2013 Picture Book Roundup

It's getting to be a yearly tradition, my January post about my favorite books of the year.  Here are my top 5 picture books, ones I'd love to see honored by the Caldecott committee at the end of the month!  I didn't do too badly last year, as I mentioned This Is Not My Hat and One Cool Friend in my top five.  Let's see how I do this year . . .

Mr. Wuffles! by David Wiesner -- you know, this seems like a kind of no-brainer, considering that Mr. Wiesner has a lot of history with the Caldecott committee.  While I like his earlier books, I really love this one.  For one thing, it's hilarious.  Mr. Wuffles, the haughty black kitty pictured on the book's cover, turns his nose up at one cat toy after another, only to fixate on one small object that is not a cat toy, but a spaceship full of aliens.  This is a nearly wordless book that manages to tell a story with hair-raising adventure and laugh-out-loud humor, which will be no surprise to Wiesner's established fan base.

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown -- in a staid Edwardian society, one tiger gets fed up with good manners and proper clothing, and he goes completely wild.  This is another picture book that brings the funny, and I must admit that I guffawed at the full spread of Mr. Tiger, newly nude and obviously proud of it!  The color palette really works well, with the lush greens of the forest contrasting with the tans and browns of the city, and Mr. Tiger showing up as a bright pop of color in each.

Grandma and the Great Gourd by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, illustrated by Susy Pilgrim Waters -- this is my dark horse pick, as I've heard very little about it around the various blogs I frequent, which is a shame.  In this traditional folktale, Grandma goes through the forest to visit her daughter.  Three predatory animals consider eating her, but she convinces them to wait until she comes back through, as eating her daughter's good cooking will fatten her up.  She finds a creative solution to get her back through the forest when it is time to go home, but will it trick the hungry beasts?  As you can see from the cover, this book is full of vibrant, saturated colors.  The backgrounds remind me of batik cloth, providing an excellent foil for Grandma in her flowing white dress.

Journey by Aaron Becker -- This one, on the other hand, seems to be a crowd favorite.  A lonely little girl with a red marker draws a door and walks through it into a fantastical country where she has amazing adventures, and meets a new friend, as well.  Publishers are always pitching things as "this meets that," so I'd call this Harold and the Purple Crayon meets David Macaulay -- the story is reminiscent of the former, but the artwork displays the meticulous attention to detail of the latter.

Building Our House by Jonathan Bean -- the most personal of my choices, since my parents are in the very beginning stages of building a retirement home on my grandparents' farm.  This book has something for everyone: technical details, tools, and equipment for readers who love diggers and dumpers, little details of family life and changes for those more interested in the human side of the story, and even an entire wordless story about a cat and her kittens, for the cat lovers willing to take a closer look. It's not as showy a title as some of the others I've mentioned, or even some of the others I haven't mentioned, but it definitely has its quiet charms.

I could easily go on and list several honorable mention titles, but I'll stop there.  Over the next few days, I'll be posting favorites from juvenile and young adult fiction, so be on the lookout!

Picture Book Roundup

Last year, around this time, I did a series of posts talking about my picks for the Youth Media Awards (which are announced at the ALA Midwinter Meeting each January).  It was so much fun that I'm doing it again, and will, of course, do a follow-up post after the awards are announced.

I'll start out with picture books.  I've done a Mock Caldecott at my library two years in a row now.  While I'm still no expert on art, I do think that it helps me be exposed to a wide variety of picture books, more than I might come across in my haphazard perusal of the new materials shelf at my library.  I do have my favorites, but I think there are a lot of strong contenders this year, so I would not be surprised if none of the ones I particularly love garner shiny stickers.

One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small
This is my personal favorite picture book of the year, but when I was looking at books to include in my Mock Caldecott, I had to think long and hard about whether I loved the illustrations, or the story.  In the end, I decided that the illustrations do support the story in a truly fascinating way -- there's a really funny twist at the end of the book, and when you go back and reread, the pictures give hints to the twist that make you question some of the things you thought you knew on your first read-through.  Am I being cryptic enough?  Go read the book and you'll see what I mean!

I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr., illustrated by Kadir Nelson
This book knocks my socks off in terms of artistic quality.  Kadir Nelson does things with oil paint that are unrivaled, as far as I'm concerned.  There is a luminous quality to the artwork in this book, particularly the portraits -- you can sort of get a sense of what I mean from the cover image above, but there's so much more within.  Take a look when you get a chance.

Bear Has a Story to Tell by Philip C. Stead, illustrated by Erin E. Stead
This book is bound to become a staple of my bears/hibernation story time theme, but the artwork takes it beyond "just another cute bear book."  I love the way Stead uses color so sparingly -- there's a lot of white space, so when there are pops of color (or entire spreads full of it) they really stand out.  There's also a lot of texture there; take a look at Bear's coat and you can see what I mean. 

