Annette Bay Pimentel

Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

4Sep

Just Like Rube Goldberg

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

Sarah Aronson’s wonderful biography Just Like Rube Goldberg opens by engaging the reader with an intriguing question. “Question: How do you become a successful, award-winning artist and famous inventor without ever inventing anything at all? (This is not a trick question.” Often in picture book biographies, the narrative voice intentionally recedes behind the story. But […]

Tags: artists Beach Lane inventor

10Jul

Gloria Takes a Stand

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In Gloria Takes a Stand, Jessica M. Rinker brings us an engaging picture book biography of Gloria Steinem. She ties together disparate parts of the activist’s life with a shifting refrain: “Gloria watched. She learned. And helped…. “Gloria wished. She read. And imagined…” and so on, all the way to “Gloria still writes. She still speaks. And still listens.” […]

Tags: women

13Mar

Let ‘Er Buck!

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I loved Let ‘Er Buck by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. This picture book biography tells the story of George Fletcher, and African American cowboy who, in 1911 entered the Pendleton Round-up rodeo and arguably won but was not awarded the top prize by the judges. The book describes how the audience took matters into their own hands to make […]

Tags: African American biography

27Feb

Juxtapositions and Arguments

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

Recently I was trying to come up with a list of mentor texts for a writer who is working on a middle grade biography project. While these days publishers occasionally bring out traditional birth-to-death biographies for middle schoolers (this year’s Sibert medalist, The Girl Who Drew Butterflies, or last year’s beautiful Rosa’s Animals, or the astonishing Some Writer, for example), much […]

21Nov

The Hen Who Sailed Around the World

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In honor of Thanksgiving, today I have a poultry-inspired nonfiction picture book: The Hen Who Sailed Around the World. This memoir of twenty-something Guirec Soudée’s solo sea journey around the world abounds with pluck and dash, largely because he wasn’t really solo. He shared his boat with his pet hen. Soudée uses words and photo to […]

Tags: animals Little Brown

14Nov

Christmas Day Bird Count

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In the 19th century, the “side hunt” was a Christmas tradition. Hunters would vie to amass the largest pile of carcasses. Frank Chapman of the Audubon Society suggested replacing the side hunt with a Christmas day bird count. Today, all over the country, people record the birds they see on Christmas day, and scientists use […]

Tags: Albert Whitman informational fiction

7Nov

Counting on Katherine

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Counting on Katherine tells the story of Katherine Johnson, the African American woman who calculated Apollo 13’s trajectory. The book plays with the word “count.” It starts, “Katherine loved to count.” We see tiny Katherine Johnson playing with, and fascinated by, numbers. But “count” quickly assumes another meaning as Katherine counts on her father and […]

Tags: Christy Ottaviano Books scientists space women

17Oct

Protesting

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A couple of new picture books take a look at protesting: how to do it, what forms it can take. If You’re Going to a March is a how-to book. In fact, for schools that assign kids to try writing how-to texts, this would be a great mentor text. It assumes you’ve found your protest […]

Tags: ABC books Expository Simon & Schuster Sterling

10Oct

Silent Star

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Silent Star is a picture book biography of William Hoy, a professional baseball player in the late nineteenth century who flourished in his career despite his inability to hear. The book starts with a lively description of one of Hoy’s record-breaking games and then goes back to the scene, when Hoy was three years old, […]

Tags: Lee & Low Physical disability

3Oct

Water Land

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I first saw Water Land, pre-publication, at a conference where both Christy Hale and I were presenting. I was completely dazzled. The published version is just as wonderful as I had remembered. Hale starts with a simple insight–that both water and land can form analogous shapes. She then uses brilliant book design to connect each land […]

Tags: Expository geography Neal Porter Books

26Sep

The Truth About Dolphins

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This year, Maxwell Eaton III has published three books in his new The Truth About… series. A busy year for him! I looked at The Truth About Dolphins. The book has three different levels of narration. The main text is a simple, straightforward nonfiction text: “This is a dolphin. Dolphins look like fish. But they aren’t” You […]

Tags: animal Roaring Brook

5Sep

Fallingwater

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I loved Fallingwater, Marc Harshman and Anna Egan Smucker’s picture book account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the iconic house. One of the astonishing things about the book is that it doesn’t even pretend to start with the sources of inspiration in Wright’s childhood. Instead, the first spread shows an old, discouraged, gray-haired man. “Once […]

Tags: architect Roaring Brook Press

29Aug

Fairies

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In 2012 I read a middle grade nonfiction book that bowled me over: The Fairy Ring: Or Elsie and Frances Fool the World by Mary Losure (Candlewick: 2012). It was the true story of how two girls faked photos that tricked many adults, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, into believing that fairies are real. I had never […]

Tags: Clarion photography women

22Aug

Pass Go

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

The story of an invention can be surprisingly convoluted. Pass Go and Collect $200 does a great job of tracing the complicated story of the boardgame Monopoly. Monopoly arguably started as Landlord’s Game, a game created by Elizabeth Magie to critique capitalism. Tanya Lee Stone deftly describes the social conditions that led Magie to patent the idea in […]

Tags: Christy Ottaviano Books inventor women

Picture of children surrounding a globe

15Aug

The United States v. Jackie Robinson

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The United States v. Jackie Robinson is one of those wonderful nonfiction picture books that takes a story you think you know and shows you a whole new side to it. The book tells the story of the baseball player, famous for integrating Major League Baseball. But it mentions that accomplishment only at the end […]

Tags: athletes Balzer & Bray civil rights

8Aug

Up in the Leaves

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

It’s good to be home! After a summer of adventures, I loved finding Up in the Leaves: The True Story of the Central Park Treehouses at our library. It’s a nonfiction picture book about a city boy, Bob Redman, who doesn’t feel at home in the city crowds, but finds his own kind of home in […]

Tags: biography family history Sterling

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