Picture Books
Javaka Steptoe
Though our focus this month is on Javaka Steptoe, we want to begin this column with another book by his father, John Steptoe, Daddy is a Monster…Sometimes. This book is narrated by two children, Bweela and Javaka, who begin, “We are Bweela and Javaka and we have a daddy. He’s a nice daddy and all, but he got somethin’ wrong with him… .”
Anita Dualeh and Her Reading Team
October 2020
It’s always fun to catch up with one of our Reading Teams and see what titles have become new favorites for them. This month, however, Anita Dualeh and her sons are revisiting OLD favorites: picture books that were once beloved by Anita’s boys, but that they have now outgrown at ages 10 and 12. Below, Anita describes what happens when her Reading Team reexamines these childhood favorites through their more “grown-up” eyes:
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.… more
Picture Books Minus the Age Stereotypes and Ageism
Modern day children’s books riddled with negative stereotypes of age? Sadly yes, they are all too easy to find.
Picture Books Minus the Age Stereotypes and Ageism
Modern day children’s books riddled with negative stereotypes of age? Sadly yes, they are all too easy to find.
John Steptoe’s Beautiful Books
This month we want to celebrate the work of John Steptoe, brilliant artist and writer, who was born on September 14, 1950. His work is a year-round birthday present to all of us.
Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
September 2020
As our Raising Star Readers column kicks off another school year, educators and caregivers both continue to face the kind of challenges few of us could have imagined last fall. Here, Ann Angel describes how her Reading Team is countering the “pandemic bubble” by adding nonfiction books to their list of favorite reads:
Hey there, parent or grandparent, raise your hand if you’re a pandemic teacher.… more
The Very Amazing Eric Carle
Phyllis: Spring is finally here, and the pollinators are buzzing in the blossoms, so we thought we’d write about bugs this month. Plus, we’ve just finished a book with our good friend and fellow writer Liza Ketchum about the rusty-patched bumblebee, the first bumblebee to be listed as endangered. Once we started looking for buggy books, we found so many by Eric Carle, from very hungry caterpillars to very grouchy ladybugs to very lonely fireflies that we decided to look at his body of work.… more
Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
May 2020
In this Raising Star Readers update, Ann Angel shares how reading aloud helps carry on her family’s heritage of storytelling. Here’s how Ann describes it:
With Stay-at-Home a requirement in most states, mine included, I only see some of my grandkids via Skype and Zoom. But I have a daughter and grandson living with us. That means we’re balancing work and Teddy’s school, so, of course, I get involved.… more
Deb Andries and Her Reading Team
April 2019
We’re especially delighted to celebrate with Deb Andries (a.k.a. Grammy) this month as she launches her newest Reading Team. Here’s how Deb describes the experience:
My heart has always felt this “explosion of love” when we’ve welcomed a grandchild into our family. I vividly remember when our grandson Parker, now 14, was born, and the pure and elevated joy I felt.… more
Books about Baking Up Family Time
Jackie: We decided to honor the nation’s newfound love of baking with a column on picture books focused on baking. We still don’t have libraries (a great benefit of this confinement is the reminder of how special and necessary are libraries in our lives) so we are limited to books we can find read aloud on Youtube.… more
Lesa Cline-Ransome
Author Lesa Cline-Ransome is known for her picture book biographies of poets, anti-slavery crusaders, musicians, athletes, and mathematicians. Her novel Finding Langston received a Scott O’Dell Historical Fiction Award and a Coretta Scott King Author Honor. We impatiently waited for the companion novel, Leaving Lymon, which was published in early 2020. Lesa is a wonderful storyteller and a stellar nonfiction researcher and author.… more
A Blizzard of Snow Books
We’re snowed under right now, what with teaching and writing and, well, snow, so we thought we’d offer up a blizzard of books about the white stuff that falls from our skies. Curl up with a child, a cup of warmth, and enjoy winter in the pages of a book.
