“Hair’s a big deal in many cultures,” author-illustrator Cozbi A. Cabrera tells me via email. “I once had a co-worker share with me that she wanted nothing more than to live with her grandmother in the South. She wanted to be where she was to the point of yearning. Her mother said, ‘as soon as you’re able to take care of your own hair, you can go live with Nana.’ Well, Nana died before that could happen, and ...
Homelessness is a complex issue, one for which many myths are frequently perpetuated — to name but two, the notion that homeless people all suffer from mental illness and/or suffer from alcohol and drug problems and that homeless people are lazy and merely refuse to work. Talking to children about homelessness is a challenging prospect, given that many adults take the myths at face value, yet children may not have been exposed to such rhetoric. They are genuinely curious ...
No one is ever going to have a hard time finding a picture book about a lonely and/or shy protagonist reaching out to make a friend. We have enough of those to cover a small planet—much like the one that the title character in Michelle Cuevas’s and Cátia Chien’s The Town of Turtle lives on. Or maybe it’s a rock in space that he calls his home. Whatever it may be, his only friend is his shadow, whom he ...
There’s a long tradition of so-called bibliotherapy, or recommending books to readers to assist them with one problem or another. This may be an antiquated library science term, but we still see today, in this vein, parents requesting books that will help their children with particular struggles. Take death, for instance. If a child’s relative dies, often parents go looking for books on the topic of death. More picture books than not rather ham-handedly address the topic. It’s not an ...
I remember, when my children were young, setting out a blanket in the front yard, on a warm spring day, for the three of us to lie on. We brought a stack of picture books with us for reading in the warm spring sun. As the weather warms up (at least it’s doing so here in Nashville), I think of that and how, if my children were still preschool-aged, I know precisely which spring picture books I’d read them now ...
Author Madeleine L’Engle once wrote that, if she has something complex to say, something too difficult for adults to accept, then she writes it in a book for children. She added, “Children still haven’t closed themselves off with fear of the unknown, fear of revolution, or the scramble for security.” I think the best children’s book authors know this, including the authors and illustrators of the two books here today.
Ian Lendler’s One Day a Dot: The Story of ...
Photo courtesy of Lian Leng
My interest is piqued when a picture book illustrated by Qin Leng lands on my desk. The award-winning Toronto-based illustrator, born in Shanghai, has been illustrating picture books since 2009, her lively ink-and-watercolor artwork so evocatively capturing body language and emotion. This prolific illustrator saw the publication this month of Jessica Scott Kerrin’s The Better Tree Fort, which tells the story of young Russell, who builds a tree fort with his father. Russell’s tree fort may not have been built ...
Spring is a big time of year in the world of picture book-publishing. Right around now—March-ish, April-ish—we tend to see a significant number of new titles reach shelves. Today, I’ve got four books that have one thing in common: They are the four that most fired me up this week. They are books I hope you go out of your way to find.
First up is Once Upon a Time, which comes from illustrator Raúl Nieto Guridi, who publishes under ...
