Books have been a part of Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s life since the day she was born. “My mother found my name in a novel she was reading,” Nelson says. Books and family and history form a thread through many of Nelson’s award-winning picture books.
We want to focus on Nelson’s telling of history beginning with the nineteenth century. Almost to Freedom (Carolrhoda, 2003; illustrated by Colin Bootman) is narrated by Sally, a doll made by the little girl Lindy’s enslaved mother for her daughter. “I started out no more’n a bunch of rags on a Virginia plantation,” the doll tells us. When the doll is given to Lindy, Lindy hugs her hard, names her Sally, and says, “We gonna be best friends.” Lindy takes Sally everywhere, tying her to her waist with a rope when Lindy and her momma pick cotton.
Then Lindy’s father is sold away to another owner for trying to get to Freedom, and Lindy is whipped for asking Massa’s son how to spell her name. One night Lindy’s momma wakes Lindy “when the sun ain’t awake yet,” and they run away, Sally tied to Lindy’s waist, to meet Lindy’s father at the river. Once across the river, they run, then hide in an underground storeroom in a house on the underground railroad. “We almost to Freedom,” Lindy whispers to Sally, but slave catchers are after them, and when they frantically scramble out to run again, Sally falls out of the rope around Lindy’s waist and is left behind in the hidden storeroom. Sally waits alone in the darkness, thinking she might be there “for the rest of her days” until one day a mother and her daughter Willa, escaped slaves, are hidden in the storeroom. Willa, shivering and scared, picks up the doll, names her Belinda, and promises they will be best friends. While the doll misses Sally, she is “mighty glad to be Willa’s doll baby. It’s a right important job.”
In an author’s note Nelson says she was inspired by a collection of Black rag dolls in a folk art museum, about which the guidebook said a few had been found in an Underground Railroad hideout. Nelson thought, “if only these dolls could talk,” and Sally/Belinda does talk to reader, in a voice that makes us care not just about Sally but also about Lindy and her family and, later, Willa and her mother and any people fleeing the horrors of slavery. Collin Bootman’s rich dark paintings capture the story’s emotions, from fear and pain to tenderness and love. While we don’t learn what happens to Sally and her family or Willa and her mother, the book is a story of hope and courage and comfort in the face of the unspeakable evil of slavery and of the longing for freedom and the “right important job” of being loved.
Bad News for Outlaws (Carolrhoda, 2009; illustrated by R. Gregory Christie) begins “Jim Webb’s luck was running muddy when Bass Reeves rode into town.” Muddy, indeed. Webb was on the run from Marshall Bass Reeves and leaped out a window to escape, but Bass chased him down. When Webb fired his gun Reeves, who hated bloodshed, was forced to shoot Webb down. After that dramatic showdown scene, Nelson tells us how Reeves went from enslaved to becoming a legendary lawman in what was then called Indian Territory, a wild part of the wild west.
Reeves had been enslaved in Texas, where his owner taught him to shoot and hunt. When Bass and his owner argued and Bass hit the owner, Bass knew he had to run, and run he did for Indian Territory, where he lived with Native Americans until slavery ended. Eventually Reeves became a U.S. Marshall for Judge Isaac C. Parker. Reeves was known for tracking down criminals and also for his shooting ability, so accurate he could “‘shoot the left hind leg off a contented fly sitting on a mule’s ear at a hundred yards and never ruffle a hair.’”
Never taught to read, Reeves memorized everything he needed to know to hunt down wanted outlaws, often using disguises to capture them. In his long career he arrested more than three thousand people and brought in wagonloads of criminals. Both respected and hated, Reeves was “right as rain from the bootheels up” and devoted to doing his duty. Once he cut down a man about to be lynched by an angry mob, an act that was “near as risky as a grasshopper landing on an anthill.” When Bass Reeves’s son killed his wife, Bass did his painful duty and arrested his own son.
written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, Carolrhoda Books
For 32 years, Bass Reeves hunted down outlaws and brought them in to face justice. He was the longest serving marshal in Indian territory until Oklahoma became a state and Reeves was out of a job. Nearly seventy years old, he joined a local police force, and during his two years on the force not a single crime occurred in his area. Such was the power of Reeve’s reputation as a lawman. When he died, fellow lawmakers called Reeves one of the bravest men the country had ever known and “the most feared deputy U.S. marshal that was ever heard of.”
Reading this book is a joy, both for the story of Bass Reeves and also for the voice in which Nelson tells that story. Extensive back matter includes an author’s note, definitions for “western words” such as shooting irons and tumbleweed wagons, a timeline of Reeves’s life, suggestions for further reading, and historical background on Indian Territory and the life of Judge Isaac C. Parker.
In Dream March (Random House, 2017; illustrated by Sally Wern Comport), Vaunda Micheaux Nelson adds a book to Random House’s Step into Reading History Reader Series and tells the story of the 1963 March on Washington.