The Snow Party by Beatrice Schenk De Regniers and Bernice Myers
A lonely woman who lives with her husband on a Dakota farm wishes for a party. … more
Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
January 2020
Raising Star Readers relishes this chance to catch up with Ann Angel and her multigenerational Reading Team. For this entry, Ann was especially focused on how the words and visual art in picture books lead kids to think and to dream. Here’s how Ann describes it:
Long before I had kids and grandkids, I thought I’d grow up to be a visual artist.… more
Celebrating Winter Celebrations
Phyllis: Winter has come down like a snowy blanket, and animals in our world have migrated, hibernated, or are shivering their way through the months ahead. But animals in picture books have other ideas. Why not be a part of December’s celebrations of Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice or help a friend in frozen need? These books make us feel as cozy as a cup of tea, a lighted tree.… more
A to Zåäö
A to Zåäö is an alphabet book, a museum exhibit catalog, an introduction to the Swedish language, and a picture book illustrated by a mother's watercolors and her son's pen-and-ink drawings.
Cookies
Jackie: November is a month to celebrate food and family, to celebrate making meals and eating together. Phyllis and I both love pie. And we often review pie books in November but we are running out of pie stories. (Writers out there: more pie stories, please.) So, this year we decided to look for cookie stories. Who doesn’t love a cookie?… more
McDuff Moves In
When I was young, my mother and I lived in a succession of apartments, none of which allowed pets. I had a fervent hope for a dog or a cat, an animal friend to love. Every year for Christmas, I received a new stuffed animal, usually a dog because my mother didn’t care for cats. I still have those stuffed animals, but I’ve never had a pet. Even when we finally moved into a house 20 years ago, we were traveling so much that we wouldn’t have made a good home for an animal.… more
Aging Down, Aging Up
Back when my kids were little, I started work on a nonfiction SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) series called the “Best Behavior” series. More than a decade later, these board books and paperbacks are still going strong, I’m happy to say. Titles in the series include Teeth Are Not for Biting, Voices Are Not for Yelling, and Worries Are Not Forever.… more
The Arrow of Time
When you walk into our house, you know immediately my husband and I are readers. The dining room is designated as the library, but there are bookcases and books in every single room, including the bathrooms. We subscribe to The Wall Street Journal and the Sunday New York Times, as well as Smithsonian, Audubon, and Sky and Telescope.… more
The BEARdecotts
The ALA/ALSC recently announced their Youth Media Awards, resulting in much excitement.
The teacher librarians at a Minnesota private school with three campuses help their students look for excellence in children’s books by holding their own award process each year. Called The BEARdecotts, after their school mascot, the educators select books for a short list that they then share with their students over several months, reading aloud, reading individually, making critical analyses, and finally voting on the most worthy books.
… more Books Are Our Emissaries
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.
For 28 years, Dinner at the Panda Palace has been my excellent emissary.
Dinner at the Panda Palace started as a simple counting and sorting book with lots of animals and a party atmosphere to make the learning fun. … more
Making Something Out of Nothing
Jackie: We are in cold, cold winter. Too cold to read seed catalogs – spring just seems too far away to imagine fragile green. We are confined to cabin. What to do but think of repurposing, making something out of nothing, or next to nothing?
Stone Soup by Marcia Brown has always been one of my favorite something-out-of-nothing (or at least something out of stones) stories.… more
Knit One, Purl Two
Phyllis: Two sticks and some string. That’s the most basic definition of knitting. The sticks might be metal or wood. The string might be yarn or flax. But in the hands of a knitter, even an unskilled one such as I, they become magic.
In the chilly months, we bundle up in cozy sweaters, snug mittens, hats that hug our heads.… more
LOVE
Love
written by Stacy McAnulty
illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Running Press Kids, December 2018 Here is a book to give to those people who immediately jump to your mind when you think of love. Love isn’t about objects or commercial holidays or competition. It’s about time spent together, making memories, being thoughtful, noticing the details (I saw that “bag of cheeze-it” on the refrigerator grocery list.),… more
written by Stacy McAnulty
illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Running Press Kids, December 2018 Here is a book to give to those people who immediately jump to your mind when you think of love. Love isn’t about objects or commercial holidays or competition. It’s about time spent together, making memories, being thoughtful, noticing the details (I saw that “bag of cheeze-it” on the refrigerator grocery list.),… more
My Little Love-One, What Shall I Sing:
Looking at Lullabies
Phyllis: Winter in the north is made of longer and longer nights. What better time to think about lullabies, those songs we sing to our babies to help them sleep? Research has shown how similar lullabies are all around the world in the sounds and rhythms they use to soothe babies. So we thought we’d take a trip with some of those lullaby books, and a few more besides.… more
Pie and Gratitude
November is a month of gratitude — and, for us, a month to celebrate Pie. We all have a favorite. Many of us have childhood memories of good times and pie. We all wait for the days when we can eat pie for breakfast. So we two thought this would be the perfect month to look at picture books about pie.… more
Lucille Clifton: All About Love
Poet Lucille Clifton in a 1998 interview “Doing What You Will Do,” published in Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers and the Art of Survival, said, “I think the oral tradition is the one which is most interesting to me and the voice in which I like to speak.” Asked about the most important aspect of her craft, she answered, “For me, sound … sound, the music of a poem, the feeling are most important.… more
The Stuff of Stars
I’ve been anxiously awaiting the book birth of The Stuff of Stars by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ekua Holmes. I heard the text a year ago and forgot to breathe while the author read it out loud. And then I heard who the illustrator was. Let’s just say, what a pairing!
