Annette Bay Pimentel

I love to read nonfiction picture books by other people. Unless otherwise stated in a post, I do not accept any books for the purpose of review. I check books out of the library or buy them before I review them.

Recent Posts

7Apr

Youth Book Prize for Social Justice…and a Giveaway!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Goddard Riverside and the Children’s Book Council awarded Pura’s Cuentos their Youth Book Prize for Social Justice. I got to go to New York City to chat about the book and to share it with lots of kids (first time in-person after two years of school visits!). To celebrate, I’m giving away a copy of […]

6Oct

Books for library lovers

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Storytime lists

I love libraries. And I love nonfiction picture books. So I made a list of my favorite library-themed nonfiction picture books. You can find it here. Thee are true books about libraries, librarians, and library users. So, what about these books will make kids love libraries? They explain what kids encounter in the library. Alexis […]

Tags: biography

1Feb

Giveaway Schneider Family Books for Younger Readers

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

I have teamed up with Tracy Newman, the author of Itzhak: A Boy Who Loved the Violin, the other Schneider Family Book Honor for Younger Readers, to give away our books, as well as the Award winner, I Talk Like a River, by Jordan Scott. To enter the drawing for one of the books, subscribe […]

25Jan

Schneider Family Book Award Honor

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

All the Way to the Top is a Schneider Family Book Award Honor Book! I got the news via Zoom late Thursday night. It’s hard to keep a secret that long. The award honors books that emody the disability experience for children and youth. Lots of us worked on the book–Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, Nabi Ali, and […]

Tags: disability Schneider Family Book Award

29Dec

Children’s Magazines Accepting Submissions

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Children’s magazines accepting submissions

Tags: writing

16Sep

The Elephant’s New Shoe

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review Uncategorized

Pacing can be tricky in nonfiction picture books. Authors are trying to wrestle all the messiness of real life into a single, coherent narrative. In The Elephant’s New Shoe, Laurel Neme gets the pacing just right. This true story tells how an animal rescue organization helped a disabled elephant, Chhouk, get a prosthetic leg. We […]

Tags: animal books Orchard Books

24Aug

Dark Was the Night

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Dark Was the Night is a picture book biography by Gary Golio about bluesman Willie Johnson. Luminous art by E. B. Lewis.

Tags: African American musicians Nancy Paulsen Books

19Aug

A Gift for Amma

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Concept books–counting, ABC, color–are the evergreens of the nonfiction world. They have an important place in children’s lives, but usually my reading of them isn’t marked by much surprise. A Gift for Amma by Meera Sriram charmed and delighted me by all the extras it brought to the reader. A Gift for Amma is, at […]

29Jul

Happy Birthday, ADA…and a giveaway

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Links

This week the Americans with Disabilities Act is thirty years old. I ‘m happy to celebrate such a visionary piece of legislation. In honor of the anniversary, Lori Alexander and I have teamed up to give away copies of our books. I hope you’ll enter! Information below. In the meantime, here are some links about […]

Tags: disability

10Jun

Odin, Dog Hero of the Fires

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Remember the news last year? Wildfires–but literal ones rather than metaphorical ones–dominated the headlines. Australia burned. California burned. Odin, Dog Hero of the Fires, by Emma Bland Smith, is a story from that time. But the hope it offers work for today’s headlines, too. The book tells the story of a northern California wildfire from […]

Tags: dog pointofview wildfire

3Jun

Queen of Physics

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Teresa Robeson’s picture book biography, Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom may seem to be a book about a physicisit. And it is! But it is also a book about a girl born into a society that devalued girls. A book about a democrat born into a […]

Tags: Sterling women in science

27May

Numbers in Motion

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Numbers in Motion tells the inspiring story of Sophie Kowalevski. Kowalevski was a nineteenth century mathematician. She managed to study advanced mathematics. Find a post as a mathematics professor. And solve some of the most intractable problems facing math at the time. In this book, Laurie Wallmark introduces us to Sophie as a child. The […]

Tags: 19th century women Creston women in science

13May

Sharing New Books, Covid-19 Style

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Those of us who have new books this Spring had lots of book promotion plans. But now we find ourselves instead sharing new books, Covid-19 style. For me and writer Laurie Wallmark, that means teaming up with Austin, Texas’ Writing Barn to do a virtual book tour. Laurie and I will each talk about our […]

6May

Making Their Voices Heard

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Two icons of the mid-twentieth century: Marilyn Monroe and Ella Fitzgerald. Who knew that they were friends? The picture book biography Making Their Voices Heard tells the story of how they met and how they supported each other. About the story Both Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe were famous, but both faced discrimination. Ella was […]

Tags: African American little bee books performers

22Apr

Beautiful Shades of Brown

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

Laura Wheeler Waring was a 20th century African American portrait artist who specialized in portraits of African Americans. She celebrated a generation of artists and thinkers. Her paintings hang in the National Portrait Gallery. And now the picture book biography Beautiful Shades of Brown celebrates her. In the book, author Nancy Churnin describes Waring’s interest […]

