Archive for the ‘picture books’ Category

For my latest assignment in library school, I had to review several folk tales/fairy tales as well as create a podcast of myself reading a folk tale. Take a look and listen below!

My Uncle Emily. Yolen, Jane. (ill. by Nancy Carpenter). Philomel Books, 2009.

Uncle Emily isn’t an uncle at all, but Emily Dickinson, and in this book, Yolen shares insight into the life of Dickinson, while also teaching readers about poetry. Children can relate to this story through the narrator, Gilbert, and his attempts to analyze poetry. Yolen is able to tell the story from a child’s point of view, simply, without being condescending. The illustrations, crafted in pen and ink, help place the story in time as well as exemplify the emotions behind the words.

Eric Carle’s Dragons Dragons & Other Creatures That Never Were. Whipple, Laura (compiled by). (ill. by Eric Carle). Puffin Books, 2004.

This topical poetry book covers a favorite topic among children: mythical creatures. The poems within are pulled from a wide variety of poets from many different time periods. Each is illustrated with a dazzling work of art by Carle, colorful, bold, in his classic and well-loved style. While some of the poems contain words that may not be well understood by children, the art helps to clearly convey the meaning behind the words. Some of the poems are comical, while others simply descriptive, but the topics within are pulled from many different cultures, which give this poem book a wider breadth. A glossary of definitions and descriptions of the mythical creatures adds another level to help children understand and appreciate this book.

Beautiful Blackbird. Bryan, Ashley. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003.

In Beautiful Blackbird, all the colorful birds want one thing: black coloring like that of the most beautiful bird of all, blackbird. This story contains rhyme and rhythm, giving some parts of it a sing-song feel that will entertain children of all ages. The simplistic, yet colorful art adds to the story and makes it easy for readers to see the plot being told. Themes abound in this story, including belonging and appreciating beauty of all kinds.

Beautiful Blackbird by Ashley Bryan — podcast (as read by me! for a fictional “celebrity” podcast series)

This semester I’m taking a class in library services for school-age children (K-5). Our first unit in this class covered picture books, and I had a rather large reading assignment. I wrote short annotations for each picture book I read, and one longer review. I haven’t picked up and read a picture book in years. I was delightfully surprised to find how much I loved them and how awesome they were. Here are a few of my favorites!

Wiesner, David. The Three Pigs. Clarion Books, 2001.

In Wiesner’s telling of The Three Pigs, the pigs escape the traditional story of the straw, stick, and brick houses, invading other fairy tales and folk tales and “rescuing” characters that have similar plights, including a dragon and a cat, while the baffled wolf and other hoodwinked characters look on from the pages of their own stories. Wiesner uses an unconventional technique with dialogue bubbles and a “story within a story”, thereby creating an action to the story—almost as if the story has jumped from the page and become a moving, living picture. The text is very humorous, and the illustrations in this book are very interactive—the reader must look around the page quite often to catch all of the happenings. Wiesner uses a variety of illustration techniques to emphasize the differences between “his” story and the fairy/folk stories. Children will enjoy how the pigs “change” their own story, as well as the stories of other characters. This alternative fairy tale will appeal to all ages and will have readers questioning the traditional format of a storybook.

Gerstein, Mordicai. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. Roaring Brook Press, 2003.

In The Man Who Walked Between the Towers, Gerstein uses light and dark illustrations to engage the reader in the story and help to place the setting. This is a suspenseful telling of the story of Phillipe Petit, a tightrope walker that walked across a rope he tied between the Twin Towers in New York City. The illustrations help explain to the reader the mechanics behind the tightrope walk in an easy-to-understand way.

Anderson, M. T. Me, All Alone, at the End of the World. Candlewick Press, 2005.

In this picture book for older readers, a boy at “the end of the world” lives all alone until a man brings civilization to interrupt, and change his perspective on, his way of living. The illustrations convey the “otherworldliness” of the text. The use of metaphor throughout the text helps to describe the settings, and older readers will be able to read into the sense of something not quite right as the story moves along.