Maddie's LIS 721 Book Blog

  Firefly July is a collection of poetry which features works selected by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrations created by Melissa Sweet. The collection has poems for each season, by a variety of authors including but not limited to Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson. The collection lacks an introduction, preface, or any other kind of opening section, and only has an acknowledgements section in the back matter. The acknowledgements section is simply a list of citations for each poem and author, with no other information given. According to the front inside flap, the purpose of this work is to give children the chance to listen to or read very short poetry which they might otherwise not come across. The front inside flap also says that poetry can “make the world glow” for children and readers of all ages. However, this is the only indication of a purpose in the book. While the very short poetry is sure to hold a young child’s attention for the time span it takes to re...

  Bravo! Poems About Amazing Hispanics, by Margarita Engle, Illustrated by Rafael Lopez, is a collection of poems that were written about various Hispanic and Latino people, including ones who are famous for their achievements, and those who are not. The purpose of this collection is to highlight these remarkable hispanic people who changed the course of history in whatever way they could, from a Hispanic american revolutionary, to a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball player who was born in Puerto Rico. This representation is key to educating young people about the different people from different times, places, and cultures than our own.  This book is intended for young people of all backgrounds, races, cultures, and ethnicities, though it seems likely that it is particularly intended for young hispanic people who may long to see themselves represented in works of literature. This book could best be used with its intended audience in a library setting, perhaps during history or poetr...

  Out of Wonder, by Kwame Alexander, with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, is a collection of poems by these authors gathered into one work in order to honor poems and poetry from around the world. This work contains works that honor such poets as Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Rumi, among many others. This purpose created a collection that is key to any general collection, in that it doesn’t just celebrate poetry from one part of the world, instead providing a variety of the styles of works from many different cultures. Kwame Alexander Preface at the beginning of the book displays his passion for words and his love of reading and poetry and his frustration that so many works of poetry for children are less than engaging, explaining clearly that he wants to ignite a similar love of words and poetry into generations of children to come.  As previously mentioned, the intended audience for this book is young children. Kwame t...

  Tales Our Abuelitas Told: A Hispanic Folktale Collection, by F Isabel Campoy and Alma Flor Ada, illustrated by Felipe Davalos, Vivi Excriva, Susan Guevara, and Leya Torres is a collection of twelve iconic hispanic folktales. Tales Our Abuelitas Told aims to preserve and carry on hispanic history and culture, as is stated clearly in the introduction section. The selected tales meet this purpose by providing samples of hispanic culture and history, and by using hispanic names, rather than english ones. The tales are related to each other through the About section, which also serves as a source note, and explains how the author knows these tales and where they came from.  As mentioned, the stories come with source notes at the end of each. Every source note contains an explanation of where the author first heard the story, translations of any spanish words or names, and explaining any changes that might have been made or liberties that might have been taken with the stories...

  The purpose of the collection, The People Could Fly, by Virginia Hamilton, Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon, is to record black and african american folktales, particularly those told during the American pre-civil war era, as is clearly stated in the introduction. The tales this work chooses to tell do meet this purpose by providing stories, none of which I had ever heard before, though some of them are vaguely familiar in theme or plot. The stories are divided into sections by topic, such as “The Beautiful Girl of the Moon Tower and Other Tales of the Real, Extravagant, and Fanciful”. There are twenty four tales in this volume overall. Source notes are at the end of each tale, and each notes the region of origin of each story, the history of the story and the history of the people who told it, and where other, similar stories may have come from, as well as any translations or origins of words used in the story. Though the writing of each story is true to the history, there ...

  Lies, B. (2019). The rough patch . Library Ideas, LLC.  The Rough Patch, by Brian Lies, is a bittersweet story of love, loss, and healing that is sure to bring any dog lover, young or old, to the brink of tears. A heartfelt introduction to the concept of loss for children, the book follows a gardener named Evan whose world is shattered when his beloved dog passes away. In response, his grief leads him to destroy the garden that housed the happiest memories he had with his dog, until by chance one day, the joy of gardening finds him again and Evan begins to heal.  Lies makes clever choices with his illustrations. While the text never states that Evan is an anthropomorphic fox, that is how Lies chose to draw him. I believe this provides a degree of separation to the reader, particularly young readers who may have been able to relate to Evan more if he had been a young human. This gives readers the space they need to relate to Evan’s story without it making for a traumatic...

Lê, M., & Santat, D. (2018).   Drawn together . Disney-Hyperion.        This picture book is a heartfelt own-voices story about bridging generational divides and finding common ground. Drawn Together, by Minh Lê, uses very few words to tell the story of an American boy who only speaks English, and his Vietnamese grandfather, who only speaks Vietnamese. Though there are significant generational, cultural, and language divides between the pair, they find common ground by expressing themselves through creating art, and learn a little something about each other in the process.  The book uses art quite effectively, as it is a book of very few words. The majority of the story is told through visual art rather than text, to the point where the text supplements the art rather than the other way around. What little text there is in the book is used very effectively, and in some ways, the minimal amount of text is beneficial to telling the story. Somewhat iro...