When I opened my much anticipated copy — after oohing and aaahing over the cover — and read the first page, I heard cello.… more
Taking Time for a Close Look
Jackie: 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.)… more
Summoning Spring
Jackie: Spring is a little late coming to the Midwest this year. But we can remember sunny days with violets and trillium blooming and rainy days that turn the grass green (instead of the snow we continue to get in mid-April). Rainy days make us think of ducks and we are going to beckon reluctant spring with stories of ducks.… more
Earth Day
Whether you are celebrating Earth Day this week or next week or every week, there are books here that will enchant your students or your family, opening up possibilities for good discussions.
Earth: My First 4.54 Billion Years
Stacy McAnulty, author
James Litchfield, illustrator
Henry Holt, 2017
primary and elementary grades Told from the viewpoint of the anthropomorphic Earth itself, this book tells the life story of our home planet, introducing it to “alien visitors.”
… more Stacy McAnulty, author
James Litchfield, illustrator
Henry Holt, 2017
primary and elementary grades Told from the viewpoint of the anthropomorphic Earth itself, this book tells the life story of our home planet, introducing it to “alien visitors.”
Dearie Darling Cuddle Hug: A Tribute to Wendy Watson
When our children were young we both spent many hours with them pouring over Wendy Watson’s illustrations for her sister Clyde’s rhymes in Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes and delighting in the sounds and the silliness of the rhymes themselves. We felt as though we had lost a personal friend when Wendy Watson died, even though we had never met her.… more
Laughing Matters
This month, Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Phyllis Root, the usual hosts of this column, have invited Kari Pearson to share her recommendations for funny picture books.
Let’s play a game! It’s called Funny/Not Funny. It goes like this:
Funny: Eating greasy bloaters with cabbage-and-potato sog (see: How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen)
Not Funny: Shoveling gigantic snowdrifts out of my driveway into piles almost as tall as myself.… more
Marion Dane Bauer
Marion Dane Bauer and her books are respected and loved by children, parents, educators, librarians, editors, and writers. She began her career as a novelist, turning to picture books later in her career. Celebrating the release of her newest picture book, the charming Winter Dance, we were curious about how she writes these short books so we asked!… more
For The Beast in Us All
The theme of being yourself is familiar. Many books, movies, and plays are devoted to this idea. When it’s done well, we all sit up a little straighter, laugh more confidently, and dream about all the things we’d like to do to be true to who we are. Children need to hear this message often so another book, one that tells the story in a different way, is welcome.… more
Skinny Dip with Stephanie Calmenson
Author of the beloved Dinner at the Panda Palace, Stephanie Calmenson has shared her love of literature with early childhood and elementary readers by channeling her enthusiasm for their experiences into her books.
Who was your favorite teacher in grades K-7 and why?
I loved my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Cogan, who taught with warmth and joy.… more
No Pigs in Space?
Some of my readers know that the very first story I wrote (in second grade) was Pigs in Space. I still have it. I still wonder whatever prompted me to write it. This was before the Muppets launched their pigs into space. And it was definitely before Kim T. Griswell and Valeri Gorbachev launched their pig into space in Rufus Blasts Off!… more
Pinkerton & Friends
I had a “Why in the world….?” moment the other day. It was unexpected and a little strange and it was this: When I imagine picture books that I am writing and/or thinking about writing, I imagine very specific illustrations. From a very specific illustrator. Even though I admire the work of many illustrators. (I admire this one, too, of course.)… more
Superheroes and Bad Days
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been wishing for an honest-to-goodness superhero to save the day.