Nelson is not content with the bland style occasionally found in easy readers and offers wonderful details for the march. “Some walked over 200 miles from Brooklyn, New York. One man rolled 698 miles from Chicago on skates. It took him ten days.” She shares lyrics from some of the songs sung that day. And she skillfully lets readers know what was at stake. “Black people fought/for many years/for the right to be treated/with respect…They fought for the right/to attend the same schools/and eat in the same restaurants. /They fought to use/the same bathrooms/and drink from the same/water fountains. /They fought to sit /on any empty bus seat/and to have the same chance/at a job. /They fought for the right to vote./”
To be treated with respect…the right to vote. The fight is not over. But we can take courage from this moment, this event. Nelson reports on Martin Luther King Jr.’s stirring words: “Finally Martin said, / his voice like thunder: /’Let freedom ring!’ /’From every hill’ and/‘every mountainside,’ /’from every state and every city,’ /’let freedom ring!’ /And if we do, people/of all colors and all faiths/will join hands and sing: /’Free at last, free at last,/thank God Almighty,/we are free at last!’”
We two like to think of young readers learning of this historic event through Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s carefully chosen words. Perhaps they will never forget the man who roller skated to attend. Perhaps they will be the people of all colors who join hands and sing. Let us hope.
We have always thought that books give us neighbors we never would have had otherwise. And Vaunda Micheaux Nelson puts readers from a small town in Iowa or south Minneapolis right next to an amazing bookstore in Harlem — the National Memorial African American Bookstore.. Lucky us!
Her story The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore (Carolrhoda, 2015; illustrated by R. Gregory Christie) introduces us to her great-uncle Lewis Michaux, a self-educated man who wanted to provide books for African-Americans who lived in Harlem. She has also written a book about this store for older readers. In this younger version she tells her great-uncle’s story through the voice of his son, Lewis Michaux Jr., who she says provided much information about Lewis Michaux Sr. and his store.
Lewis Michaux’s store eventually became famous and was visited by celebrities such as Muhammed Ali and Louis Armstrong, civil rights leaders such as W.E.B. Dubois and Malcolm X, and hundreds of Harlem residents. But in the beginning when Lewis Michaux went to a bank to ask for a loan, the bank refused. “The banker told him ‘Black people don’t read.’”
Lewis persisted and raised money for the store by washing windows. He acquired more and more books until the store was jammed full of books, wall to wall, top to bottom. “Customers stay as long as they want, even if it’s past closing time. Dad never makes them leave like other stores do. Sometimes Dad locks up so late he’s too tired to come home. He sleeps there with all his books.” Lewis Michaux loved signs: “Knowledge is power. You need it every hour. Read a book!” “Don’t get took. Read a book.” Some of his best signs are reproduced in the endpapers of the book.
Lewis also hosted speakers for rallies outside his bookstore. Whenever they set up the raised platform “people crowd around.… People come to hear talk about fighting for the same rights white people have. Talk about jobs and voting. People shout angry words. They kid around and laugh.…Dad talks to the crowd from the platform too. He says black people need to learn their history by reading books.” Lewis Michaux was friends with Malcolm X who spoke outside the store, received his mail at the store, and often talked with the bookstore owner.
The most moving section of this book reports the assassination of Malcolm X. The civil rights leader was scheduled to speak at the Audubon Ballroom and Michaux was going to appear onstage with him. But Michaux was late because he had to pick up his son from ice-skating with friends at Rockefeller Center.
“Mom hangs up [the phone] and looks at me. ‘Malcolm…’ Her eyes are wet. She can’t talk for a minute. ‘Someone shot him when he stood up to give his speech.
I can’t breathe.
Later I hear Dad’s key in the door. He hugs Mom and me and sags into his chair. …
After I go to bed, Dad sits in the living room, crying in the dark. I never heard Dad cry before, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep from crying too…
Malcolm used to say, ‘If you’re not willing to die for it, put the word freedom out of your vocabulary,’ Dad said. ‘They think they got rid of him. But people won’t forget, Louie. His words will never leave us.’
Lewis Michaux Sr.’s own grief about Malcolm X takes us right to the scene of his death. We feel its impact because we already know Lewis Michaux and we care about him.
written by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, Carolrhoda Books
“His words will never leave us.” The story ends by noting the importance of words and the importance of books and the “National Memorial African Bookstore.”
Backmatter information tells us that the bookstore was forced to move in 1968 because of the construction of a new state office building. (Why on this particular site? Could it have something to do with the importance of words and books?) Lewis moved the store and a few years later he “received notice from the state that he was being evicted.”
We are so grateful for this book (Get a new look. Read a book.) and the glimpse into the life of this remarkable man who followed his dream to make books available to the people of Harlem, to provide a gathering place for his people to promote the exchange of words and ideas.
Nelson writes like a poet, and her language sings. Dolls and lawmen, booksellers and civil rights activists, enslaved people fleeing for freedom, ordinary people marching in Washington D.C. — all of them come alive in her books. Here are other titles of hers to read and learn from and delight in.
