Three Picture Books for the Thoughtful Child

Some picture books are wonderful because they sing out like a brass band, but others are just as marvelous because they murmur like a night wind. Here are three such books.

Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole

Making a picture book that’s wordless is usually more of a storytelling choice than a symbolic one, but here the wordlessness is both, as the title implies. This is a story about keeping quiet for all the right reasons, about keeping a secret to keep someone safe. It is also about not needing to speak to help someone out—which makes me think of quiet kindnesses in everyday life.

As our story begins, a young farm girl bringing the cow home from the pasture watches five men pass on horseback. The first one is carrying a Confederate flag, so we understand that this story takes place in the South during the Civil War era. The girl goes to feed the chickens, and then her mother sends her to fetch the eggs from a small barn. As she does so, she is frightened to realize that someone is hiding in a big stack of corn stalks laid in one corner of the barn, perhaps to dry for feed.

The girl runs back to the house, but even before she goes inside, she starts to calm down and think about what this means. She does not say anything to her family, but after dinner she goes out to the barn with some food for the fugitive. Perhaps my favorite part about this story is a spread showing different hands holding different food items on the same checked cloth—showing that each member of the family separately slips out to the barn to feed the runaway slave hiding there.

The next day two men come to the farm looking for a runaway slave, but the girl’s family sends them away. That night the runaway is gone, but she has left a simple gift behind for the girl, something she has made from the checked napkin and the corn husks.

A good picture book is like a poem. It is hard to tell a story well in just a few words or just a few pictures, but Cole succeeds beautifully. The entire book is done in charcoal pencil on cream-colored textured paper, giving it a sepia look like photos from the late 1800s as well as a subtle richness. The North Star, or rather the Little Dipper containing the North Star, is a motif used in a piece of art that appears on the book cover and inside the book; it is also shown on two other spreads, tying the story together.

Unlike a graphic novel, the picture book format does not allow for a lot of sequential storytelling, but Cole has chosen his moments well, and the narrative flows logically. I like the way he shows most scenes at a medium distance, but includes the occasional close-up. One of the best spreads in the book is simply all those corn stalks with their marvelous texture—and one eye of the hidden girl looking out.

Cole includes an author’s note that explains about the Civil War stories he heard as a boy growing up in Virginia, as well as more information about how slaves used the North Star to guide their escape to freedom.

Unspoken may require you to use a few words of introduction to give young readers historical context. But the sense of quiet urgency, the threat of discovery, the courage of the runaway, and one farm family’s kindness need no words, as Henry Cole so wisely shows us.

The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins

I knew a guy in Los Angeles who created original artwork using photographs of beetles. They were really gorgeous, so it’s no surprise to me that the beetle art in Jenkins’ latest nature book is, too. The cover alone is worth the price of admission!

I will admit I was a little put off when I first opened the book and saw how small the font size is, but I quickly got used to it and realized that its size means the text doesn't compete with the illustrations. Beetle names are in boldface in the text, which is helpful. Another nice touch is that the author-illustrator gives us many of the beetles in black silhouette to show their actual sizes.

Jenkins lets the stark white backgrounds set off the beetles’ strong colors and shapes, taking full advantage of negative space and the beetles' symmetry to create graphic art-influenced illustrations. Many of the beetles are static, portrait-style, but some are shown in action, most notably two rhinoceros beetles dueling to win a mate. The illustrations are all the more breathtaking when you realize that they are done entirely using “torn- and cut-paper collage.” Jenkins has joined the rarified ranks of Eric Carle and Lois Ehlert in his use of the technique.

The science content may remind you a little of an Eyewitness book. The Beetle Book is filled with fun facts. For example, have you ever heard of the forest fire beetle? "[It] has special heat-sensing spots on its body. It can detect a fire from more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) away. These beetles fly to the site of the forest fire and lay their eggs in charred wood—wood that is now free of predators." I thought he was going to say the beetles sensed the fire and flew away from it, but instead the beetles fly to the fire!