If adults are feeling that way, kids, who pick up all of our emotions, are wishing for the same thing. Batman and Wonder Woman led the list of most popular Halloween costumes in 2016. The proliferation of superhero movies is hard to ignore.… more
The Funny and the Heart
Jackie: Recently Phyllis and I read a heart-breaking column in The New York Times, written by author Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who wrote many children’s books, and a couple of books for adults.
The column, written as a love-note to her husband from a dying wife, was heartfelt, sad, and funny all at the same time. We both wished we had known Amy Krouse Rosenthal.… more
Chef Roy Choi’s Story
Every time I re-read this book, it makes me happier. I’ve grown quite fond of the books being published by Readers to Eaters and I eagerly anticipate each new book.
Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix is another food artisan biography from Jacqueline Briggs Martin, this time co-written with June Jo Lee. Jackie writes the flavorful essence of the artist in an irresistible recipe of words.… more
Read Out Loud for Easter
As you prepare to celebrate Easter, we encourage you to include books in your celebration. A tradition of reading out loud before Easter dinner, after Easter dinner, as you awaken on Easter morning … perhaps each day during Holy Week? Here are a few gems we believe you and your family will treasure. Happy Easter!
At Jerusalem’s Gate: Poems of Easter
written by Nikki Grimes, illustrated by David Frampton
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2005 There are twenty-two free-form poems in this book, each from the point of view of a witness to the events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
… more written by Nikki Grimes, illustrated by David Frampton
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2005 There are twenty-two free-form poems in this book, each from the point of view of a witness to the events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
March Shorts
Oooo! Here in Minnesota, shorts in March mean chills. These books will give you chills – in a good way!
Cat Goes Fiddle-I-Fee
Adapted and illustrated by Paul Galdone
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985
(reissued in April 2017) I recognized the title immediately as I song I know well, sung as “I Had a Rooster” by Pete Seeger on Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Little Fishes in 1968.… more
Adapted and illustrated by Paul Galdone
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1985
(reissued in April 2017) I recognized the title immediately as I song I know well, sung as “I Had a Rooster” by Pete Seeger on Birds, Beasts, Bugs & Little Fishes in 1968.… more
Our Hearts Will Hold Us Up
Jackie: It seems perfectly appropriate that the Manager of Holiday Placement has placed Valentine’s Day, a day to celebrate love and affection, right in the middle of cold, dark February. I want that celebration to spread out for the whole month (why not the whole year?) the way the smell of baking bread fills an entire house, not just the kitchen.… more
The Books in the Night
Phyllis: Night means many things: the terrifying darkness behind the garage where I had to carry the garbage after supper as a child, the dark night of the soul that depression brings, the hours between sunset and sunrise that grow longer and longer as our earth turns into winter. But night holds comfort as well as fear, and this month we want to look at books about the gifts that night and darkness can bring.… more
Orbiting Kindergarten
That lively, quirky-thinking duo from Planet Kindergarten have teamed up once again for Planet Kindergarten: 100 Days in Orbit. Many schools use the 100-day marker to reflect on how far they’ve come since the first day of kindergarten. Social graces, etiquette, mindfulness, assignments, singing, pledges … they’re all included in this new book.
But the extra-fun twist is that our hero recounts the entire story as a trip into space aboard a starship filled with aliens and a thoughtful commander. … more
Thanksgiving is a Good Time for a Book
As food is being prepared and family gathers, as food is being digested and some people are napping, as sports and shopping beckon, perhaps it's a good time to take out a stack of Thanksgiving books to read aloud as a family.
William Steig and Transmogrification
Jackie: After Phyllis and I read Amos and Boris for our last month’s article on boats we both wondered why we hadn’t looked at the work of William Steig. He so often executes that very satisfying combination of humor and heart. Steig’s language is funny but his stories regularly involve worrisome separation and then return to a loving family.… more
Coming Home to Safe Harbor
Phyllis: This summer I had the opportunity to sail for a week in Lake Superior, so we are turning our thoughts to books about the sea (including the great inland sea that borders Minnesota, so vast it makes its own weather). If we can’t go sailing right now, we can at least read about it in a fleet of good picture books.… more