Phyllis: 
Almost from the start, Colby made it known he wanted to see both the book and our faces as we read. We’ve found creative positions, so he can look from book to face and back again. It’s no surprise many of his favorite books feature faces of babies. At eight months, he grins and babbles whenever he sees Peekaboo Morning by Rachel Isadora. It’s a simple text: “Peekaboo! I see … my mommy; Peekaboo! I see … my daddy; Peekaboo! I see … my grandma.” The book ends with a beautiful illustration of a toddler gazing straight at the child reader. “Peekaboo! I see … you.” Colby gazes back and smiles his best drooly smile.
One of my all-time favorite picture book biographies is Weatherford’s Voice of Freedom Fannie Lou Hamer (2105; illustrated by Ekua Holmes). Hamer was a hero of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. In 1963, on her way home from a training session she ordered breakfast at a whites-only lunch counter (segregation had been outlawed by then). She and the others were taken to jail. Hamer was brutally beaten and waited three days for a doctor. She never wholly recovered from the beating, suffered kidney damage, weakened eyesight, and a permanent limp. But she did not quit. In 1964 she went to Atlantic City to the Democratic National Convention and argued that the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party’s delegation should be seated at the convention because the regular Democratic Party’s Mississippi delegation did not represent Black people. Fannie Lou Hamer continued to work in the trenches — registered voters, marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Alabama and Mississippi. In her lifetime she also started Freedom Farm, a pig bank, and a Head Start program, and helped others get government housing loans, sued to integrate the public schools in Sunflower County — and won. Weatherford studied Hamer’s life so assiduously that she could write in Hamer’s voice. She has Fannie Lou Hamer tell us her own story and intersperses the book’s text with quotes from Hamer’s speeches. The blending is seamless. This book won a Caldecott Honor.
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (2006; illustrated by Kadir Nelson) is a hymn of praise to this courageous icon of history. Weatherford begins with Harriet talking to God and hearing God’s answer in the song of a whip-poor-will. She has decided she can no longer bear slavery and will run away. “God whispers back in the breeze. ‘I will see you through child.’” The book gives us detail s of the harrowing journey north: Harriet spends a week in a hole in the ground, takes off her shoes and walks in a stream to elude bloodhounds, almost gives up several times, but hears the voice of her God, and continues. She is taken the last step of the journey by a couple with a wagon. In Philadelphia she learns the routes of the Underground Railroad and goes back south to rescue her family and many other slaves. Kadir Nelson’s powerful illustrations add to the immediacy of the book and we feel the fear, the cold, damp potato hole where Harriet hides out. Harriet Tubman’s whole life cannot be covered in one picture book, but this one book gives the reader a full sense of her courage, her ability to endure hardship, her spirituality and her relationship with God.
In 2020, Weatherford’s Box Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom was published. Illustrated by Michele Wood, it tells the story of Henry Brown who, after his wife and children were sold to an owner way south, decided to mail himself to freedom. He climbed into a wooden box. A friend nailed the box shut and posted it to Philadelphia.
Sidewalk Chalk: Poems of the City, with Dimitrea Tokunbo (illustrator), Wordsong, 2001
Becoming Billie Holiday, with Floyd Cooper (illustrator), Wordsong, 2008
How Sweet the Sound: The Story of Amazing Grace, with Frank Morrison, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2018
Infinite Hope is an unforgettable book. It contains several strands of information: Ashley Bryan’s drawings and paintings done from those drawings from his time as a soldier, drafted into World War II; his letters to Eva; photographs as background information, illustrating places he encountered or was stationed; text written recently recollecting Bryan’s wartime experiences. These strands give readers a powerful and textured sense of Bryan’s wartime experience. He dispassionately describes the many instances of racism the about 20 members of the 502 Battalion encountered: while stationed in Belgium they quickly made friends with the Belgians, were invited into their homes and shared good times. To put an end to this socializing the white officers prohibited the Black soldiers from leaving the base on weekends, though no such prohibition was laid on the whites; the Black officers were not allowed in the officer’s facilities or clubs; on Omaha Beach during the D‑Day landing, the bodies of Black soldiers were quickly removed from the beach so they would not show up on newscasts; German prisoners of war (captured enemy soldiers!) were allowed to sit in the front of buses and socialize with whites; Blacks had to sit in the back; Blacks were the last to be sent home and could only be on board a ship if there were no whites to take those spots. One of the most chilling pictures is Black soldiers detailed to clear as-yet-unexploded mines, during which, Bryan tells us, many Black lives were lost.
Freedom Over Me is Ashley Bryan’s reconstruction of the lives of eleven people whose names he found in a collection of slave-related documents. “Eleven slaves are listed for sale with the cows, hogs, cotton; only the names and prices of the slaves are noted (no age is indicated)….My art and writing in this story aim to bring the slaves alive as human beings.” And so he does, he invents their dreams, their losses. Peggy is the cook, brought from Africa, who feels close to the mother she was separated from on the auction block, when she steams roots and herbs. And Peggy’s strong, unflinching face looks carved from African wood. Stephen, a carpenter, who loves Jane, a seamstress, and build a special sewing shed for her. Jane: “The praise I receive, /I offer as a tribute/to my ancestors.”
Beautiful Blackbird is a beautiful book. The cut-paper artwork in vivid solid colors shows the birds of Africa a long time ago “in their clean, clear colors from head to tail.” Only Blackbird was black all over. When Ringdove asks all the birds who is the most beautiful of them all, the birds all agree that Blackbird is the most beautiful one.
