art – Jenny Arch

Today, a few page spreads from picture books to surprise, delight, and amuse:

IWantMyHatBack-rabbit and bear

From I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen: This wordless spread captures the moment when the Bear confronts the rabbit who stole his hat. It’s a moment of tension and uncertainty, though the readers – and the rabbit – have a good guess what’s coming next.

Next up is Mina by Matthew Forsythe, and if you haven’t read it yet, please stop reading this and go find a copy; or at least request a copy from your library, close your eyes, and scroll down a bit, because I don’t want to be responsible for ruining perhaps the single greatest page turn ever:

PXL_20241025_180612337 PXL_20241025_180556386

“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” said the doctor. “But let me take a look at these squirrels.”

“Oh, I see the problem,” said the doctor. “The problem is that these squirrels are definitely cats.”

"Well, shoot." From Snail Crossing by Corey Tabor

This is the part in Snail Crossing by Corey Tabor where the snail realizes it has journeyed back to its starting place instead of making it across the road to where the delicious cabbages are. “Well, shoot.” I love the understatement of this, and the slime trail showing the snail’s path.

Page from You Can't Be A Pterodactyl

“Tommy closed his eyes. If he were a pterodactyl, he wouldn’t have to put up with this.” This gem is from You Can’t Be A Pterodactyl! by James Breakwell & Sophie Corrigan. Haven’t we all had moments like this? Kids, especially, often find their imaginative flights of fancy reined in and pulled back down to earth by adults (or even other kids).

"Final" page spread from Endlessly Ever After

This “final” page from Endlessly Ever After by Laurel Snyder and Dan Santat reminds readers “that every day…you choose.” The simple message is emphasized and made even more powerful by the 96-page book’s “pick your path” structure. In my experience, kids will want to read this one over and over again until they’ve made all the possible choices. And then they’ll want to read it again.

Do you have a favorite page turn or page spread from a picture book?

We received three beautiful framed prints recently, and although they tickled something in the back of everyone’s brain, no one in the group of assembled family and friends was able to recognize them with certainty.

Naturally I brought them to the library, certain that the librarians in the Children’s department would know. No one recognized them right away, and an image search on the Internet was also fruitless. I turned to Twitter, choosing a few tags (#librarylife, #librarians, #kidlit, #kidlitart) and also sending a tweet directly to Mel of Mel’s Desk, who kindly re-tweeted to her many followers, a good percentage of which must be children’s librarians.

In a matter of minutes, I had my answer: not The Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Anderson, but Get-A-Way and Hary Janos by Maud and Miska Petersham. According to WorldCat, this is “The story of a worn out toy horse and his friend, a wooden soldier doll, who travel to a land where old toys become new.” I requested it from WorldCat, since there isn’t a copy in my library system.

I’m glad that (a) I have an answer to my mystery, (b) the Internet can’t answer everything, and (c) librarians are awesome detectives.