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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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15Feb

To the Stars!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows female astronaut floating in space near space shuttleMost picture book biographies, unsurprisingly, have a linear structure. Someone did something and then did something else and then did something else. To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space uses a refreshingly different structure. One spread shows Dr. Kathy Sullivan’s interests and activities as a child or teenager, and then the next spread shows an analogous task in her adult work as an astronaut. This structure invites readers to make thematic connections between disparate parts of her life. I think it would be a fun book to use to make predictions. After reading about a childhood activity, challenge kids to think of how that might have prepared her for her work as an astronaut?

The structure is reflected in the typeface choice. Each spread that shows modern-day life for Dr. Sullivan is printed in italic, emphasizing the shifting timeframe.

The book has lots of dialogue and quotes that are unattributed in the back matter, but since Sullivan is a co-author, I trust them.

There are 2 full spreads of back matter, including a note from Dr. Sullivan and a biographical essay about her. My favorite part, though, was the list of short biographies of 13 other women astronauts. I hadn’t heard of most of them. but even the short glimpse of their lives was fascinating and inspiring.

This is a great companion book to another astronaut book from last year that examined how childhood experiences shaped adult passions–The Darkest Dark.

To the Stars! The First American Woman to Walk in Space by Carmella VanVleet and Dr. Kathy Sullivan, illustrated by Nicole Wong. Charlesbridge: 2016.

Children with book around a globe

I participate every Wednesday in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge.

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16Nov

The Music in George’s Head

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of The Music in George's Head shows George Gershwin seated at a pianoThe Music in George’s Head: George Gershwin Creates Rhapsody in Blue is an elegantly-structured story. The book has three main parts. First, we learn about the many types of music Gershwin listened to as a boy. For example, “He just couldn’t stop thinking about Melody in F, a classical tune he’d heard at the penny arcade.” He played ragtime on the piano, listened to classical pianists, “roller-skated to New York’s Harlem neighborhood to hear the smooth syncopated jazz rhythms in clubs,” listened to noise on the city streets, and sampled a wide variety of styles in his job playing piano to sell sheet music at a music store.

The second part of the book focuses on how Gershwin, as an adult, composed Rhapsody in Blue. We see him work hard–and unsuccessfully–to put the music on his head on paper. We see him keep trying to solve the problem as he goes on a train trip. And finally we see him write out what he had imagined. Rhapsody in Blue.

The final part of the book gives us a glimpse of the first public performance of Rhapsody in Blue. We see the audience start to get bored by the too-long numbers before Gershwin’s piece. But then “a clarinet fluttered softly, like butterfly wings” and Rhapsody in Blue begins. “People were surprised to hear new melodies mixed with classical, ragtime, jazz, and the blues.”

I loved the design of this book. The type flows in organic lines and different sizes emphasize important words. The artist’s palette is blue and black, with brown highlights. It’s a surprising choice but it works very well here with the sketchy, improvised look of the art.

Calkins Creek Publishing typically lavishes care on back matter. This book is no exception. The author’s note gives fascinating details that had to be left out of the main text and talks about Gershwin’s legacy in American culture.

Ideally, you’ll want to listen to Rhapsody in Blue while you read this book, but if you can’t do that, the text may make you hear it in your mind anyway.

The Music in George’s Head: George Gershwin Creates Rhapsody in Blue by Suzanne Slade, illustrated by Stacy Innerst. Calkins Creek: 2016.

Children around a globe.

 

 

I participate in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challene every week at KidLit Frenzy.

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11May

The Secret Subway

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of The Secret Subway showing a man with his finger to his lips standing next to a subway car on rails.I wish I’d written this book. I love the topic–someone secretly built a subway under New York City in 1870?!? Who? How? Why didn’t I know about it before?

Shana Corey answers all those questions in her delicious retelling of Alfred Ely Beach’s innovative engineering feat and shrewd political wrangling (shrewd until the moment it all fell apart in the face of Boss Tweed’s power, that is) to build a pneumatic tube transportation system under the streets of New York City.

