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14Feb

2017 Nonfiction Picture Books I’m Just Now Reading

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

Cover of book shows boy dressed as an ancient Egyptian on a reed boat, as a grown-up paddles.

Nile Crossing is a surprising first-day-of-school book. The main character, Khepri, is nervous about leaving Mom and Dad behind, and worried about the new activities he’ll have to get used to. But he’s a child in ancient Egypt instead of the next town over, and he has to leave home before dawn in order to cross the Nile to get to school. The beautiful art is inspired by ancient Egyptian art. The back matter actually continues the story–we get to see Khepri make his first friend!–and watch him write his first letter. I’ve never before seen a sequel embedded in back matter, and I can only imagine how delighted Egypt-crazy kids will be to discover that the story continues. The back matter also has a fascinating essay about why it’s likely that lower-class boys and some girls attended school in ancient Egypt. In the Author’s Note, the author talks about how she got interested in the topic, and in her analogous note the illustrator talks about the process of illustrating a story from long ago.

Nile Crossing by Katy Beebe, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport. (Eerdmans: 2017).

 

 

Cover of book shows a boy--Vincent Van Gogh--asleep under a starry sky

 

 

Vincent Can’t Sleep is a lyrical picture book biography of Vincent Van Gogh. It’s structured around the refrain, “Vincent can’t sleep…” We follow Vincent throughout his life, seeing his wakefulness and attentiveness as a child, as a young person, and as an adult, lead to careful observation of the world around him. The scenes are biographical, placing Vincent where he actually lived at different stages of his life–“while the sturdy Dutch village of Zundert slumbers, he lies rocking in his wooden cradle” and he is “away at boarding schools in bigger towns. Zevenbergen. Tilburg”–but they also evoke his most famous paintings. We see him looking at the stars (Starry Night) and painting in the country (The Potato Eaters). The art is reminiscent of VanGogh’s art, and the back matter gives more detail about his life, including the fact that “from boyhood on, he was plagued with long bouts of insomnia.” I love how the book conveys the energy and emotion of Van Gogh’s paintings.

Vincent Can’t Sleep by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Mary Grandpre. (Alfred A. Knopf: 2017).

 

 

 

 

 

On the cover of the book a young Harriet Tubman looks at the night sky.

 

Most narrative nonfiction picture books have a straightforward, beginning-to-end structure. Before She Was Harriet inverts that pattern. It tells the life of Harriet Tubman starting with old age. Then, with each page turn, we move backward in time and see her at younger and younger ages: “Before she was an old woman she was a suffragist…Before she was a suffragist she was General Tubman…Before she was General Tubman she was a Union spy.” The structural device of moving from old age to youth means that the climax of the book is the moment when we arrive back at her childhood and see her, still unformed, ready to move forward bravely into life. She’s a child, not yet knowing the great good that she will accomplish in her life. It’s inspiring, and puts its child readers there with Harriet, imagining what good they will accomplish in their lives. The paintings in the book are luminous. I especially loved the ones set at night and in dark spaces. In those, Harriet almost seems like a source of light herself. [And this just won a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor!]

Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James Ransome. (Holiday House: 2017).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture of children surrounding a globe

Alyson Beecher hosts the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at kidlitfrenzy.com. Visit there for more great nonfiction picture books!

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28Jun

I Like, I Don’t Like

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of "I Like, I Don't Like" shows two children writing the title.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 working in deplorable conditions. So one child says, “I like bricks” while building with Lego. On the facing page, children carrying bricks to a building site say, “I don’t like bricks.” A child playing soccer says, “I like soccer balls,” while on the facing page a child sewing soccer balls says, “I don’t like soccer balls.” It’s a sobering but sensitive depiction of child labor.

I wish the back matter had included explanations about each spread. For example, I didn’t really understand the “I don’t like popcorn” page. Where do children pop and then package large plastic bags of popcorn? And am I doing something to promote this type of child labor? It left me with unsettling questions that I’m not sure how to answer.

The art is collage, with both photographic and illustrated elements. This book is a great addition to the set of non-narrative nonfiction titles to use with young children. It uses comparison and contrast as a structure. It also could be an example of a book that takes a position and argues it.

The book is in translation from the Italian.

I Like, I Don’t Like by Anna Baccelliere, illustrated by Ale + Ale. Eerdmans: 2017.

Children with book around a globe

I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge at Kid Lit Frenzy.

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16Dec

Fur, Fins, and Feathers

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Book trailer Review
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Man in top hat and waistcoast lifts a lemur up while 2 nineteenth century children look on.Before you visit the zoo next time, read this book. Then look for all the ways that Abraham Dee Bartlett helped create your zoo experience: informational signs, veterinary care, naturalistic habitat, all of them can be traced back to this self-taught nineteenth century zoo director.

The book begins with Bartlett’s childhood, with one-on-one encounters with wild animals and much private study. We see him get a job as an adult preparing taxidermied animals for display and then finally rejoice with him when he’s named the director of the London Zoo, where he can work with live animals. The book shows Bartlett’s sensitivity to both human visitors and to his animal kingdom residents. He comes up with innovations to make the visitors’ trips more informative and interesting and he insists that animals be treated compassionately, not an obvious proposition in his time.

If you’re looking for a mentor text to teach alliteration, this would be a fun title. As the title promises, there are lots of examples of alliteration within the text: “feel of their fur,” “fulfill his fondest wish,” “camels and coatis, lemurs and leopards.”

Mostly, though, this is a book for zoo-lovers everywhere.

On her website, Maxwell talks about her pastel with paper collage method, used in the illustrations here. One minute book trailer here.  And don’t forget to spend time with the fun endpapers; they’re covered in bits of text and scraps of image that didn’t make the cut into the main text of the book but are, nonetheless, fascinating.

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs, The Nonfiction Detectives, for telling me about this book.

Fur, Fins, and Feathers: Abraham Dee Bartlett and the Invention of the Modern Zoo by Cassandre Maxwell. (Eerdmans: 2015)

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