picture book

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen

by Tom B.

I Want My Hat Back

He just wants his hat back. Is that so wrong?

One of my favorite things about reading books to my daughter is that, through the process of reading out loud, she learns so much about not just language, but also things like intonation, context, sarcasm, and all of those other glorious abstractions that come hand-in-hand with verbal communication. Funny books do a particularly good job of teaching children about those subtle underlying language rules, and I love watching my daughter realize on her own that, even though a character is seemingly saying one thing, you can infer through the context of the illustrations and the intonation of how the line might be read that the character actually MEANS something completely different. And, if you’re looking for an example of that kind of book, you can hardly do better than I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen.

Named as one of the New York Times best illustrated children’s books of 2011, I Want My Hat Back is a masterpiece of understated, slow-burn humor. Even Klassen’s illustrations revel in the art of the deadpan, giving us a menagerie of animal characters with stony, nearly unchanging faces. And yet the blank expressions of the animals – especially the face of the lead character, a bear – can suddenly convey volumes of emotion with only a slight shift of posture or eye position. Fun with language aside, this is a beautiful book – Klassen’s illustrative style reminds me of an exquisite hybrid of Frederick‘s Leo Leonni and A Sick Day for Amos McGee‘s Erin Stead.

I Want My Hat Back

Seriously, Mr Fox. If you're holding out on me...

And it’s a heck of a lot of fun to read too. The premise of I Want a Hat Back is gorgeously understated – there’s a bear who’s lost his hat and he wants it back. But, out of that set-up, Klassen creates an extremely funny scenario. Realizing that his hat is gone, the bear starts to ask other animals in the forest if they’ve seen his hat. He asks a fox and a frog, and they offer polite, repetitious responses, informing him that, “No. I have not seen any hats around here.” The bear then encounters a rabbit, who’s wearing a bright red pointy hat, the color of which starkly stands out against the muted earth-tone palette of all the other illustrations in the book. When asked about the hat, the rabbit responds:

No. Why are you asking me.
I haven’t seen it.
I haven’t seen any hats anywhere.
I would not steal a hat.
Don’t ask me any more questions.

And, no matter how obvious it is that he’s lying – talk about a self-incriminating witness – the bear doesn’t pick up on it, says “Thank you anyway”, and moves on to questioning a turtle.

I Want My Hat Back

Awww... poor guy...

As soon as I turned the page after the rabbit’s rambling response, my daughter did a brief double-take and said, “Wait… he totally stole that hat, didn’t he?” I gave a non-committal shrug and replied, “What do you think?”, and, suddenly, my daughter’s engagement with the story exponentially increased. She couldn’t believe that the bear hadn’t picked up on the rabbit’s obvious lie OR that the bear didn’t notice what was probably his own hat sitting on the rabbit’s head. Now my five-year-old had more information than the bear narrator and, enlivened by her discovery, she couldn’t wait to see how the mystery played out. [read the rest of the post…]

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Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

by Tom B.

Plant a Kiss

Plant a Kiss: A Cynic's Worst Nightmare

I’m going to open my review of Plant a Kiss by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Peter H. Reynolds with two quick moments of full disclosure. Ready? Here goes. Full Disclosure #1: My daughter is an unabashed fan of Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I’ve mentioned her love of Rosenthal’s Little Pea board books on the blog before and she’s consistently fallen head over heels for every other Amy Rosenthal book we’ve brought home from the library or bookstore. (She particularly digs Duck! Rabbit!, This Plus That: Life’s Little Equations, and The Wonder Book… three books that I can definitely recommend as well.)

Illustrator Peter Reynolds is also a pretty big deal in children’s lit – his picture book, The Dot, is supposed to be fantastic – but, I’d admit, he’s one of those children’s book creators whom we’ve somehow missed entirely. Plant a Kiss is actually the first Peter Reynolds book we’ve ever read (it won’t be the last), and the only reason I point that out is to reassert that Amy Krouse Rosenthal really was the driving force for my daughter wanting to read this book. So, in terms of full disclosure, just FYI, we were TOTALLY predisposed to like this book.