Writing a book for kids about the past is tricky. In order to tell the story, you somehow have to set the scene. An adult may immediately realize that a story set in 1870 happened before cars were invented, but you can’t assume kids will know that. And you can be pretty sure kids will not know that New York City was run by powerful political machines then, either.

Corey does a masterful job of building the historical scaffolding that her story needs to stand on. The book opens by setting the scene:

Welcome to New York City–the greatest city on earth. You say it looks crowded? Dirty? DISGUSTING? Well…you’re right.

She then describes New York City in the 1860s, giving kids all the background information they need to understand the magnitude of what Beach accomplished.

She structures the story around two dramatic moments, the first where Beach comes up with his idea and the second where he is forced to shut down the subway. At both of these moments, the reader has to turn the book to a vertical rather than a horizontal orientation. The drama of the book turn matches the drama of the moments in the story and act as bookends to the account of how the subway was built.

I was also impressed with how Corey dealt with quotes. In the back matter, she gives source attribution for the quotes she took out of primary source material. But she also adds that “several lines of dialogue have been invented to illustrate political debates of the time.” I went back to see if I could find the invented quotes. Each has to do with a suggested solution for New York City’s transportation problems. Here are the invented quotes:

Why not make a moving street, so we can get wherever we want by standing still?

What about building double-decker roads?

Or a railway on stilts?

A mail tube? Why not?

I’m generally leery of invented quotes, but these seem to me to  work well in the book. They explain the historical context, without extra verbiage, and do so without inventing new scenes or characters.

The art is quirky–“hand-built three-dimensional sets” that have been photographed–and memorable. This book is going on my wish list.

The wonderful book trailer is here.  The artist’s website is well worth a gander.

The Secret Subway by Shana Corey, illustrated by Red Nose Studio. Schwartz & Wade: 2016.

Children around a globe.

I participate in the 2016 Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy. 

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20Apr

Whale Trails

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review
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Cover of book shows whale watching cruiseI’ve been thinking a lot lately about nonfiction text structures. I love lots of nonfiction picture books with traditional story structures: following a character through her life from birth to death, or recounting an event from beginning to end. But there are lots of other text structures possible, as well. Whale Trails: Before and Now elegantly sets up a compare/contrast structure to explore the differences between whale watching trips with whaling voyages.

The design of the book invites the reader to compare and contrast. Every spread has, on the left, full color with illustrations that bleed to the edges of the page. The right hand page of the spread, though has a black and white illustration enclosed within borders. But every spread deals with the same idea, showing how it differs or is the same across the centuries.

The narration is in first person present tense:

My father and I live for the sea. He is the captain of the Cuffee whale boat, and today I am his first mate.

But it invites us to look back to the past:

Before now, each generation of my family sailed these waters in search of whales.

We see the whale watching travelers traveling up the gangplank, and the whaling boat crew traveling up the gangplank; the route of the whale watching cruise and the route of the whaler; the gear aboard the whale watching cruise and the gear aboard the whaler, and so forth.

This fascinating book is another great example of a book with solid nonfiction content that ably uses a fictional framework–the girl who is serving as first mate today. Would you shelve this in the fiction section? Or the nonfiction? I’m not sure, but I think it’s clear to the reader what is fact and what is not.

I’ve never gone whale-watching, but I loved doing it virtually in this book!

Whale Trails: Before and Now, by Lesa Cline-Ransome. Christy Ottaviano Books: 2015.

Children surrounding a globe and the words "Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge 2016"

 

I participate in the Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge hosted by Kid Lit Frenzy. 

 

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25Nov

Fab Four Friends

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Cover of book showing the Beatles performing togetherThis visually lovely biography looks at each Beatle individually. The first–and longest–chapter shows John Lennon’s troubled growing-up years. In other chapters we see Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr before they joined the band. Susanna Reich focuses on the boys’ inner lives–what drew them to music and why they were looking for a group to make music with.

Reich has woven wonderful quotations throughout the book. For example, Lennon’s aunt, whom he lived with, told him, “The guitar’s all right for a hobby, John, but you’ll never make a living at it.” And Richard Starkey, before he became Ringo Starr, told his family, “Drums are my life.”

