Annette Bay Pimentel

Review

22Jun

My Heart Will Not Sit Down

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Some picture books are straight fiction. Some picture books are straight nonfiction. And then there are a few, like Mara Rockliff’s My Heart Will Not Sit Down, that straddle that line. As the author’s note explains, “In 1931, the city of New York received a gift of $3.77 to feed the hungry. It came from the […]

Tags: historical fiction Knopf

15Jun

The Kid from Diamond Street

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I love stories about gutsy women. I love stories about gutsy kids. Here’s a book about both–a gutsy girl. Edith Houghton loved baseball. But in the 1920s there were no Little League teams for girls. Didn’t matter. She kept playing, and when she was 10 years old (ten!) she joined a professional team. She was […]

Tags: biography Houghton Mifflin Harcourt quotations sports

7Jun

Super Gear: Nanotechnology and Sports Team Up

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Super Gear: Nanotechnology and Sports Team Up is just the book you want around during the Olympics. And it will appeal to sports-obsessed middle schoolers anytime. It tackles the fascinating world of nanotechnology, explaining what nanotechnology is, describing how it’s used in sports equipment, and delving into some of the ethical questions this new science […]

Tags: narrative voice science

1Jun

Anything But Ordinary Addie

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In Anything but Ordinary Addie, lush illustrations and sparkling text tell the story of unconventional Adelaide Herrmann, who embarked on a career without her family’s knowledge, proposed to her husband, and transitioned from magician’s assistant to successful stage magician upon the death of her husband. I loved the story of this gutsy woman. Rockliff keeps […]

Tags: biography Candlewick invented dialogue

25May

Crossing Niagara

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This is the story of the multiple crossings which tightrope walker Blondin made of Niagara Falls in 1859 and 1860. Usually, picture books about historical events look at the events through the eyes of the main character. This story is told differently. Instead of looking at what happens through Blondin’s eyes, we watch what happens […]

Tags: artwork biography Candlewick

18May

Ada’s Violin

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“Ada Rios grew up in a town made of trash.” This story tells what happened just a few years ago when an amateur musician offered to teach the children of Paraguayan trash-pickers how to play instruments. He had some guitars and violins, but not enough for Ada and all the interested children. The parents, who […]

Tags: musicians recycling simon&schuster

11May

The Secret Subway

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I wish I’d written this book. I love the topic–someone secretly built a subway under New York City in 1870?!? Who? How? Why didn’t I know about it before? Shana Corey answers all those questions in her delicious retelling of Alfred Ely Beach’s innovative engineering feat and shrewd political wrangling (shrewd until the moment it […]

Tags: biography quotations scaffolding Schwartz & Wade social history structure

4May

Cloth Lullaby

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The language in this beautiful book about artist Louise Bourgeois is lyrical and full of abstract language: metaphors, similes, and sly double-meaning phrases. Right from the first line we’re plunged into the world of words packed tight with meaning: “Louise was raised by a river.” The obvious meaning is that her family lived next to […]

Tags: Abrams artist metaphor

27Apr

Dorothea’s Eyes

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Dorothea’s Eyes fills a gap. Here, at last, is a biography of the great photographer Dorothea Lange. In her straightforward text, Rosenstock tells the story of Lange’s life. She traces how Lange’s childhood polio gave her keen empathy. We see Lange face struggles as the child of a single mother. We watch her insist that […]

Tags: biography Calkins Creek

20Apr

Whale Trails

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about nonfiction text structures. I love lots of nonfiction picture books with traditional story structures: following a character through her life from birth to death, or recounting an event from beginning to end. But there are lots of other text structures possible, as well. Whale Trails: Before and Now elegantly sets […]

Tags: Christy Ottaviano Books compare and contrast fictional elements structure

13Apr

Bugs: What’s Not to Love?

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

Bugs. What’s not to love? Plenty for most of us. Icky, creepy, crawly critters send most of us running. But even ugly pest animals deserve their own books, don’t they? I, Fly: The Buzz about Flies and How Awesome They Are has a housefly narrator who argues the case that ugly bugs are every bit […]

Tags: fictional elements Henry Holt insects Viking

6Apr

Miss Mary Reporting

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Miss Mary Reporting is vintage Sue Macy–it’s the rollicking story of a woman breaking barriers in the world of sports. But this time, the woman isn’t an athlete but a reporter. This picture book biography tells the story of Mary Garber, one of the first and arguably the most prominent early female sportswriter. We learn about […]

Tags: biography Paula Wiseman Books quotations sports writers

30Mar

Solving the Puzzle Under the Sea

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

I love to find nonfiction picture books about women in science! This lovely new picture book tells the story of Marie Tharp, a cartographer and ocean researcher. She didn’t live that long ago, but she still encountered lots of opposition to her working in science. She managed to carve out a tiny place for herself […]

Tags: back matter biography Paula Wiseman Books scientists women

16Mar

Right to Vote

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In this voting year, no child is going to escape bombardment with news about the election. But will those children understand the significance and context that led to that vote? Two new books look at the right to vote in very different ways. The first book is Two Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass is […]

Tags: hyperion orchard voting women

9Mar

Fearless Flyer

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Book trailer Review

What did it take to be a woman aviator in the early 1900s? Pluck. Intelligence. Courage. Ruth Law had them all. This story of her record-breaking flight from Chicago to New York City had me worrying for her, pulling for her, and ultimately applauding her success. I especially loved the way quotes from Law are […]