Beautiful Blackbird feels like a classic work of children’s literature. And so does Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum. The title is no accident — rhythm is a part of every page of this book. Here’s an early part of the first story: ”Hen strut two steps, pecked at a bug. Frog bopped three hops, flicked his tongue at a fly. Strut two steps, peck at a bug. Bom three hops, flick at a fly. Hen flapped her wings and spun around. Frog slapped his legs and tapped the ground.” That rhythm is just so much fun to read. We know when there’s a hen involved there’s often work to be done — and the other creatures don’t want to do it. So we know the shape of this story. Bryan wants us to have some fun along the way. “Why the Bush Cow and Elephant Are Bad Friends” features two huge characters who cannot resist the urge to fight to prove which one is strongest. No fight ever proves anything. And perhaps the main character of the story is the comic monkey who talks in scat rhythms and, when he goes to tell the Head Chief the two enemies are fighting again forgets his message and eats bananas.
In looking through Bryan’s published works we discovered one we didn’t know, Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry. Rather than having each letter begin a poet’s name Bryan includes lines from poems that began with or included that letter. So the letter A showcases lines from James Weldon Johnson:
Jackie: There’s lovely magic in Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle. This book has been a favorite of mine since my days as a preschool teacher. It never fails to please the sit-on-the-rug crowd. What’s not to love? There’s Eric Carle’s wonderful moon, and a father so dedicated that he finds a “very long ladder” and takes it to “a very high mountain.” Then he climbs to the moon and waits until it’s just the right size. He brings it back and gives it to his daughter. She hugs it, jumps and dances with it — until it disappears.
Phyllis: In Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, Kitten, too, yearns for the moon, mistaking it for a bowl of milk. “And she wanted it.” Closing her eyes and licking toward the moon only gives her a bug on her tongue, jumping at the moon ends in a tumble, and chasing the moon ends with Kitten up a tree and the moon no closer. After each attempt, the text reminds us of Kitten’s yearning: “Still, there was the little bowl of milk, just waiting.” When Kitten sees the moon’s reflection in the pond and leaps for it, she ends up tired, sad, and wet. Poor kitten! She returns home… to find a big bowl of milk on the porch, just waiting for her to lap it up.
Jackie: Kittens and children and all of us are fascinated by the moon. Thirteen Moons on Turtle’s Back: a Native American Year of Moons (Penguin, 1992) by Joseph Bruchac and Jonathan London is a collection of thirteen poems about the seasons of the moon from “each of the thirteen Native American tribal nations in different regions of the continent [chosen] to give a wider sense of the many things Native American people have been taught to notice in this beautiful world around us.” The noticing is one thing I love about this book. Reading these poems makes me want to walk in the woods and see something in a new way.
Outside the lodge
Jackie: Moonlight by Helen V. Griffith (Greenwillow, 2012) is also a poetic text — and spare:
Jane Yolen’s Owl Moon, which won a Caldecott for its evocative wintry art, is a story of an owl, patience, hope, and love. On a snowy night the narrator sets out to go on a long-awaited outing owling with Pa. She knows, because Pa says, that when you go owling you have to be quiet, you have to make your own heat, and you have to have hope. Their hope is finally rewarded when they spot an owl and stare into the owl’s eyes as it stare back before it flies away. The last image shows the small narrator being carried toward the lights of home by her pa. The book concludes:
Several of her books are looked at closely. When she accepted the challenge to illustrate Phyllis Root’s Big Momma Makes the World (Candlewick, 2003), a re-telling of the creation story that casts the Maker as a single mother, Oxenbury writes, “I see Big Momma as highlighting the complex condition of women,” she explained. “It is impossibly hard for women today — so much is expected of them. They have the children, create the environment they live in, nurture this environment, bring up their children, and, more than likely, hold down a responsible job to boot. And then they have to sparkle on a social level!” These are the thoughts with which Oxenbury created a picture book that won The Boston Globe-Horn Book Award.
Monique Gray Smith is a new-to-us author. When we looked at other books she has written, we also fell in love with You Hold Me Up, illustrated by Danielle Daniel. In the same simple, lyrical prose, Smith celebrates the ways in which we hold each other up: when you are kind to me, when you share with me, when we learn together, when you play with me, laugh with me, sing with me, comfort me, listen to me, respect me. The book concludes, “You hold me up. I hold you up. We hold each other up.” In this trying and sometimes terrifying year, we am grateful for all those who help hold us up and who, we hope, we help hold up, too. 
Jackie:
In the first book he illustrated, a collection of poems by twelve poets, In Daddy’s Arms I Am Tall (1997), Javaka Steptoe’s poem “Seeds” is a tribute to his father.
While I was at the library I found another of Javaka Steptoe’s books, Sweet Sweet Baby, a small cloth book with simple text (“My sweet baby, My honey bun, I love you forever, My precious one…”) The book is shaped like a flower with six petals, each a different color and texture, with Steptoe’s illustrations of African American children and parents on each page and a Mylar mirror at the end. I wish I’d had this book for my babies to delight in. It’s clear that for Steptoe, family matters in everything he does.