Biographers always face the difficult question of how to frame the story they’re telling. This is a particularly difficult problem for a group like the Beatles with such a dramatic and famous trajectory. Reich chooses to end this biography with the formation of the Beatles, as we know it, and their triumphant year of touring in the United Kingdom. It’s a great craft choice, since the stories she has told are all about why and how these musicians looked for each other. Ending here, with a successful musical band, gives a satisfying close to the narrative arc.

In her author’s note, Reich tells about how she got interested in the subject and talks about the difficulty she faced in compressing so much material into a picture book format.

Adam Gustavson’s illustrations add a wonderful layer to the story. He’s a great portraitist. The Macmillan website is highlighting 8 of his paintings from the book. Younger readers will love the pictures, but the text is definitely written to older kids.

Fab Four Friends: The Boys Who Became the BEATLES by Susanna Reich, illustrated by Adam Gustavson. (Henry Holt: 2015)

 

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26May

A Fine Dessert

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dessert

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 of all the children.  Where did the blackberries and cream come from? How did they whip the cream? How did they cool it? What did they eat for dinner before dessert? Who sat at the table? What did they wear?

To top things off, there’s a recipe for blackberry fool in the back, and the end papers are painted–gorgeously!–with blackberry juice.

This is a book my kids and I spent a long time bent over. Beautiful!

(And just for fun, the illustrator, Sophie Blackall, admits here to a mistake she didn’t know she was making in the illustrations. Did you catch it? I didn’t, and I lived in California for years.)

A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Sophie Blackall. Schwartz & Wade: 2015.

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5Mar

Tiny Creatures

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tinycover

 

 

 

 

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. For example, on this page, she compares the number of microbes found in the spoonful of dirt pictured in the upper left corner of the page to the number of people living in India. An unforgettable image that makes her point handily!

 

tinycreatures

 

 

 

 

This book engaged both tiny and big readers at my house!

Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes by Nicola Davies, illustrated by Emily Sutton. Candlewick: 2014

 

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5Dec

Move!

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This book is built around an insight so obvious you’ve probably never thought about it. I hadn’t! Despite what we teach toddlers, bunnies don’t only hop and birds don’t only fly. All living creatures move in different ways at different times. Page builds that insight into her clever structure: we see each featured animal move in two different ways, and the second way it moves is the first way the next featured animal moves. Such a simple and elegant structure, and so effective!

A spread at the end gives a little more detail about each animal. Steve Jenkins’ illustrations and the book design are gorgeous.

Move! by Robin Page, illustrated by Steve Jenkins. Houghton Mifflin: 2006.

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17Nov

Look Up! Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review Uncategorized
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In writing biography, it’s tempting to start at your subject’s birth and finish at your subject’s death. But usually that’s not the structure that will best tell the story.

In this biography of an astronomer, the book starts with her gazing at the stars as a child and wondering about them. We see her work to learn the answers to her questions, and the book concludes as she publishes an academic paper to answer those questions. The beginning and ending relate directly to the story Burleigh’s telling. Sure, a lot of Leavitt’s life is left out, but the book feels complete because it tells one story, beginning to end.

The book is a great look at a girl growing up to be a scientist. The extensive back matter profiles other female astronomers as well.

Look Up! Henrietta Leavitt, Pioneering Woman Astronomer by Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Raul Colon. Simon & Schuster, 2013.

 

 

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3Nov

What to Read on Election Day

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Tomorrow is Election Day here. I’ll be going to the polls, grateful that I have the right to cast a ballot.

This book is the story of Susan B. Anthony’s illegal vote in 1872 when she cast a ballot in the presidential election. The book tells an important story and it’s beautifully constructed. Malaspina doesn’t try to tell us about all the great things Anthony did in her long life; the book tells just about that one vote and its dramatic consequence (spoiler: the consequence was NOT women getting the vote!).

Instead of using wordy transitions between scenes in the book, Malaspina heads sections with their time and place: “Rochester, New York, November 1, 1872.” She also repeats a refrain to keep the book organized and connected: “Outrageous. Unvelievable. True.”

