Bookology Magazine

Melissa Sweet

Bicycles, Bloomers, and Books about Invention

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Birth of the Bicycle by Sarah Nelson and Iacopo Bruno, Candlewick Press
Since 1900, most of kids' riding and rolling has happened on bicycles. It’s no wonder that children love these clever machines. As kids learn to ride, their worlds widen; their independence grows.

Poets and Picture Books

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How to Write a Poem
Poets and picture book writers both know the weight of a word, the sound of a syllable, the turn of a line, and they both know that every word matters.

Art Will Out

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Ablaze with Color
This month we have been thinking about the mysteries of the visual arts—how some artists must create, no matter the circumstances.

Perseverance

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The Oldest Student
Patience and perseverance are among the hardest things for children to learn. How can we make pressing on in the face of discouragement interesting to kids? By reading them amazing stories of creativity and resilience!

Growing a Nonfiction Reader
and Even a Nonfiction Writer

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Candice Ransom
It is more impor­tant to pave the way for the child to want to know 
than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assim­i­late.  —Rachel Car­son One would nev­er guess from the fol­low­ing excerpts that a cer­tain nine-year-old would grow up to write more than 50 non­fic­tion children’s books.  This is from my fourth-grade book­let on Florida: The Cypress swamp is a part of the Everglades.… more

Some Illustrator!

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Candice Ransom
In my next life, I’m com­ing back either as a cat liv­ing in our house (think Canyon Ranch for cats), or Melis­sa Sweet. I’ve fol­lowed her career since she illus­trat­ed James Howe’s Pinky and Rex (1990). I love this book for its atyp­i­cal char­ac­ters (Pinky is a boy who loves pink and stuffed ani­mals, and Rex, his girl friend, is into dinosaurs), but also for Melissa’s fresh-faced char­ac­ters and bright watercolors.… more

Some Writer!

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I had the won­der­ful good for­tune of hear­ing Melis­sa Sweet talk about her work last week. It was a fas­ci­nat­ing pre­sen­ta­tion about her process, her research, her art. I left inspired, and with a han­ker­ing to find scis­sors and a glue stick and do some col­lage myself. (Let’s be clear, things would not turn out at all like Sweet’s gor­geous works of art….)… more

Melissa Sweet

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Melissa Sweet
In this inter­view with Melis­sa Sweet, illus­tra­tor of A Riv­er of Words: The Sto­ry of William Car­los Williams, our Book­storm™ this month, we asked six ques­tions and Melis­sa kind­ly took time from her busy days of vis­it­ing schools and cre­at­ing art.
 Do you recall the first time you encountered a William Carlos Williams poem? My first introduction to William Carlos Williams was when I was seven years old and went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.… more

Jen Bryant

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Jen Bryant
In this inter­view with Jen Bryant, author of A Riv­er of Words: The Sto­ry of William Car­los Williams, our Book­storm™ this month. Do you recall the first time you encountered a William Carlos Williams poem? I was in high school—and it was part of an anthology reading that we did for English class. I had disliked/not understood/ been unmoved by all of the other poems in this assigned reading (I recall that the language in those poems was archaic and flowery, and the forms very, VERY traditional)—and then—whooosh—like a breath of fresh air, here were a few selected W.… more

Bookstorm™: A River of Words

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A River of Words
  Author Jen Bryant and illus­tra­tor Melis­sa Sweet have teamed up on a num­ber of pic­ture book biogra­phies about cre­ative artists. We’ve cho­sen to fea­ture their very first col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing this month in which poet­ry takes the spot­light. By telling us the true sto­ry about poet William Car­los Williams’ child­hood and grow­ing up, with his clear poet­ry sur­round­ing the pages, they awak­en inter­est in young peo­ple who may think this no-longer-liv­ing, ancient (he was born in 1883 and died in 1963) poet is not with­in reach.… more

Lowriders in Space Companion Booktalks

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  To get you start­ed on the Book­storm™ books … 13 Plan­ets: The Lat­est View of the Solar Sys­tem, by David A. Aguilar. Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Children’s Books, 2011.  Grades 2 – 6 Report mate­r­i­al galore, beau­ti­ful­ly organized Illus­trat­ed with a com­bi­na­tion of pho­tographs and dig­i­tal art Includes sev­er­al hands-on activities Car Sci­ence: an Under-the-Hood, Behind-the-Dash Look at How Cars Work, by Richard Ham­mond, DK Books, 2008.… more

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