Picture Book Tuesday

I'm going to try to start a weekly thing here: Picture Book Tuesdays. I kinda started this blog thinking that it would mostly be to highlight ALL of the picture books that I would tear through. Well, my focus seems to have shifted toward YA fiction and I'd like to make myself read a few picture books a week. Hence, this weekly "feature". Although, I must admit that I read the follow books and am writing this on Saturday the 9th of August. Not a Tuesday at all. But I'll get on the regular schedule this coming week. Now, on with the show...


STARTED & FINISHED:

Shulevitz, Uri. (2008). How I learned geography. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.

[Shulevitz scores again in my book with this new one of his. It's the autobiographical story of how his family had to leave Poland in 1939 and ended up living in the Soviet Union dirt poor and living with another family in a small house. One day, despite the fact that the family is starving, Uri's father spends money on a wall-sized map of the world instead of bread. Initially, Uri and his mother are furious, but as time goes on, Uri finds the map fascinating and he begins to imagine himself in various other places which spurs his interest in drawing. Great simple text and his wonderful ink-outlined watercolor illustrations make this a contender for a Caldecott mention.]



van Ommen, Sylvia. (2002). Jellybeans. Brookfield, CT: Roaring Brook Press.

[A cat and a rabbit, friends, agree to meet in the park where they will share jellybeans and hot chocolate. Looking at a blue jellybean the color of the sky starts a discussion between the two about whether or not there is a heaven, and, if there is one, whether or not they will see each other there. Initially, I got a bit whigged out when they started talking about heaven thinking, "Oh, gee, here we go with the big Christian talk." But, it kind of skirts that and just becomes about these two friends, rendered in simple line drawings (including the cell phones which they seem to text each other on...), pondering existence and whether or not their solid friendship will go on and on.]



Zolotow, Charlotte. (1989). The quiet mother and the noisy little boy. New York: Harper & Row.

[Got this one for the Marc Simont illustrations and noticed that the author, Zolotow, wrote "Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present" (Harper & Row, 1962) which I loved. This one can pretty much be summed up by the title, there's a loud boy who is always causing a ruckus and a mom who enjoys some quiet. Of course, when he's away, the mom begins to miss the noise her son makes, and when the boy's SUPER rowdy cousin visits, she realizes that a bit of noise is ok, and the boy realizes a bit of quiet is sometimes a good thing. Sweet, and Simont's illustrations - watercolor-filled black pastel outlines - are fantastic. Could make a good read-aloud for a bit older audience.]



Lord, John Vernon. (1972). The giant jam sandwich. Boston, MA: Hougton Mifflin.

[Holy cow! I had COMPLETELY forgotten about this book from my childhood! I think that we even owned a copy. It strikes me that books like this just aren't made anymore - just a simple, crazy premise treated as though it were completely ordinary. Well, I'm sure that I'm exaggerating and just being overly nostalgic ("Back in my day..."), but this one is a classic gem about a town overrun with wasps who comes up with the inventive idea of making a giant jam sandwich to catch the wasps on. So, that's what they do, down to mixing a whole bunch of bread dough, baking a huge loaf of bread, and setting it all up in a farmer's field with a helicopter hovering overhead ready to drop the top piece of bread. While the illustrations are dated, the rich colors and minute details will hopefully still appeal to younger readers. This copy comes with a CD of the book which I'll likely "get" and see how it sounds.]

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