Stinky beetles, shiny beetles, poisonous beetles (if you eat them!) and camouflaged beetles—Jenkins introduces readers to a colorful cast of characters. One of my favorites is an Australian beetle called Wallace’s longicorn, which has a body that’s not quite 4 inches long and antennae that can reach 15 inches or so in length. (Illustration above is a dung beetle.)

I’ll just end with one final fact, Jenkins’ opening sentence: “Line up every kind of plant and animal on Earth… and one of every four will be a beetle.” So yes, we’re outnumbered. But if you’ve got a budding scientist on your hands, get him or her The Beetle Book.

Here’s Chris Marley’s website if you want to see his beetle art and other pieces.

Also: See The Beetle Book cover art below at the end of last week's post.

The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry, illustrated by Maurice Sendak

This is a golden oldie, a Caldecott Honor Book back in 1960, predating Sendak’s 1964 Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are. I am happy to bring it up now because Harper Collins is reissuing the book in February. So just how well does The Moon Jumpers hold up?

It is retro in two obvious regards: it’s a quiet book, and the dad in the book smokes a pipe. The text of the story would be a real hard sell if Udry sent it out to Scholastic or any other publisher today. Fortunately, she sold it in a kinder, gentler day, and then Sendak’s illustrations made a slight story into something significantly more magical. Basically, four kids go outside and play around. Then their mom calls them in and they go to bed.

So what does Sendak do with this material? He adds a cat, for one thing. He shows how four kids can make a game out of anything, including a tree branch and the moon. And he gives the whole thing this really atmospheric feeling, reminding us that there is something mysterious and a little wild about the night and the moon. The four children—two girls and two boys—are a bit pretty, especially the girls, but we can happily forget that as they strike kid poses and flop around and goof off. (See Sendak’s brilliant work showing how kids move and the faces they make in Ruth Krauss’s A Hole Is to Dig.)

The spreads here are flatter and simpler than in some of Sendak’s later work, though you can see hints of Where the Wild Things Are in his trees and bushes. The shapes of the house, the trees, and the shadows make new meaning out of the night, as do the figures of the children. One spread I particularly like doesn’t show the children at all, just the house, the night, and the cat.

But I am not giving enough credit to Janice Udry for her own understanding of children. What do the children do, playing outside?

"We climb the tree just to be in a tree at night.

And we make a little camp and pretend we’re on an island for the night.

We make up songs. And poems. And we turn somersaults all over the grass.

We tell ghost stories. And holler “Boo!” under the window.

We jump and jump, over and over, and higher and higher. But nobody has ever touched the moon."

Today, even if you had four kids instead of two and weren’t afraid of them getting snatched from the yard and could get them out the door after dark, they would probably sit on the porch playing video game apps.

I hate to cite nostalgia, but it’s another good reason for liking this book. Most of all, though, I think I like it for the mood. People don’t necessarily talk a lot about that as a book illustration skill, but one reason Maurice Sendak is considered a master illustrator is because he could create a tone so distinct it was like a voice calling softly through the night.

The Moon Jumpers reminds me of that—and of catching fireflies when I was a child in my grandmother’s backyard. 

A Review of Living Hell by Catherine Jinks

This book's title represents truth in advertising in a big way: the story gets bleak, then bleaker, working its way clear down to bleakest. In that sense, Jinks's new YA science fiction work is ultimately a horror story, Edgar Alan Poe on a spaceship. Or maybe it's just an especially creative example of dystopian fiction. (Spoiler ahead!)

We begin with a seventeen-year-old boy named Cheney who lives on the Plexus, a huge spaceship outbound from Earth many years earlier. More than a thousand colonists live in a perfectly well-ordered environment which supports their every need. But during the middle of a birthday party in a virtual environment, Cheney gets an inkling that something has gone wrong. As the son of leaders, he is able to find out that the ship is about to pass through a strange wave of radiation.