This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen
Another funny book -- what can I say, I have a weakness for them.  This cheeky little fish has a lot in common with the rabbit in last year's I Want My Hat Back . . . there's a lot of hat-related drama in Jon Klassen's picture book world.  In this book, the fish is telling one story, while the pictures are often telling another, and the ending will delight readers who have been paying attention to both.  Klassen has illustrated three books eligible for the award this year, if I am counting correctly (I've heard a lot about Extra Yarn and hardly anything about House Held Up by Trees), but this is my favorite of his in terms of making the artwork do the work of telling the story.

Oh, No! by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann
There's an air of "instant classic" about this book.  It's kind of perfect for reading aloud, the kind of book that kids are going to love and demand to hear again and again.  But there I go, talking about the text again! This is another case of the artwork doing a lot of the work of telling the story -- in fact, the story begins on the endpapers at the front of the book, and ends (or perhaps I should say, continues) on the endpapers at the back of the book.  I did some research on the medium used by Rohmann for this book -- he created it using block prints and something called the reduction method, which I had to look up.  Basically, it involves making a linoleum block print, then carving out a little bit more of the block for each layer of color that goes into making the illustration.  It sounds fabulously complicated and (if I were to try it) frustrating.  Does having a complicated process automatically make the artwork more distinguished?  Of course not -- but I can't help being impressed by both the process and the results in this case.

Those are my top five, pretty much in order of preference.  As I mentioned above, it's been a good year for picture books and I'm sure the committee has their work cut out for them!  What about you, readers -- do you have any picture book favorites from 2012?

(Reviewed from copies borrowed through my library system.)

Bonus picture book review: One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo

I haven't reviewed many picture books here yet.  I read lots of them, of course -- as a children's librarian, they cross my desk regularly.  Last year, I even did a Mock Caldecott program, and I posted about my personal favorites before the Youth Media Awards were announced.  But I rarely spend enough time with them to formulate a review.  However, when one comes along that manages to surprise and delight me, I have to give it a little extra praise.

One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small, is one of those books that managed to delight me from the first page to the last.  Elliot, a very proper young man, is polite but slightly disinterested when his father suggests that they attend Family Fun Day at the aquarium. "Kids, masses of noisy kids," Elliot thinks -- and proves to be correct.  As Elliot's absentminded father sits on a bench and reads his magazine, Elliot bypasses several crowded exhibits until he discovers the penguin display.  The penguins appeal to his sensibilities . . . so he takes one home.

This was all reminding me of My Penguin Osbert, a book that I enjoy reading at post-Christmas storytimes, but One Cool Friend gets bonus points for humor and a twist at the end that made me laugh out loud.  The interplay between the text and the pictures is flawless -- I was particularly impressed at the way David Small makes the character of Elliot's father come to life on the pages of the book.  Kids and adults alike will appreciate this story, and I'll definitely be using it as a read-aloud in the future!

(Reviewed from a copy borrowed through my library system.)

Picture Book Round-Up

It’s the season of anticipation: the ALA Youth Media Awards (including the Newbery and Caldecott) will be announced one week from today.  Most years, I have an opinion on the Newbery (the award for the most distinguished book for children published in the USA in the previous year) – and sometimes one of my picks shows up as one of the books that earns recognition.  I usually have favorites for the Printz (the teen book award) – but the Printz committee usually manages not only to completely disregard the books I would have chosen, but to choose books I have never even heard of.

Most years, I don’t have much of an opinion about the Caldecott – perhaps I will have a favorite, but will not feel qualified to predict a winner.  Part of this is that my training in evaluating art is rudimentary at best, and part is that I pay less attention to picture books than I do to novels.  I use lots of picture books in my work, and I have my favorites, but I rarely spend as much time with picture book new releases as I do with middle-grade or young adult novels.

This year is different.  This year, at my library, we decided to have a Mock Caldecott election.  The main part of planning for this program involved me spending a lot of time really considering the year’s crop of picture books.  I’m not sure, but it seems to me that this was a particularly good year in the picture book world.  Some years, there is a clear favorite (for instance, it seemed like nearly everybody wanted The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney to win back in 2009), but this is not one of those years.  There are certainly books that are getting a lot of buzz, but there’s no single book that seems to be on everyone’s lips.  So, based on my reading and research, here are my top five picture books from this year:

Brother Sun, Sister Moon by Katherine Paterson, illustrated by Pamela Dalton

Naamah and the Ark at Night by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, illustrated by Holly Meade

Perfect Square by Michael Hall

Say Hello to Zorro by Carter Goodrich

Where’s Walrus? by Stephen Savage

Of course, it's hard to choose a favorite (or even five favorites), and my choices may change between now and next week.  Even if the Caldecott committee doesn't choose any of these books, there are many others that I have looked at and really appreciate, and would love to see with a shiny sticker on the cover.

What about you, readers?  Any favorite 2011 picture books that you're rooting for as the awards roll around?