The Jones Family Express, the first book Steptoe both wrote and also illustrated, is another celebration of family as relatives gather for the yearly block party. The narrator Steven’s favorite aunt, Aunt Carolyn, is coming back from one of her many summertime trips. Each trip she sends him a postcard and tells him when he’s old enough he can take a trip with her. He wants to give his aunt a special gift, but he has only a few hours until her train arrives. With his saved-up $10.75 cents he heads to Nostrand Avenue to find a gift. Perkins’s Drug Store has nothing special enough, and the elephant picture frame at Miss Ruby’s that he wants to buy is almost three times more than he has to spend. His Uncle Charles encounters him on the street and offers to find something within Steven’s budget at his house, which is full of junky objects that could be useful one day. Steven finds the perfect gift, a train with peeling paint and broken windows. By the time he fixes it up with picture of family covering the broken windows and The Jones Family Express painted on the side, it’s time to meet Aunt Carolyn. She declares his gift the best she’s ever received and gives him his postcard on which she has written that he’s old enough now to take a trip with her. 
In his Radiant Child, the Caldecott-winning biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat, he used “found wood harvested from discarded Brooklyn Museum exhibit materials, the Dumpsters of Brooklyn brownstones, and the streets of Greenwich Village and the Lower East side.” He also includes cut out photographs of people on the street, a street musician playing a trumpet, dancers, and people I probably should recognize.
One evening a few months ago, I came down to our office to find my son Adam finishing up The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. He recalled that we used to read the book together. “Whistle for Willie is by the same author.” “We still have that book too,” I said as I went to retrieve it from the picture book collection that has been relegated to the utility room.
The first book we read, Clip-Clop by Nicola Smee, didn’t do much but confirm their feelings. It was one of the first books Adam had requested by name when he was a toddler. He didn’t remember that, and he no longer had fond feelings for the book. My boys thought the story line was too simple for them now, and they no longer appreciate the repetitive phrases in the text.
The next book didn’t get a much better reception. We often used to check I Stink! by Kate and Jim McMullan out of the library, with its accompanying CD. The boys both went through a phase when they would listen repeatedly to this story about a garbage truck and his nightly work. I guess we should have checked out the CD again for the full effect. As it was, my reading of the book dredged up no real positive memories. They just thought the text was silly and wondered why younger kids are so fascinated by garbage trucks. 
Yellow Elephant: A Bright Bestiary by Julie Larios was another favorite of Adam’s — he used to head right for the bin in the children’s section where he knew it would be “shelved.” He wanted me to read it over and over to him, and still liked it when I read it to him and Caleb a few years later. “I remember this book,” Caleb said with a smile. We all admired the illustrations by Julie Paschkis, and noted this time how pretty the gold finch is. A few years ago, I found a used copy of this book for purchase, so now we have it on the bookshelf in the living room. Still, it had been a year or two since we’d last read it. About midway through reading it this time, Adam said, “these poems are for any age.” I agree. 
We found that Scaredy Squirrel by Mélanie Watt seemed to have taken on added meaning thanks to the pandemic. I used to read this book to Caleb frequently, but this time, we were struck by how commonplace it now seems to heed the warning inside the front cover: “Scaredy Squirrel insists that everyone wash their hands with antibacterial soap before reading this book.” At the start of the story, the squirrel never leaves his tree, and every day is the same. We can so well relate to staying home and thinking that every day feels exactly the same. Scaredy Squirrel even has a face mask and rubber gloves in his emergency kit, details we hadn’t taken much note of in all prior readings. But the squirrel’s self-quarantine came to an end after he discovered that nothing horrible had happened when he fell, propelled out of this tree into the unknown. We were able to vicariously enjoy Scaredy Squirrel’s “drastic changes” in his daily routine as we hold out hope for the day when we aren’t so confined to our own living space.
The last book we read that evening was Get Me to the Ark on Time, written and illustrated by Cuyler Black. A riff on the flood account from the Torah, the story is presented in cartoon format, narrated by a flamingo and an anteater. This book held their attention, and the banter between the narrators still produced a few smiles.
Illustrated by John Steptoe
Entertainment, art, and education are all combined in some of the best illustrated books I’ve come across. Marion Dane Bauer’s The Stuff of Stars is surely the most beautiful weave of these elements, with abstract illustrations by Ekua Holmes that allow a glimpse of nature made of star dust. You can make out the forms of horses, feet, birds, butterflies, and a caretaker hugging a child. The first time I read this with my grandson Teddy, he exclaimed at the exploding stars, “I’m beginning to love this book!” It has become a favorite, and Teddy and I enjoy finding new images every time we share it. He reads along with me, loving the idea that before there was you, there was a universe, and we’re all made of star dust. (Note: this book actually inspired the name of this column.)
