back matter biography Henry Holt narrative voice philosopher quotations second person

12Jan

Ben Franklin’s Big Splash

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This book is based on a passage in a letter (helpfully included in the book’s back matter) where Franklin describes his youthful invention of a swimming aid: swim fins and flippers! Using that single paragraph as her starting point, Barb Rosenstock imagines the process young Ben Franklin–or anyone–would follow to invent something new. The […]

Tags: alliteration American Revolution back matter biography Calkins Creek inventor scientist word choice

9Jan

Red Bird Sings

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It’s only 32 pages long, but this biography of a Native American artist and activist is dense and wordy, coming in at over 3500 words. It’s obviously not targeted at the youngest readers. I hope older readers won’t dismiss it out of hand, though, because it uses its primary sources in really innovative ways. […]

Tags: biography Carolrhoda history Native American primary sources

7Jan

Goldie Takes a Stand

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This book is another biography of a recent public figure, this time Golda Meir. Who knew that she lived in Wisconsin as a child? I hadn’t! The book is based on a 1909 Milwaukee Journal newspaper article telling about a benefit that Golda and her friends organized. The author is very clear in the back […]

Tags: biography first person narration invented dialogue Israel politician refrain

5Jan

Star Stuff

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’m sometimes surprised by the topics that pop up in nonfiction picture books. Carl Sagan seems to me more like newspaper material than history book fodder, but to an audience of four to eight year olds, he’s just as much The Past as are George Washington and Julius Caesar. After all, he died years […]

Tags: back matter biography Page turn Roaring Brook Press scientist

22Dec

Anna & Solomon

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I firmly believe that every family has a story that its children need to know, and I love nonfiction picture books that grow from those stories. This delightful book came about when the New Yorker artist, Harry Bliss, finally convinced his mother-in-law to put her family story on paper. It is a beautiful […]

Tags: biography family history Farrar Straus Giroux history immigration Page turn religion Russia scaffolding

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