Full Disclosure #2: Amy Krouse Rosenthal started a viral campaign a few weeks ago to get more people talking about Plant a Kiss and was offering copies of the book to people who felt they could act as a “Plant a Kiss Ambassador” and just let people know about the book. I sent Amy an email, got the NICEST response possible, and quickly received a copy of Plant a Kisswith a beautiful little message for my daughter inscribed on the title page. So… again, not only were we big fans of Amy Krouse Rosenthal in the first place, but she then showed my daughter an immense amount of kindness, so, again, we’re talking about a RIDICULOUS level of predisposition for really, really wanting to like this book. Are we clear on that? OK. So, what’s the verdict?

Plant a Kiss

How it all begins...

Plant a Kiss is a pretty great book.

(Pause for the cynical heart of the internet calling bullshit on my very existence.)

Are you still with me? OK, I’m glad I was so upfront about my metric ton of favorable biases about Plant a Kiss, but, my positive prejudices aside, I think it’s hard to deny that this is a very warm-hearted, very well executed picture book that a lot of kids will really enjoy.

But I can understand why some parents might not be into Plant a Kiss. Why? Here’s the thing – I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty cynical person. I’m sarcastic, I love edgy, jaded authors, I complain a lot, I enjoy irony to the point where I’m a captain’s hat, a Wilco shirt, and a 24-day beard growth away from being a hipster – I am a part of the generation that PERFECTED eyerolling. I am a cynical bastard.

BUT, when I became a parent, I quickly realized that that cynicism is MY BAGGAGE. It’s not my kid’s. My daughter wears her heart on her sleeve 24/7 and, you know what, I’ll be damned if anyone, particularly her dad, makes her think that’s a bad idea. As a parent, it’s my job to get wide-eyed with wonder – to gleefully regale her with tales of pokey little puppies, magic, and adventure – and to not let my inner black-hearted, liberal arts critic-side ruin her fun. I’m not saying that I’m sheltering my daughter. I’m not. If she’s going to decide that the world is NOT a fine place and is NOT worth fighting for – more power to her – but I want that to be her decision, not mine. [read the rest of the post…]

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17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore by Jenny Offill, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter

by Tom B.

The first thing you should know about 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore is that – if a book can make me laugh with its title alone, there’s a 80% chance that I’m either going to buy it or, at the very least, borrow it from the library and keep it until I incur late fees. It might seem immature to be such an easy sell, to be so willing and eager to literally judge a book by its cover, but if an author can make me smirk with something as basic as a book title, that’s an accomplishment I can appreciate. Heck, I believe that the innate power of a killer title is the primary reason why Adam Mansbach’s Go the F**k to Sleep was such a sensation last year. When you encounter a title like that, how can you NOT want to read that book?

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore

And, I’ll admit, it was totally the title that sold me on 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore. I was at the annual American Library Association Conference last year, walked past a table displaying Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter’s picture books, and the featured titles alone caused me to stop in my tracks and turn around. (The pair has another book, 11 Experiments That Failed, that also sold me on its title alone.)

17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore

Admit it. This is kind of a genius prank, isn't it?

As the title hints, 17 Things is a very, very funny picture book, which falls decidedly into the “Kids Behaving Badly” genre of children’s books. Well, “behaving badly” might be a little harsh, but the protagonist of 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore is definitely a grade-A hellraiser. She’s precocious, stubborn, obstinate, and extremely self-possessed. And I think that’s a wonderful thing to see in a kid’s book.

Our unnamed narrator walks us through the “17 things” she’s no longer allowed to do anymore and, as we learn more about her past offenses and the related fallout, personally, I think it’s hard not to fall in love with her. Her list of “things” starts out slow:

I had an idea to staple my brother’s hair to his pillow.
I am not allowed to use the stapler anymore.