If this were a movie script, the wave would be what is called "the inciting incident." The other movie term I'm thinking of is "high concept." Because—and this will be a spoiler—the radiation essentially transforms the ship into a living organism. An organism whose immune system tags the humans as something along the lines of attacking bacteria.

I tell you this because there is no way to describe the book at all without showing you where Jinks is going with this. The remaining three-fourths of Living Hell describes the terrible struggle for survival of those who manage to get through the first few hours. The author goes all out with her concept, coming up with intriguing details about the problems Cheney and his friends encounter, as well as how they get around the ship and defend themselves.

So this book is action-adventure of a kind boy readers might particularly enjoy (including some grisly deaths), especially if they like horror. Jinks does a great job of depicting the ship's transformation, carefully envisioning what each change might entail. Here's a sample from right after the change:

Slowly, one by one, we clambered through the hole between the door panels. It was becoming so small that by the time Dad squeezed through—nearly falling on his face in the process—the fleshy rims of the panels were sucking at his body.

It was disgusting to watch—like someone being born.

Out in the street there were samplers flying everywhere. The street shuttle had disappeared. All the doors had turned into valves and the floors into slippery paths of tissue, some of it slick and smooth, some of it rough with soggy bristles, some of it bunched into funny pads or pillows that looked a bit like cauliflower heads.

Mum seized my hand.

"I feel as if I'm in somebody's stomach," Dygall muttered, and I glanced at Mum in alarm. She knew exactly what I was thinking.

"We're not in a stomach," she declared. "If we were, those excretions would be eating through our pressure suits."

(Yep, there are quite a few scientific explanations of what is happening!)

Now, I'm usually pretty good at suspension of disbelief. But this one is tough to buy into, and perhaps that's because the change is so abrupt that, in addition to being a shock to the crew of the Plexus, it's a shock to the reader. I would have liked to see the change come on more gradually, with a building of suspense, having people being picked off one by one instead of everyone being completely under attack all at once. It also seems like the characters figure out what's going on and what each change means a little too quickly. (Including an explanation of what the strange radiation is, which isn't entirely satisfying.) Though many readers will appreciate that Living Hell is fast-paced, at times it feels a bit rushed.

As for characterization, we mostly get to know Cheney and an aggressive friend of his named Dygall. Cheney is a likable first-person narrator who is forced to become the leader of a small group of kids in short order. He rises to the challenge, and readers will be rooting for him to succeed.

It's possible there could be a sequel, although I didn't get the feeling the author has decided to write one just yet. For the moment, if you're in the mood for a happy ending, you should probably skip this book. On the other hand, if you don't mind a dose of gloom and doom and have a fondness for science fiction, action-adventure, and horror of the gooshy variety, try Catherine Jinks's latest.

Note for Worried Parents: Living Hell is a book for teens and includes some peril and gruesome deaths, but the author doesn't linger on the gore.

Also: I requested this book from the Amazon Vine program. It is scheduled to be published on April 12.

Spidery Creativity

I just want to make sure other people catch this article from NPR. Yes, a couple of very creative weavers made a tapestry using actual spider silk, of a type which in quantity shows as golden. Link through to see how beautiful it is. You can also learn the process used, how much the project cost, and how many spiders "helped"! Don't worry, the spiders weren't harmed, although they may have been a little miffed.

Happily, this tapestry will be housed in a museum, at least for the next few months. I love the way humanity dreams up new art forms, especially ones as out there as this is...

Random/Cool Science Stuff

I don't have a review for Nonfiction Monday, which will be hosted at The Miss Rumphius Effect tomorrow. But take a look at these intriguing science-type items I discovered the past few days while blog-surfing:

First, Chicken Spaghetti clues us in about International Rock-Flipping Day, which takes place on September 20. Far from being a neo-pagan ritual or a boyish sport, this is about seeing what's living beneath your local rocks.

