MORE 'PICTURE-BOOK-BIOGRAPHIES' POSTS
Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat By Javaka Steptoe Little, Brown & Co. $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-21388-2 Ages 5 and up On shelves October 25th True Story: I’m working the children’s reference desk of the Children’s Room at 42nd Street of New York Public Library a couple years ago and a family walks […]
Okay. So now we’re finally getting some interesting picture book biographies on a regular basis. When I was a kid you had your Helen Keller and your Abraham Lincoln and you were GRATEFUL! These days, people are interested in celebrating more than just the same ten people over and over again. Why this year alone […]
You may have seen the Guardian article the other day ‘Oh, what a big gun you have’: NRA rewrites fairytales to include firearms. The title pretty much is the whole story, except that these are tales posted on the NRA’s website and not (at this time) actual published books. I was looking at the post […]
The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch By Chris Barton Illustrated by Don Tate Eerdmans Books for Young Readers $17.00 ISBN: 978-0-8028-5379-0 Ages 4-8 On shelves now “It’s the story of a guy who in ten years went from teenage field slave to U.S. Congressman.” Come again? That’s the pitch author Chris Barton pulled out […]
Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower By Greg Pizzoli Viking (an imprint of Penguin Group USA) $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-670-01652-5 Ages 8-11 On shelves now I was listening to a favorite podcast of mine the other day when the panelists began discussing the difference between heist films and […]
Grandfather Gandhi Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus Illustrated by Evan Turk Atheneum (an imprint of Simon and Schuster) $17.99 ISBN: 978-1-4424-2365-X Ages 4-8 On shelves now. Are you familiar with the concept of booktalking? It’s a technique librarians developed to get people interested in books they might otherwise not pick up. The whole concept is […]
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table By Jacqueline Briggs Martin Illustrated by Eric-Shabazz Larkin Readers to Eaters Books ISBN: 978-0-9836615-3-5 $17.95 Ages 4-8 On shelves September 10th It shouldn’t be this hard. You walk to a biography section of a children’s room, any children’s room, and you start searching for biographies of living people […]
The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdős By Deborah Heiligman Illustrated by LeUyen Pham Roaring Brook (an imprint of Macmillan) ISBN: 978-1-59643-307-6 Ages 6 and up On shelves June 25th Make a beeline for your local library’s children’s biography section and learn firsthand the shocking truth about picture book bios of […]
Spirit Seeker: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey By Gary Golio Illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez Clarion Books (an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-547-23994-1 Ages 6 and up On shelves now Is there any complicated hero with a past so full of darkness that their life cannot be recounted to children? This is the conundrum […]
The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau By Michelle Markel Illustrated by Amanda Hall Eerdmans Books for Young Readers $17.00 ISBN: 978-0-8028-5264-6 Ages 4-8 On shelves now I’m not ashamed to say it, though perhaps I should be. Still, it’s true. Though I grew up in the middle class with a good education and a stint […]