Librarian Preview: Albert Whitman and Company (Fall 2010)

So!  Let’s start off with the big news first.  I’m kind of a dessert first gal, y’know.  As it happened the happiest thing I learned from this preview right off the bat was that the fantastic Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award winning picture book The Baby Goes Beep by Rebecca O’Connell, illustrated by Ken Wilson-Max is back in print, babies!  And I do mean babies because this time it’s coming out as a board book.  If you want to get technical about it, the title was always meant to be a board book in the first place.  What goes around comes around.  Folks everywhere will be cheering since, as Judy Zuckerman about its previous out-of-print status, "This was a sin!"

I got a little confused with our next book.  Climbing Lincoln’s Steps: The African American Journey by Suzanne Slade originally had me thinking that it was a sequel.  You see, this past fall Albert Whitman & Co. published Finding Lincoln by Ann Malaspina.  In spite of the fact that the authors of these two books were completely different, illustrator Colin Bootman illustrated them both.  Hence my confusion.  However, while Malaspina’s book was a work of fiction, Slade’s is a kind of non-fictionish picture book about the history of black people in America.  The book examines slavery to the Great Migration to the election of Barack Obama, and connects moment after moment to the Lincoln Memorial.

You know, Jeannette Winter may have the world’s best nose for sniffing out non-fiction picture book subject matter (Mama, September Roses, The Tale of Pale Male, etc.) but she can’t be in all places at all times.  Enter the one that got away: Librarian on the Roof! A True Story by M.G. King, illustrated by Stephen Gilpin.  If Gilpin’s name sounds at all familiar that’s probably because he has illustrated approximately one billion books and book jackets in his day (I like his work on Eric Kimmel’s The Three Cabritos quite a bit).  In this particular title, Ms. King heard about a librarian by the name of RoseAleta Laurell.  When Ms. Laurell went to work at the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in Lockhart, Texas she vowed to give it a kickin’ kids room.  Her solution?  She was going to live on the library’s roof until enough money was raised to create that space.  There’s a great picture of the real RoseAleta at the beginning of the book, which lends it a nice connection.  And since I’m always in the mood for a good heroic librarian story, I’m a fan.

If your library is like mine then you probably have a holiday section of some sort, right?  We keep ours in the overflow so that when it’s not that particular holiday the books aren’t taking up valuable shelf space.  Years ago some enterprising soul also wrote out little dividers for each holiday.  You’ve got your Valentine’s Days, your St. Patrick’s Days, your Passovers, etc.  Then there’s New Year’s Eve.  Not Chinese New Year, mind you.  That section is nicely stocked.  No, I’m talking about the New Year’s Eve books of which we own approximately three.  To be perfectly frank, nobody writes New Year’s Eve books.  It’s not a sexy holiday.  New Year’s Eve tends to be a day of reflection and looking back at your life.  Five-year-olds don’t have a whole lotta life to look back on.  Mind you, New Year’s is also good for resolutions, hence Pat Miller’s Squirrel’s New Year’s Resolution, illustrated by Kathi Ember.  The book explains what a resolution is (good idea) and goes from there.

Finally, there’s good old Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Springs Into Action by Jacqueline Jules, illustrated by Miguel Benitez.  This would be the middle grade fiction book on this year’s list.  Due to the fact that I can count on one hand the number of MG books for kids starring a Hispanic character where the plot isn’t ALL about being Hispanic, I’m thrilled to see this newest Zapato Power book.  The first one was just plain old Zapato Power in which a boy named Freddie finds shoes that allow him to go super fast.  In this sequel, the shoes get a remote control.