Then there's the latest from the International Space Station, where rookie astronauts inform us that outer space has a smell.

And over on Leftwriter, KC Dyer recently provided a link to a very cool chart comparing the size of Earth, other planets, and our sun to bigger and bigger stars... prepare to feel dinky!

A Review of Animal Aha! by Diane Swanson

Most of the nonfiction I read as a child bored me. The only nonfiction books I remember liking were the World Book Encyclopedia, which I sometimes read randomly to entertain myself, and some books called Animals Do the Strangest Things, Birds Do the Strangest Things, and Insects Do the Strangest Things. In fact, I wondered why, if animals and birds and insects were out there doing such strange things, more of the books in the library couldn’t talk about that, instead of what they did say, which seemed like a whole lot of blah-blah to me.

I’m still more hooked on fiction than nonfiction, but I am happy to report that children’s nonfiction has improved tremendously since I was young. Simply having more photos—and having them be in color—is a great start. The advent of the Eyewitness series has also upped the ante. As a teacher, I love bringing those books to my students, especially reluctant readers. Like my childhood encyclopedias, their pocket-sized pieces of text and wonderful photographs draw kids in. I know some have objected to the way they jump around, but then, science is often sold to us in schools as lists of facts, so what’s the difference?

Fortunately, there are alternatives. After you’ve gotten children involved with books like Eye Wonder and Eyewitness, you can introduce them to some books that don’t, in fact, jump around. Another thing I’ve noticed while teaching is that kids are inclined to think of science as a done deal, with all of those facts conquered and ordered and laid out in boxes beneath pins for their perusal. To show them that science is actually ongoing and constantly changing, we need books along the lines of Animal Aha! Thrilling Discoveries in Wildlife Science. Here’s how the introduction puts it:

Scientists work hard to uncover some of the amazing things that animals do. They spend thousands of hours planning experiments, making observations, spotting patterns, and analyzing results. Their efforts call for plenty of patience and loads of persistence. But that all pays off big time when they discover something new—something no one has ever seen before. As you might imagine, finding an AHA in research is a big thrill.

This book has five short chapters, one for each discovery. The discoveries are told in story form, letting young readers share in the scientists’ aha moments. Further facts and explanations and a history of the research leading up to the key observation follow. For example, the first chapter tells about the discovery of a gorilla using tools, adding that previously, among the great apes, only chimpanzees, orangutans, and humans have been seen doing that. In this case, a female gorilla crossing a swampy area in the Congo rainforest was observed breaking off a tree branch and using it, not only to support herself, but to check the depth of the water as she went.

Animal Aha! provides an appealing array of animals and discoveries: we go on to read about elephants looking at themselves in mirrors, dolphins demonstrating simple math skills, parrots speaking with meaning, pythons growing bigger hearts in order to digest their prey, and cockroaches learning better at night than in the morning—kind of like some people. Perhaps most intriguing is finding out how the scientists set up viable experiments for verifying things such as animal thought processes. I especially like the way the elephant research illustrates how a poorly designed experiment can yield inaccurate results: Earlier attempts to find out if elephants could recognize that they were being reflected in mirrors had used smaller mirrors so that elephants could only see their faces. Once scientists offered the pachyderms jumbo-size mirrors, the elephants quickly conducted their own experiments and concluded that they were seeing themselves.

Each chapter in Animal Aha! begins with a small sidebar of summary points titled Fast Facts and includes plenty of nice photos of the subject, some from the actual experiments. Each chapter then ends with a sidebar called Fun Facts. The book has an index, as well. My two favorite Fun Facts are “Like your fingerprints, a gorilla’s noseprints are unique” and “An elephant’s ear can weight as much as a slim woman, about 50 kilograms (110 pounds).”

Besides offering up active science about intriguing topics, Animal Aha! is written in a friendly, clear way at a second or third grade level. Diane Swanson is apparently the author of many other nonfiction books, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for them. For now, I am happy to report that animals are still doing the strangest things!