Tag: art

Collage art in picture books

JennyLeave a comment

Cover image of Thank You OmuA library patron told me they loved Oge Mora’s artwork in her picture book Thank You, Omu, so I found her some other picture books whose illustrators used collage: Daniel’s Good Day by Micha Archer; Little Penguins by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Christian Robinson; and The Noisy Puddle by Linda Booth Sweeney, illustrated by Miki Sato. Those are some of my favorites I could recommend off the top of my head. But I knew there had to be many more…

One of the things I love about LibraryThing, where I keep track of all my reading, is that the “Review” field is searchable, so any notes I make become part of my personal reading database. I searched for “collage” to remind myself of art I’d liked, and I did find several more!

  • The Story of the Saxophone by Lesa Cline-Ransom, illustrated by James E. Ransome (collage is a particularly brilliant choice for this book because of the way Adolphe Sax pieced together the instrument he created)
  • Bryan Collier uses college in many of his picture book illustrations (e.g. All Because You Matter by Tami Charles)
  • Golden Threads by Suzanne Del Rizzo and Sunny Days by Deborah Kerbel, both illustrated by Miki Sato
  • The Dictionary Story by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston
  • Woodpecker Wham! by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steve Jenkins
  • Stalactite & Stalagmite by Drew Beckmeyer
  • Everybelly by Thao Lam
  • Beansprout by Sarah Lynn Reul
  • Saving American Beach by Heidi Tyline King, illustrated by Ekua Holmes (Holmes has illustrated many others, including Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer and The Stuff of Stars)
  • Farmhouse by Sophie Blackall

Cover image of The Noisy PuddleWhat are your favorite picture books with collage art?

Imagine how a favorite picture book might be completely different if illustrated in another medium. Let’s Be Bees wouldn’t be nearly as effective if Shawn Harris hadn’t used crayon, and Kaya Doi’s Chirri and Chirra books wouldn’t have their delicate charm without those colored pencil illustrations. Do you have another favorite medium – watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, crayon?

“Well, shoot”: On page turns and page spreads

JennyLeave a comment

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:

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“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?

Librarians are also detectives

Jenny3 Comments

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.

Three framed prints of color illustrations

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.

Screenshot of a tweet: Children's librarians, please help. Recognize these illustrations?

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.