The book comes alive with the richly-textured sensory detail she uses: she “jumped up to grab her purse and wrap”; they “hoisted their skirts”; “Miss Anthony’s heels tapped faster and faster.”

After you cast your ballot, sit down and share this book with a child.

[booknet booknumber=9780807531884]

Heart  on Fire: Susan B. Anthony Votes for President by Ann Malaspina, illustrated by Steve James. Albert Whitman, 2012. 

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17Oct

Lifetime The Amazing Numbers in Animal Lives

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This is not your everyday counting book! No 1-2-3 or babyish illustrations here. Instead, Lola Schaefer attacks the idea of averages for middle grade readers. The mathematics are sophisticated but she keeps the text simple and clear. Brevity and consistency are the heart of the book. Every spread has a sentence in exactly the same format:

In one lifetime, this [animal] will [verb] [number] [item].

For example:

In one lifetime, this alpaca will grow 20 different fleeces.

The consistency of the text and the consistently increasing numbers provide all the structure this book needs.

Extensive back matter not only gives more detail about each featured animal but also walks the reader through the author’s calculations. Other sections explain mathematical averages and challenge the reader to solve math problems.

[booknet booknumber=9781452107141]

A great book for anyone who thinks he’s outgrown counting books!

Lifetime: The Amazing Numbers in Animal Lives by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal. Chronicle Books: 2013.

 

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1Oct

Review: Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything

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thomas-jefferson-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-everything-12Illustrator Maira Kalman follows up her 2012 book about Lincoln (Looking at Lincoln) with a look at another president, Thomas Jefferson. Once again, the narrator’s voice is memorable and spunky, but while the Lincoln book had a childlike narrator, this book sounds like your quirky Aunt Edna telling you stuff:

But wait. We have not spoken of the Founding of America.

It’s a good choice for a biography tackling the confusing inconsistencies of Jefferson the visionary, the patriot, the slaveholder, and the philanderer.

The book competently guides its reader on a tour of Jefferson’s life. It’s organized by theme, each group of spreads looking at a different facet of Jefferson’s interests, passions, or accomplishments. There’s no bibliography and no source notes, but the real treat is Kalman’s candy-colored illustrations.

And Aunt Edna’s not a bad tour guide for a visit to a remarkable and troubling life.

Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything by Maira Kalman. Nancy Paulsen Books: 2014.

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24Sep

Review: Baseball Is…

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20140825_095856

Louise Borden and Raúl Colon have created a lyrical ode to baseball and its place in American culture. Such a huge, amorphous topic must have been tough to structure into a narrative, but Borden uses chronological arcs to organize everything. She uses both the arc of a single game and the arc of an entire season to position the different sections of the book, winding up the book, of course, with a celebration of the World Series.

The voice of the book is lyrical and celebratory. Often back matter has a completely different tone from the rest of the book, but Borden’s “Note to the Reader” at the end is similarly lyrical as she writes about great baseball games she has attended.

Baseball fans will enjoy this hymn of praise.

Baseball Is… by Louise Borden, illustrated by Raúl Colon. Margaret K. McElderry Books: 2014.

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22Sep

Review: Stone Giant

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stone giant

This book opens with a giant block of marble standing in a courtyard in Florence and tells the story of how that chunk of rock became Michelangelo’s iconic statue of David. The book doesn’t break any new ground historically, and it doesn’t rely on primary documents, but the clever structure makes it a great introduction to Michelangelo. Focusing first on the marble rather than on Michelangelo actually helps us see the artist more clearly because we understand better the world in which he worked.

The writing is rich with sensory details:

In summer the stone dust mingled with the sweat on his skin and made a kind of mud. In winter his breath hung in the air. He stopped only when he had to, to eat or to sleep.

Even if you don’t have plans for a trip to Florence in the near future, it’s worth visiting the statue David here in this book.

Check out the one minute trailer for the book.

Stone Giant: Michelangelo’s David and How He Came to Be by Jane Sutcliffe, illustrated by John Shelley. Charlesbridge: 2014.

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