Tags: aviation back matter biography Calkins Creek quotations

1Mar

Freedom in Congo Square

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Freedom in Congo Square uses lyrical, ebullient rhymes to tell the story of how slaves carved out their own culture in the face of oppression in New Orleans. Cleverly adapting the idea of a concept book to her historical story, Weatherford counts down through the days of the week to Sunday when, by law, slaves […]

Tags: civil rights poetry slavery

24Feb

Hillary

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

If the children’s publishing world has anything to say about it, it appears that our next president will be Hillary Clinton. Already this year two different nonfiction picture books about Hillary Clinton have been published–Hillary by Jonah Winter and Hillary Rodham Clinton: Some Girls are Born to Lead by Michelle Markel. The art in the Markel book, […]

Tags: Balzer & Bray biography Schwartz & Wade

17Feb

Impossible Voyage of Kon-Tiki

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

When I was little I devoured my parents’ books about the amazing voyage of Kon-Tiki. But I don’t think my children have ever heard of it. Deborah Kogan Roy’s new book, The Impossible Voyage of Kon-Tiki, tells a new generation the thrilling story of a quirky anthropologist’s attempt to recreate an ancient sea voyage. Thor Heyerdahl wanted […]

Tags: Charlesbridge explorers

10Feb

W is for Webster

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

A dictionary scholar is a tough sell as a picture book subject. Where’s the action? What’s the illustrator going to illustrate? Sitting around writing and reading? W is for Webster tells the story of sitting around writing and reading with whimsy and humor. Fern picks out whimsical details to tell the story of Webster’s life–as a child […]

Tags: American Revolution biography Margaret Ferguson Books

3Feb

Sky Painter: Louis Fuertes Bird Artist

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

In Sky Painter: Louis Fuertes Bird Artist, Margarita Engle skillfully uses poetry to tell the remarkable life story of Louis Fuertes. He began painting birds when the state-of-the-art was to shoot the bird and then arrange it in a lifelike pose. Fuertes, however, couldn’t bear to kill the animals he admired. So he invented new techniques […]

Tags: artists first person narration poetry

27Jan

Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton is a lovely picture book biography about an African American who started writing poetry while he was enslaved. In the afterword, Tate says, “…the publishing industry could do a better job of balancing the topic of slavery with other African-American stories.” This month furor has erupted again over […]

Tags: African American back matter biography Civil War

20Jan

Aaron and Alexander

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“Aaron and Alexander could have been friends. They were alike in many ways. But the ways in which they were different made them the worst of enemies.” So begins Don Brown’s fascinating comparison of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, culminating in the events that led to their infamous duel. Brown’s language is solid and serious–as […]

Tags: American Revolution history quotations Roaring Brook Press

13Jan

Billy’s Booger

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Hilarious nonfiction picture books can be hard to find. Gentle, amusing, sweet. It’s a lot easier to find nonfiction picture books that fit those descriptions. But rollicking, silly, laugh-out-loud nonfiction picture books are rare. William Joyce has provided just such a rare duck with his “sorta” memoir about the first book he wrote. At the […]

Tags: autobiography humor memoir Moonbot Books

12Jan

Multicultural Children’s Book Day

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Craft Links Review

I live in a tiny rural town. Ethnically, racially, and even economically and religiously, our community is pretty uniform. Before this, we lived in two other small towns that were even more uniform than the one we live in now. Are diverse books for communities like mine? Aren’t diverse books really for urban kids? No! […]

6Jan

Swan

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Years ago my sister gave me a picture book by someone she had met at a social function. It had one of the best titles ever, Baxter, the Pig who Wanted to be Kosher. The book is hilarious. So I was excited when I saw another book by the same author, Laurel Snyder. I love this […]

Tags: artists back matter ballet biography Chronicle Books dance

30Dec

Game Changer

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

“On Sunday, March 12, 1944, at eleven in the morning, when most people were still at church, a group of basketball players who thought they were the best in the state of North Carolina piled into two cars. The members of the Duke University medical School team knew they were playing a game, but they […]

Tags: civil rights Carolrhoda sports

23Dec

This Is My Home, This Is My School

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

This charming memoir, a follow-up to Jonathan Bean’s equally delightful Building Our House, takes us through a day of home-school with his family. The narrator, a cheery blond-headed boy (suspiciously like the photos of cheery blond-headed Jonathan Bean in the back of the book) shows us his world of school. He stands in front of his […]

Tags: autobiography endpapers Farrar Straus Giroux memoir

16Dec

Fur, Fins, and Feathers

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Book trailer Review

Before you visit the zoo next time, read this book. Then look for all the ways that Abraham Dee Bartlett helped create your zoo experience: informational signs, veterinary care, naturalistic habitat, all of them can be traced back to this self-taught nineteenth century zoo director. The book begins with Bartlett’s childhood, with one-on-one encounters with […]

Tags: alliteration biography Eerdmans

9Dec

How to Read a Story

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

The Common Core introduces informational and explanatory writing to children as young as kindergarten. How do you explain how to books to kindergarteners? Most of the titles on the shelves of the library are going to be more technical or involved than is appropriate for such young readers. Here’s the solution! This charming “how to” […]

Tags: Chronicle Books explanatory writing

2Dec

The House that Jane Built

Posted by: annettepimentel@gmail.com Categories: Review

Growing up, I visited my grandparents on the farm every summer, and every day after our huge noon dinner (not lunch), when Gram finally rested, I would sit by myself in the quiet, dim living room and read Childcraft. My favorite volume was the one about real people. I read about Jenny Lind and Robert […]

Tags: biography Henry Holt Page turn social reformer

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