In “Slowly, Slowy Slowly,” said the Sloth the sloth slowly, slowly, slowly crawls along a tree branch, eats a leaf, falls asleep, wakes up. All day, all night, even in the rain the sloth hangs upside down in a tree. The other animals ask the sloth, Why are you so slow? So quiet? So boring? The sloth doesn’t answer until the jaguar asks (rather rudely), “Why are you so lazy?” Then the sloth thinks for a long, long, long time and says, “It is true that I am slow, quiet, and boring. I am lackadaisical, I dawdle, and I dilly-dally. I am also unflappable, languid, stoic, impassive, sluggish, lethargic, passive, calm, mellow, laid-back, and, well, slothful. I am relaxed and tranquil, and I like to live in peace. But I am not lazy … That’s just how I am. I like to do things slowly, slowly, slowly.”
I have an Eric Carle baking book to share. Walter the Baker was published in 1972 and was off my radar, but it’s a charming story about a skilled and clever baker, Walter, who was “the best baker in the whole duchy.” The Duke and Duchess loved his sweet rolls and ate them every morning. And then, oh my gosh, Walter’s cat spilled the milk Walter was planning to use in the sweet rolls, so he had to make his rolls with water. The Duke and Duchess could tell something was wrong and decided to expel Walter from the Duchy. Walter asks for one last chance and the Duke agrees, but only if Walter can invent a roll “through which the rising sun can shine three times.” The roll must be made of one piece of dough and must taste good. AND it must be done by tomorrow morning.
While we’re on the topic of food, in Pancakes, Pancakes! Jack wakes up wanting a big pancake for breakfast. His busy mother says he will have to help. She sends him with a sickle to cut as much wheat as a donkey can carry to take to the miller to grind into flour. At the mill Jack first needs to help thresh the wheat with a flail, and the miller grinds the resulting grain into flour. “Here’s the flour,” Jack tells his mother. “Let’s make a pancake.”
The Grouchy Ladybug doesn’t flail about, but does have a rough day, as anyone who’s ever been grouchy will recognize. And these days my mood often swings between grouchy and grateful, so I was pleased to spend time with this ladybug, who is just grouchy, no reason, maybe just woke up grouchy.
Phyllis: 
The story takes on twists and turns and amazing details. Recently Teddy read to me from Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks from A to Z. Teddy was concerned that an apple car might arrive instead of an ambulance. “Would the worker take you to a farm?” he asked. “Would you get better or worse?” When we reached an image of a pickle car, Teddy asked, “Who drives a pickle car? Do you?”
The Duchess Bakes a Cake by Virginia Kahl has been around since 1955. The Duke and Duchess live with their thirteen daughters: Madelyn, Gwendolyn, Jane, Catilda, Carolyn, Gwenevieve, Maud, Mathilda, Willibald, Genevieve, Joan, Brunhilde, and Gunhilde. One day the Duchess decides to bake a cake — a lovely, light luscious, delectable cake. She gives the cook the day off and begins to assemble. “Whatever she found she put into the batter.” And six times as much yeast for good measure. When the cake begins to rise the Duchess sits on top of it to tamp it down. But the lovely, light luscious delectable cake will not be stopped. Soon the Duchess is high in the sky, hoping for good weather.
Jackie:
Jackie: 
Jackie:
I was reminded of that magic recently when I came across a dusty copy of Wild Wild Sunflower Child Anna by Nancy White Carlstrom (author) and Jerry Pinkney (illustrator).
After reading Anna’s garden tale, Amanda pulled out Laundry Day, a book by writer/illustrator Jessixa Bagley.
Amanda ended up reading an entire stack of favorites while grandkids explored the pictures. Jessixa’s detailed art was definitely a top new choice.
Another favorite is Wherever You Go, written by Pat Zietlow Miller and illustrated by Eliza Wheeler.
Michael Gay’s The Christmas Wolf was originally published in France as Le Loup Noël. Fortunately for us, it was also published in English in 1980 by Greenwillow Books. Father Wolf and his family live in the mountains in an abandoned powerhouse. When the wolf cubs wonder why Father Christmas never comes to them, Father Wolf decide something must be done and heads to town. He is run off the road by a truck and lands in the dump, where he fashions a disguise from a hat, boots, a long coat, and sunglasses. But it’s hard to hide his wolfish tendencies at the store in town, where a revolving door baffles him, and salespeople wonder when he says that his wife prefers a bone to jewelry. In the toy section his excitement causes him to forget his disguise, and his tail gives him away. In the outcry, Father Wolf hides in a wintry window display, finally returning home empty handed that night. The same truck that ran him off the road, returning from town, manages to hit him, and when he howls in pain Mother Wolf finds him and helps him home. The truck drivers, frightened by the howl, leap from the truck, which pitches down the mountainside, scattering the presents it carried. In the morning, the animals find presents everywhere — in trees, on the ground. A bandaged and recovering Father Wolf really has brought Christmas to the delighted animals. The last two spread show a pleased Father Wolf and wife and animals gleefully opening presents, reading books, playing a guitar, and finding all sorts of Christmas surprises. Even though each side of a spread shows a separate image, Gay’s art flows seamlessly as we journey along with Father Wolf and feel immense satisfaction along with him at the end.
