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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
I love Linda Sue Park’s books, so I was interested to see her writing advice on her blog: Read. That’s the single best thing an aspiring writer can do for his or her work. I once heard an editor say, “Read a thousand books of the genre you’re interested in. THEN write yours.” I appreciate […]