15Apr

Madame Saqui

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Madame Saqui: Revolutionary Rope Dancer is a nonfiction picture book. The biography transports readers back hundreds of years to pre-revolutionary France. We meet a family of tighrope perfomers and their tiny daughter, Marguerite, who yearns to join her parents on the tightrope. But trouble looms. First, Marguerite’s family deals with the French Revolution. Then, they […]

Tags: biography circus books women

8Apr

Dream Builder

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

What does it take to build a dream? Kelly Starling Lyons’ picture book biography Dream Builder: The Story of Architect Philip Freelon explores that question. Lyons structures Dream Builder around the steps necessary to build a building. She explores Vision, Foundation, Frame, Form, and Dream. We see how each of these ideas led to Freelon […]

Tags: African American architect Lee & Low

1Apr

Nabi Ali

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Interview

This is a big year for illustrator Nabi Ali. My book All the Way to the Top was his debut picture book. His second picture book, The Fighting Infantryman, comes out in June. I loved the way Nabi captured emotions in the illustrations for my book. I wanted to talk to him about his life […]

Tags: illustrator little bee books Sourcebooks

25Mar

Mamie on the Mound

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

It’s women’s history month and we would be heading into the baseball season if this were a normal year. Mamie on the Mound: A woman in Baseball’s Negro Leagues by Leah Henderson is just the right book. It tells the story of the first female pitcher in professional baseball. Mamie Johnson learned the game as […]

24Mar

Tiny Writing Lessons

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

I and my writer friends want to help parents struggling to teach at home and teachers struggling to teach remotely. We have started a YouTube channel called Tiny Writing Lessons where working writers give a short (3 minutes or less) lesson on a writing technique they use. Enjoy!

18Mar

Standing Up, Speaking Out

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Storytime lists

My book came out March 10. It was just before coronavirus warnings stepped up, so I got to share it with lots of kids and adults at various book events. One was a special library visit where I shared selections from my book and several other books about activism. We talked about people standing up, […]

Tags: activism nonfiction storytime

4Mar

Educator’s Guide for All the Way to the Top

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Educator's Guide

Next Tuesday my book All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything comes out. I’m excited to share with kids and adults the story of how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) came about. Lucky for me, the brilliant social studies teacher Jenna Pontius Vandenberg volunteered to […]

Tags: biography disability

26Feb

Equality’s Call

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Uncategorized

One of the problems writers face in celebrating advances in social justice is acknowledging that those advances didn’t solve everything. Equality’s Call: The Story of Voting Rights in America tackles the problem head-on. With a rhythmic rhyming text that invites reading aloud, Deborah Diesen lays out the gap between the ideals in America’s founding and […]

5Feb

Hard Work But It’s Worth It

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

One of my favorite questions to ask school librarians is, “What book do you wish you had for your library?” Surprisingly often the answer is, “More books about US presidents.” Hard Work But It’s Worth It: The Life of Jimmy Carter by Bethany Hegedus answers that need. Carrying through the theme of Carter’s belief in […]

Tags: picture book biography US Presidents

29Jan

The Oldest Student

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Children spend a lot of time and energy learning to read. The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read acknowledges that effort and reminds us what a treasure literacy is. Rita Lorraine Hubbard has written this beautiful tribute to Mary Walker. Mary, as she’s called in the book, was born into enslavement. The author’s […]

Tags: African American biography

22Jan

Patricia’s Vision

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A female, African American physician and inventor whose work gave many the gift of sight. Why haven’t I heard of Dr. Patricia Bath before? Michelle Lord’s picture book biography, Patricia’s Vision, aims to correct that. The story starts with Michelle’s childhood and how her early life steered her toward a life in science. It touches […]

Tags: 20th century women African American female scientists Sterling

15Jan

Sweet Dreams Sarah

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Sweet Dreams Sarah by Vivian Kirkfield is a nonfiction picture book that hits the sweet spot of combining STEM principles with social studies content. In the book, we see the engineering process at work. Every element of the story zeroes in on the engineering process: identify the problem brainstorm solutions construct a prototype analyze the […]

Tags: 19th century women African American biography Creston inventor STEM women

6Nov

A Girl Called Genghis Khan

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review Uncategorized

I loved this lively book about a girl, supported by her family, who found a way to be active in a society that discouraged it. The story tells the inspiring true story of how a Pakistani family supported their daughter in masquerading as a boy so that she could have an active childhood. Eventually, she […]

Tags: Asia Sterling women athletes

30Oct

Skulls

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A perfect nonfiction Halloween read, this book combines just the right amount of spooky and creepy with real facts about the role of a skull. The lighthearted illustrations by Scott Campbell, the illustrator of Hug Machine, are breezy and fun. The text is fun to read aloud and gives kids accessible ways of thinking about […]

Tags: anatomy Atheneum

18Sep

The Girl Who Named Pluto

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The Girl Who Named Pluto is a gentle story. It tells how a child becomes interested in astronomy and how she interacts with the adult scientific world. Venetia Burney was a child in 1930 when she suggested “Pluto” as the name for the ninth planet. I loved how this book shows her interactions with adults. […]

Tags: biography Schwartz & Wade

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