The Storm Whale in Winter by Benji Davies, is a sequel to The Storm Whale in which a little boy, Noi, rescued a stranded whale washed up by a storm. Noi, who lives with his father and six cats by the sea, keeps searching the water for his whale friend with no success. Winter descends, and Noi’s father leaves for one last fishing trip, even though the sea is filling with ice. When he doesn’t return by darkness, Noi thinks he sees his father’s boat out to sea and hurries across the ice to find it. The boat, when he reaches it, is held fast by ice, and Noi’s father is not aboard. Afraid and not knowing what else to do, Noi curls up tight in a blanket. Suddenly the boat feels a BUMP. The storm whale and his whole family have come to help. They punch through the ice, singing, and push the boat back to the shore, where Noi’s father had been brought when rescued by other fishermen. The art shows Noi together with his father in the spring, painting the boat which they rename The Storm Whale in honor of the night Noi’s friend had come back, then sailing together among the whales.
Jackie:
One last animal story, or sort of. Russell Hoban’s otters are the people we wish we could be. We have included this book in the past, but it is so good, so warm, we just have to mention it again. Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas (1971) was written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Lillian Hoban. I have loved this story for most of my adult life. We found it when our kids were young and read it for years – all year long. It is always fun to watch the Jim Henson 1977 Muppet production of this story, but the book is my favorite telling.
Phyllis: 
Some children’s writers take the approach of getting all their ideas and best lines on the page first, so they don’t get caught up in editing themselves too much, too early. In other words, they write long before writing short. This method feels expansive and freeing; it lets you use the page to explore and brainstorm. Yet, there are some tips to keep in mind so you’ll be on your way to creating work that’s age appropriate. Expert picture-book writer Anne Whitford Paul in her manual 
Recently, I visited a first-grade classroom to share a couple of my picture books, Small Walt (about a little snowplow) and Peep Leap (about a baby wood duck afraid to leave the nest). A theme in each of these works is “small can be mighty” and that we all need encouragement, from ourselves and others. One of my favorite lines in Peep Leap is: “You are braver than you know.” To be honest, I feel scared every time I start a new manuscript. It doesn’t matter how many books I’ve written before — each new one feels like a challenge I have no idea how to take on. I give myself little pep talks and reach out to fellow writers who often feel the same way. On that day of the first-grade visit, the teacher pulled me aside and confided that she had a book idea and wanted to write for children and hadn’t started yet because it felt too “big.” Well, I hope she does start writing soon, and I told her to give it a try. If you work with children or are raising them, you have an insider’s view into what makes kids tick, and how much they grow and change as time rolls on. That’s a great start … now you need to put some words on the page.
My husband has been teaching himself quantum physics the last few years. I take books to the movies. Yet we both would have failed the “Goldilocks effect” if that test had been given to us as young children. In her book, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction, Meghan Cox Gurdon discusses Dr. John Hutton’s research on how reading aloud to children affects their cognitive development.
As authors, we send our books out into the world and, if we’re lucky, they connect us to good people whose paths we wouldn’t otherwise cross.
Stone Soup by Marcia Brown has always been one of my favorite something-out-of-nothing (or at least something out of stones) stories. The three hungry soldiers promise to teach the townsfolk, who claim to have no food to share, how to make soup from stones. The townsfolk quickly find a pot, wood for a fire, and three good stones. “’Any soup needs salt and pepper,’ said the soldiers, as they began to stir.” No problem. And then it begins, “Stones like these generally make good soup. But oh, if there were carrots, it would be much better.” Françoise brings carrots. Soon others bring cabbage, beef and potatoes, barley and milk. Tables are set. And the peasants decide this wonderful soup requires “bread — and a roast — and cider.” They feast and dance into the night and offer the soldiers warm beds in their homes. I love the idea of making soup from stones, the notion that the villagers are willing to share to make a better stone soup, perhaps because it’s coöperative. They are making soup together.
Phyllis:
Jackie:
Jackie: 
The Patchwork Bike by Maxine Beneba Clarke, illustrated by Van Thanh Rudd, begins, “This is the village where we live inside our mud-for-wall home. These are my crazy brothers, and this is our fed-up mum.” The narrator and her brothers build a sand hill to slide down, jump and climb in the big Fiori tree “out in the no-go desert, under the stretching-out sky.” But the best thing in the village, she tells us, is the bike she and her brothers make out of scraps, with a “bent bucket seat and handlebar branches that shicketty shake when we ride over sand hills.” Tin cans become handles, wheels cut from wood go winketty wonk, a flour sack becomes a flag, Mum’s milk pot becomes a bell (and is she fed-up about that, we wonder), lights are painted on, and the license plate, made of bark, keeps falling off. “The best thing of all to play with under the stretching-out sky at the edge of the no-go desert,” she tells us, “is me and my brothers’ bike.” As someone who’s mended cars with twisty ties and temporarily patched leaky gas tank leaks with bars of soap, I admire their ingenuity. The art races across the page as a few exactly right words create setting and family and take us along with the narrator and her brothers on their best-thing-of-all patchwork bike.
