The language in this picture book biography of Elvis Presley echoes the sound of his music–it’s colloquial, fresh, and not above leaving out a few nouns and verbs here and there. But the meaning still makes it through just fine: “Shy, shaky Elvis sang his ballad about a dog. Didn’t even have a guitar, just […]
It has been 50 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. This book looks at the history of US voting rights through the lens of personal and family history. We follow a one-hundred year old woman, Lillian, as she walks up the hill to her polling place and thinks back to how her […]
I love inventive picture book rhymes, snappy refrains, and fantastical figurative language as much as anyone, but sometimes a story works best just simply told. In this book, Thompson tells us the story of a disabled Ghanaian man beautifully but without any bells and whistles. It’s unadorned storytelling: “In Ghana, West Africa, a baby boy […]
I’m the fifth child in my family and was always delighted to have teachers mistakenly call me by a sibling’s name–I knew it could only mean good things for me. So the central relationship in this book, two brothers who sometimes envy each other but always admire and help each other, resonated with me. This […]
Illustrating a picture book about an artist can be tricky. What do you draw to depict what he or she drew? This unusual book neatly sidesteps the problem. The text recounts the events of Benny Andrews’ life in a straightforward way, but each spread is illustrated by a reproduction of one of his paintings. This […]