Review: Nappy Hair

Nappy Hair by Carolivia Herron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This book was a fun experience! (I'll have to compare to the other three picturebooks on this theme.) The voice of the grandpa reminded me so much of my own grandpa, who also loved to push a joke. I thought the call/response storytelling was so fresh and unique, and the way fonts were used to represent different voices responding was perfect. I loved how some of the voices were protecting the little girl, and how the grandpa responded by repairing and nurturing her. I found myself worrying whether her feelings would be hurt, and then the conversation would shift to something that built her up. Since she tells us the text comes from an audio recording, I wonder how true the text is to that recording. I also wonder if she appreciated this kind of attention at the time, or if she did find it embarrassing. I would read another book by Herron in this style in a heartbeat!

The story of the neighborhood mob that drummed a white teacher out of a Brooklyn school (because she helped the kids learn to enjoy reading through this book) is heartbreaking. You can find it on page 58 of Foerstel's book on bannings in the US.



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Review: Beach Feet

Beach Feet by Kiyomi Konagaya

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I might call this a concept book, because it focuses so directly on just the sensory experience of the beach. The corresponding-style illustrations are for helping me experience just what the words are saying.

With the pictures, this might be enough to help someone who had never actually been to a beach imagine fairly clearly what it could be like (making the strange familiar). Because I have enjoyed some days at the beach, the book resonated and felt true to my memory (so it doesn't really make the familiar feel 'strange').

Thanks to goodreads, I see there was a 1996 book with this same title. It'd be interesting to compare them!



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Review: Archie

Archie by Domenica More Gordon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



An interesting example of a wordless picturebook, because there are words all over it--but these words are more about subtext through sound effects. Kind of like an episode of Mr. Bean. The story is still mostly a picture narrative.

Still, it's interesting to think about how this book would signify without the environmental print/sound effect words. I have to say I really enjoy the trend of handwritten text in picturebooks over the past 10-15 years. I think it takes extra skill in design and illustration to be able to do this and make it come off. Gordon does well at this aspect of it. Her design is very tight, and her drawing skill is impeccable.

I just wish there had been something different about the story. The whole narrative leads up to a visual gag (which did make me chuckle). But I thought it was a lot of book just to end with a little sight joke, which didn't really do much with the strengths Gordon had set up throughout the book.

Gordon's drawing is rough around the edges, but each image still feels super tidy. Her magazine / greeting-card style of illustration is well-known in that sphere of publication, and she is totally in control of her skill. I wouldn't mind seeing more picture books drawn by her, and would like to see this same kind of sensitivity from her illustration bleed over into her construction of the story. Maybe she should find a partnership with a really great writer.



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Review: Life Story

Life Story by Virginia Lee Burton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book blew me away when I first read it. It's approach to natural history and evolution is unapologetic and embraces the beauty of natural history. It does so through a kind of anthropomorphism or anthropocentrism (in the device of a theater) that is easy to criticize, but which in this case seems like an interesting technique to bring interest to the lifeless or non-human eras of the world's development. I have owned several copies in the past 15 years, and have had my students buy it as one of the key books for discussing design and visual elements. Burton controls composition and visual elements such as line and color masterfully. She knows exactly how to guide our eyes along a line to see her illustrated narrative emerge as if the picture were live on stage.



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Review: Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas

Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas by Molly Bang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I could have used this book years ago when we were doing an inquiry project on oceans, and we could hardly find anything on plankton. This is a great book for making single-celled phytoplankton into an interesting thing to look at and think about.

This book reminds me of Virginia Lee Burton's Life Story in its storytelling and composition style. It emphasizes the beauty of the life cycles and the organisms themselves, but without making them cute or non-dangerous.

This book also has the extended 'fact section' at the end where the storytelling voice is broken and shifts straight to an informational text structure for 2-3 pages. Lu Benke was wondering yesterday what practical needs editors and publishers might have for insisting on this section at the end of these books. This book is cowritten by a biologist, so there's some reputability to the science. But the fact that the book presents no sources is a liability--minimally on its credibility, but more so on its usefulness in inquiry. If there's a scientist on board, can't she show us what some of the best sources are for further exploration of plankton?



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Review: The Stupids Die

The Stupids Die by Harry Allard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



When Bela came home from school one day in first grade, she said that a boy got in trouble for saying the 's' word. We asked, "Which s-word'?" Stupid! was the reply. Some strange cultural undercurrent made this word into a no-no in primary education in the 1990s and this book was and is still the antidote. When will teachers and parents learn that making a word into a tabu only makes it all the more enticing to use on the sly?

This book is the perfect antidote! But the story is only part of it. It's the way James Marshall adds subtext to the story with the illustrations that makes it interesting reading. The paintings on the walls, the looks on the faces of the dog and cat--all part of an overall mix of complementary and counterpoint illustration.

I've loved this series since I found a used copy of #2 at a library sale in Michigan in the 1990s (the dust jacket and cover illustration were missing, but the hard cover was embossed with a drawing of a chicken labeled 'cow').



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Review: This Moose Belongs to Me

This Moose Belongs to Me by Oliver Jeffers

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Jeffers wins again. This was an enchanting example of counterpoint illustration-text relationship (I set it squarely on my goodreads 'counterpoint' shelf, which has only 7 books--cue cricket chirps).

That is, the pictures contradict what the words say, and vice versa. Jeffers' take on counterpoint gave me the sense that either the narrator in the words or in the pictures was exaggerating, maybe just plain lyin'! Here it feels more like someone is winking at me about Wilfred, as if to say, "Leave him alone. Let him have his dream." Jeffers enhances all this by using an incongruous style for the backgrounds--the painterly landscapes don't match his cartoony figures at all.

The specific experience of this counterpoint book prompts some wicked reader-response theorizing(are you listening, Wolfgang Iser?): In a picturebook are there two narrators, one for the pictures and one for the text, or just one narrator for both? This becomes even more convoluted when we think how so many picturebooks are written by an author and then illustrated by a separate artist. Because the narrator, implied reader, implied author, narratee are all 'characters' made up by the reader (in the back of the mind usually), these questions can't be answered simply: i.e., 'The writer makes up one narrator, and the illustrator makes up another.'

This would be an excellent book for a technique like 'sketch to stretch'--to ask readers to draw this omniscient teller outside the frame of the pages, maybe on scanned pages with wide white borders. Putting the narrator's words into a thought bubble and giving the narrator a concrete character. Then the narratee question is easy to ask: To whom is this 'guy' telling the story? This is exactly the kind of book that could support folks discovering some nifty inner workings of literature!



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