“It all started with the bear.” An unknown narrator weaves an impossible story to account for someone’s missing lunch in a picture book pairing a straightforward narrative with beautifully realized illustrations made whimsical by their impossibility. The bear, it seems, fell asleep in the back of a truck full of berries and ended up in a new forest (a city), where he found “climbing spots” (e.g., fire escapes, clothes lines between buildings), “good bark for scratching” (a brick-sided building), and “many interesting smells” (garbage cans).
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Asian American Writers Take on Race
It’s something we’ve been wondering about here at the CCBC for the past year or so, ever since we noted that our statistics reveal that fewer Asian American book creators write and illustrate books about Asian characters than they do about white (or animal) characters. With such a dearth of books with Asian main characters, why don’t more Asian authors and illustrators create them?
Bone Gap
Teenage Finn is the only person in Bone Gap who believes Roza, a young woman relatively new to town, was abducted. Finn is sure Roza was a prisoner in the car he saw her riding in, but he can’t describe the driver. Everyone else thinks he made up the story and was in love with Roza. In truth, Finn’s older brother Sean is the one in love with Roza, and Finn feels increasingly frustrated by Sean’s distant behavior and seeming lack of concern: Sean clearly assumes Roza left Bone Gap—and him—of her own accord.
The World in a Second
“While you turn the pages of this book, the world doesn’t stop…” A picture book that begins and ends with an awareness of the book itself as both physical object and source of engagement also launches reader’s and listeners on a journey around the world, offering glimpses of things happening at the same moment in time. A boat tossed by a storm in the Baltic Sea, passengers stuck on an elevator in New York City, a soccer ball flying toward a window in Greece, a man resting on a bench in Tokyo, a thief entering a home (perhaps his own, it’s playfully noted) in Pescara, Italy.
The Way Home Looks Now
Peter’s Taiwanese American family is struggling since the death of his older brother, Nelson. Peter, Nelson, and their mother shared a love of baseball, so Peter tries out for a team in hopes it will spark his mother’s interest, since she’s so sad she rarely leaves the couch. But it’s Ba who gets involved, volunteering to coach Peter’s team. Angry that his father, who argued with Nelson about the Vietnam War, can’t make things at home better, Peter is now embarrassed by him as a coach. But turns out Ba has been paying attention to baseball—he even played as a boy—and to what’s happening at home more than Peter knew.
Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans
An informative and deeply moving chronicle of Hurricane Katrina opens as “a swirl of unremarkable wind leaves African and breezes toward the Americas. It draws energy from the warm Atlantic water and grows in size.” As he did in The Great American Dust Bowl, Don Brown offers a factual account that makes brilliant use of the graphic novel form both to provide information and to underscore the human impact and toll of a disaster. As the storm builds and unleashes its power, it wreaks havoc—on levees and on neighborhood and on people, so many people.
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer
Adjusting to life in the country brings challenges and surprises for Sophie Brown. While her unemployed dad learns about small-scale farming, her mom is churning out one freelance article after another to stay on top of bills. Sophie, meanwhile, is learning to care for the chickens that once belonged to her Great Uncle Jim, only Uncle Jim’s chickens prove to be far from ordinary. Henrietta has a Forceful gaze—literally. Sophie has seen her levitate things. Chameleon turns invisible. And all six are the target of a would-be chicken thief who clearly knows they’re special. A funny, spirited story is told almost entirely through letters.
Fatal Fever: Tracking Down Typhoid Mary
Sanitary engineer and chemist George Soper functioned as a “germ detective” in the early 20th century. After a typhoid outbreak in Ithaca, New York, in 1903 infected local residents and Cornell University students, Soper tracked the contamination source to a creek and recommended better practices in outhouse siting and maintenance, as well as construction of a city water filtration plant. When six members of the Thompson family of New York City fell ill with typhoid in the summer of 1906, the family hired Soper. Through a meticulous process of elimination Soper determined that a cook, Mary Mallon, was the most likely source of the bacteria.
Last Stop on Market Street
As he and his nana take the bus across town, observant young CJ is full of questions and more than a little wishful thinking: Why don’t they have a car instead of having to take the bus? Why do they always have to go somewhere after church? How come that man sitting near them can’t see? Why is the neighborhood where they get off the bus so dirty? In response, his nana points out everything they would miss if they weren’t right where they were at each moment, from the interesting people they get to see and meet to the realization that beauty can be found everywhere.
Role Models
Shannon Hale recently commented on a school visit experience she had in which boys were not invited to the event. She rightly decries sexism in our thinking about youth literature and in our role as gatekeepers.
Hale is commenting specifically about the assumption that boys don’t want to read books with girls as main characters: what I think of as the “genderizing” of literature.
But the issue she describes is not unlike adults—from parents to professionals in the fields of libraries and education—who assume white kids don’t want to read about kids of color. Who assume that readers are only interested in characters who look or talk or behave like them.