Jackie: 
Phyllis:
In Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Balzer and Bray, 2012), a little girl in a cold, drab town finds a box filled with yarn of every color. She knits herself a colorful sweater and still has extra yarn, so she knits her dog a sweater. But she still has extra yarn. She knits a sweater for a boy Nate (who laughs at her sweater but is really just jealous) and one for his dog, and so it goes. She knits sweaters for her whole class, including her teacher, for her parents, her neighbors (except for Mr. Crabtree who never wears sweaters, who get a knitted hat), sweaters for dogs, cats, birds and “things that didn’t even wear sweaters” — houses, mailboxes, birdhouses. And still she has extra yarn. When an archduke hears of the magical box of yarn and demands to buy it for ten million dollars, Annabelle, who is knitting a sweater for a pickup truck, politely declines. The archduke hires robbers who steal the box for him, but when he opens the box it is empty. He flings it out the window along with a curse, “Little girl…you will never be happy again!” The box floats back across the ocean straight to Annabelle, who finds it full of extra yarn and who is indeed happy as she continues to knit a more colorful world. I love how her generosity makes her world warmer in more ways than one.
Phyllis:
Phyllis:
Phyllis: 
We want to start with the classic—How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman (Dragonfly, 1994). We both love this book, love the idea of teaching geography through pie. If you want to make an apple pie and the market is closed what can you do? Well, you can go to Italy for wheat for your pie crust, France for an egg, Sri Lanka for cinnamon. Pick up a cow in England and on and on until you have collected the ingredients for the pie. The two-page spread showing the making of the pie is charming. And the last spread of sharing pie with friends — and the cow, the chicken, a dog and cat is enough to make you want to get out and make a pie. And of course the book includes a recipe for an apple pie.
Priceman did another book—How to Make Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. (Knopf, 2008) — which focuses not on ingredients, but tools involved in pie making — potholders, pie pan, rolling pin. It features the same sprightly illustration style and the same indefatigable character who will go to any lengths for pie.
Summer is honey from the bees, cherries, berries and peaches. “Six perfect peaches make a perfect pie.” And then of course, tomatoes, corn, and beans. This is a book to get readers thinking about foods and seasons. In a time when we can buy tomatoes and peaches all year long, it’s good to remember the best fruits and vegetables are the ones we find in their seasons.
Part of the satisfaction of a delicious meal is in the sharing. And that is doubly true for pie. If we should ever forget that and dream of eating a whole pie all by ourselves Stephanie Parsley Ledyard and Jason Chin have written a book to jolt us back to community—Pie is for Sharing (Roaring Brook, 2018). “Pie is for sharing,” this book begins. And we see kids and families gathering for a picnic. The best part is that the kids are all colors, all ethnicities, and they are playing and eating pie together. No one stands alone. No one is excluded. They also share books, balls, even trees. They laugh and swim and build sand castles. They are a flock of friends on a summer day together.
Sharing pie is the problem and the solution in Gator Pie by Louise Mathews (illustrated by Jeni Bassett, published by Dodd, Mead 1979). We hope you can find this book. It is a charming math lesson told with pie. Alvin and Alice are alligator friends who happen to find a pie “on a table near the edge of the swamp. /It was a whole pie that had not been cut. /’ I wonder what kind it is,’ said Alice. /’Let’s eat it and find out!’ cried Alvin.” But before they can cut it, an alligator “with a nasty look in his eye” stomps up and demands some pie. They realize they will have to cut the pie into three pieces. Then comes another gator — four pieces. And four gators show up, “swaggering like gangsters.” We see a pie cut into eight pieces. Then more gators — a hundred in all. Very tiny pieces of pie. Alice cuts the pie into one hundred pieces and you’d think that would be the end, but Alvin has an idea…
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the book birth of The Stuff of Stars by 
Phyllis is on the road with her beautiful and informative new book Searching for Minnesota’s Native Wildflowers. [While Phyllis is out of the room, I will say that I love this book. It makes me want to get out and find flowers. Iowa has many plants in common with Minnesota and I look forward to tromping with Phyllis and Kelly.)
Wings stretch wide
In 2015 Sayre took a look at woodpeckers—Woodpecker Wham! (illustrated by Steve Jenkins). Once again, the birds’ story is told with quick, lively rhymes:
And just this year Beach Lane books has published Warbler Wave, an amazing book about warblers with photographs taken by Sayre and her husband. I have trouble identifying warblers with binoculars. I am amazed that April and Jeff Sayre were not only able to spot these busy birds but spot them long enough to photograph them.
Finally, another book with April Sayre’s stunning photographs Raindrops Roll (2015). The book opens with a tree frog looking quite philosophical about rain. (A photograph Sayre notes that was taken by her husband). We see a drenched blue jay, rain drops on leaves, petals, pumpkins, even a moth.
I want to start with an old favorite In the Rain with Baby Duck by Amy Hest, with illustrations by Jill Barton. This is one of those books I wish I had written. The story sets up the problem immediately. Baby Duck has to go out in the rain. She hates the rain. But at the end of the walk are pancakes — and Grandpa. Baby Duck loves both pancakes and Grandpa as much as she hates the rain.