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28Mar

Timelines in Nonfiction Picture Books: Mentor Texts

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Craft
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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 are constructed, what they can convey, and how they can be presented. So I’ve been noticing timelines lately!

A timeline in the endpapers shows protesters holding posters with the timeline information

Let the Children March, by Monica Clark-Robinson, illustrated by Frank Morrison (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2018), has used the endpapers for its timeline. The children protesters, who are the subject of the book, are each holding a poster, as if it were a protest sign, but each poster has a different significant event for the timeline. I think it’s so brilliant to use the endpapers to add extra content to the book, and the information is connected beautifully through the art to the rest of the book.

 

 

Timeline shows dates after subject's death

A Lady Has the Floor: Belva Lockwood Speaks Out for Women’s Rights, by Kate Hannigan, illustrated by Alison Jay (Calkins Creek: 2018) devotes two pages of the back matter to a timeline. You’ll notice in the middle of the first column of the second page, “Belva Lockwood dies in Washington, D.C., at age eighty-six.” And yet the timeline continues! The timeline highlights Lockwood’s legacy–what happened to the fight for the vote and individual women who broke gender barriers to serve in government. Keeping the timeline going after the subject’s death is a great way to point to the importance of the life of a trailblazer.

Timeline of life on Earth

Earth! My First 4.54 Billion Years, by Stacy McAnulty, illustrated by David Litchfield (Henry Holt: 2017) doesn’t relegate the timeline to back matter but plops it smack-dab in the middle of the book as an important part of the text. I love how the graphics–using a ruler under all the text–manages to show just how new life is to Earth.

Timeline surrounded by border of pink roses.

And sometimes a straightforward timeline is made irresistible by the sweet wreat of pink flowers surrounding it. Ordinary, Extraordinary Jane Austen, by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by Qin Leng (Balzer + Bray: 2018).

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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27Jul

The Hole Story of the Doughnut

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of the book, showing a sea captain inside a giant doughnut.The origins of some everyday objects are lost. But in The Hole Story of the Doughnut, Pat Miller goes back to a 1916 newspaper article to unearth the story of the doughnut’s beginning. It’s actually a humble tale. A sixteen year old ship’s cook experimented with a way to get rid of the undercooked center of a fried breakfast cake. And it worked!

Miller describes the much more exotic origin stories that popped up around the doughnut–that a cake was speared on a ship’s wheel during a gale, or that it was designed to look like the lifesaving ring that had snatched a sailor from certain drowning death. The back matter even tells about a dastardly plot to seize credit for the doughnut. But eventually Hanson Gregory’s rightful claim to be the inventor of the doughnut was restored.

The book is appealing since it’s about a food we all love, but it’s also an important look at innovation. Kids–and all of us–may imagine that inventions and innovations require extraordinary circumstances. But this book is a gentle reminder that more often innovation happens in everyday ways as people notice and try to solve problems. The book would pair beautifully with Earmuffs for Everyone! by Meghan McCarthy or Miracle Mud by David A. Kelly, both about how the process of invention works to solve everyday problems.

Spread shows text in a circle box on one side and facing page shows the art in a circular box, as if it has been cut out of the facing page.The design of the book and the illustrations by Vincent X. Kirsch are delightful. Every spread mimics a doughnut, with one page having the text in a white circular text box clipped out of the illustration, while the facing page presents the circular illustration that has been cut out to make room for the text.

You can listen to an interview with the author here.

The Hole Story of the Doughnut by Pat Miller, illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch. Houghton Mifflin: 2016.

I participate in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge every Wednesday at Kid Lit Frenzy. Come join us!

Children around a globe.

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31Oct

What to Read on Halloween: The Bat Scientists

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Holidays
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Happy Halloween!

Books in the Scientist in the Field series look and feel like a picture book (albeit hefty ones at 80 pages). They get shelved with nonfiction picture books. But inside, they’re middle grade material, complete with chapters.

They’re also totally engaging. Every chapter in this book features a different scientist working on some aspect of bat conservation. The photos are wonderful and the text accessible. It’s not a read aloud, but by the time I was finished, I was starting to plan how to build a bat house for my backyard.

And if you enjoy The Bat Scientists, be sure to check out The Case of the Vanishing Little Brown Bats: A Scientific Mystery,  by Sandra Markle, another middle grade read masquerading as a picture book. Its gripping true story will have you cheering for the bats around you.

[booknet booknumber=9780544104938]

The Bat Scientists by Mary Kay Carson, photos by Tom Uhlman. Houghton Mifflin, 2013.

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