     Lyons, K. S., & Minter, D. (2020). Going down home with daddy . Peachtree.  Going Down Home with Daddy, by Kelly Starling Lyons, illustrated by Daniel Minter, is a stunning picture book about a black family getting together for a reunion and a young boy's struggle to find his sense of place among his extended family. Minter uses color masterfully throughout the book to portray emotions as well as the setting in a unique, remarkable manner. Lyon's story is highly descriptive, using phrases such as "peppermint kisses" and "scattering corn for her chickens like tiny bits of gold" to enhance it and bring the story to life. This evocative language is sure to delight any young readers.     Minter used either watercolor or a digital watercolor effect for the illustrations in Going Down Home With Daddy. These illustrations reflect the mood of the story wonderfully. There are designs and shapes overlaid on the pages throughout the book. His use of colo...

  Loney, A. J., & Gutierrez, R. (2019). Double bass blues . Alfred A. Knopf. Double Bass Blues is a vibrant picture book which depicts the story of a young boy named Nic, who finds inspiration for his music on the way home from school during the applause after a concert, a rainy bus ride, a walk, and an otherwise bustling post school commute.The illustrator uses the elements of color, line, shape, and space to fantastic, expressionist-esque effect The Caldecott honor award winning book significantly exaggerates the shapes that make up Nic’s world to perfectly capture the mood of the story. The line expresses the movement of Nic playing the double bass and his ride home. An obvious example of this is the bars of music which appear when Nic plays his Double Bass. They twist around and embrace Nic and his family, even forming an arching halo around Nic’s Head on the cover. Another example is the lines which make up the illustration’s outlines. A bright yellow one swoops around N...

  Huang, Y.-H. (2021). Head, shoulders, knees and toes . Nosy Crow.  This engineered picture book is a delightfully well illustrated book that unfortunately has little to do with the text inside. The cute, anthropomorphic animals, moveable images, and appealing summer scenes of a day at the pool will be engaging to young audiences, but the pictures and engineered aspects unfortunately have little to do with the classic nursery rhyme of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, which supplements the drawings on each page.  The engineered pages are as delightful as the illustrations, allowing users to move the cat’s head on the cover back and forth, have two kittens change into their swimsuit, make the same two kittens with water wings tread water, send a young bear down a waterslide, and have the pair of kittens pop out from behind an adult kitten reading a book. All in all, there are five engineered illustrations in this book, one for each two page spread, plus the cover. While...

  Becker, A. (2020). My favorite color . Candlewick Studio, an imprint of Candlewick Press.       The beauty of My Favorite Color, by Aaron Becker, is in its simplicity. The narrator of the book appears to be trying to narrow down the colors to discover their favorite color, and goes back and forth between all the shades of the rainbow, before being told they can only have one favorite color, and finally disregarding that claim completely to declare that it is “impossible” to choose just one color to be their favorite color. While an incredibly basic, perhaps too basic, plot, it is nevertheless intriguing for youngsters to examine the pages of colorful swatches. The story, while one of the most basic I have ever seen, is very appealing to its target audience. The book is filled with pages of varying hues of each color and the opaque, plastic hues that appear in the book that can be popped inward and outward by a curious youngster’s hand. These squares of ...

Henkes, K. (2020).  A parade of elephants . Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.  This counting board book is a colorful introduction to numbers 1 to 5 and some basic opposites. With a soothing color palette consisting of pastel pink, yellow, green, magenta and blue, this is a perfect bedtime book. The illustrations of the small, cute elephants appear to be done through digital methods, providing sharply defined yet gentle images. It’s quite easy to imagine a baby or toddler looking through this book on their own for the illustrations, or an adult reading the simple words to a young child.  This book is also available in picture book format, and while it works very well in both board book and picture book format, it seems better suited to board book format, as the simplicity of the illustrations, words, and basic opposites are more baby and young toddler material than older toddler material. As babies are likely to be less gentle with pages than toddl...

Chen, E., & Desierto, D. (2019).  A is for awesome: 23 iconic women who changed the world . Feiwel and Friends.       At first glance, I love the concept of this book. An A to Z board book on incredible women throughout history? Sign me up! I read this book once for pleasure, and then again with a more critical eye. Personally, I enjoyed this introduction to world changing women. For the most part, the women the author chose for the book were inspiring role models for young women and girls everywhere. However, considering this book was aimed at babies, it seems to me that some of the words were too advanced to engage and hold a young reader’s attention. Words like modernist, formidable, tempestuous, and philanthropist appear on almost every page of this board book aimed at babies and very young toddlers, thereby essentially excluding the child from the reading experience. This appears to be a board book written for the adult, rather than the child in the rea...

 Hi! My name is Maddie. I'm currently studying for my Masters of Library and Information Science to become a Children's or Teen Librarian at a public library. Welcome to my book review blog, where I review Children's Library Materials for one of my classes.