It’s a hilarious scenario, which is made even funnier by Nancy Carpenter’s pitch-perfect illustrations. I actually think that 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to Do Anymore is one of the most visually striking picture books we own. Carpenter composes wonderfully comic illustrations for the main characters, but she also creates this fantastically tactile world around them by digitally building their environments out of real-life objects. The backgrounds of the page-spreads are sometimes sheets of notebook paper, sometimes a child’s painting, or sometimes pieces of fabric. In the stapler pages, for example, Carpenter inserts real pictures of staplers and staples into the collage-style page-spreads. It’s original and extremely cool. It almost reminds me of a hybrid of Tony Fucile’s illustrations in Bink & Gollie and Lane Smith’s collages in Cowboy and Octopus. (BTW, both of those books are incredbly awesome.) [read the rest of the post…]

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2012 Caldecott Medal Winner: A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka

by Tom B.

A Ball for Daisy

A Ball for Daisy: Winner of this year's Caldecott Medal

Earlier this week, Chris Raschka’s A Ball for Daisy won the 2012 Caldecott Medal, the very prestigious annual award for the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Earlier this evening, I was flipping through Chris Raschka’s A Ball for Daisy as my daughter brushed her teeth and worrying that she wasn’t going to like it.

Why was I worried? Because, recently, my daughter, who turned five in November, has started to gravitate towards older and older skewing reading material. She still loves picture books and even has a few board books that she refuses to pack away with the rest of her toddler toys, but, lately, she’s shown increasing interest in early readers and chapter books. We’d just spent the past two days reading her the 128-page Lulu and the Brontosaurus by Judith Viorst and Lane Smith, and she’d loved it. It was a huge hit. (It’s both a beautiful and a hysterically funny chapter book. I definitely recommend it.) My wife and I began thinking, “OK, this is where we’re headed. More Mercy Watson, less Eric Carle.”

So, as I flipped through A Ball for Daisy, a wordless picture book with big, expressive illustrations that even the youngest of readers could appreciate, all I could think was “She might be too old for this.”

BUT, as frequent readers of this blog will recognize, there is one seemingly constant and unchangeable rule of parenting that I never seem to be able to escape. What’s that rule? The fact that – when I make a parental decision or even when I speak a particularly declarative sentence – I am almost always, always WRONG.

A Ball for Daisy

They're so cute together. I hope nothing ever happens to that ball...

My five year old didn’t just LIKE A Ball of Daisy. She adored it. This little 32-page book, with no words at all, brought out so many emotions from her in a short bedtime reading that I could barely believe it. And, once I finished reading, she was more animated and chatty about what she’d just read than I’d seen her be in a long time. It was one of the best bedtime reads we’d had in weeks and it all came from a book that five minutes earlier that I assumed she wouldn’t like. (My great apologies, Caldecott committee. I shouldn’t have doubted you.)

I think the reason that A Ball for Daisy worked so well for my daughter – and why it probably works so well for other children too – is that it very skillfully takes its reader on an emotional journey. The simple, yet achingly deep story is all about a cute dog named Daisy who LOVES her big red ball. How do we know she loves it? Because, in Raschka’s expressive drawings, you can see Daisy’s face light up and almost hear her tail wag whenever she’s near the ball. The kicker is the beautiful moment when Daisy, while trying to fall asleep, decides to cuddle up to her red ball on the couch. (Trust me. Cuddles go over HUGE with kids. My daughter let out an audible “Aww” at that part.)

Daisy’s owner takes Daisy and her ball on a walk to the park, and Daisy meets a new brown dog, who excitedly jumps in to play with Daisy’s ball. And then the unthinkable happens – the ball pops. It explodes in a little red burst and, suddenly, it’s gone. All that’s left is some red plastic, deflated and broken on the ground. [read the rest of the post…]

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Zombie in Love by Kelly DiPucchio, illustrated by Scott Campbell

by Tom B.

Zombie in Love

Aww... isn't he cute?

I’m just going to put this out there – Zombie in Love by Kelly DiPucchio and Scott Campbell might be one of the coolest picture books I’ve ever bought for my daughter. And it’s that great kind of cool where my daughter is really enamored with it – after our first reading, she loudly declared “Put that on my bookshelf NOW” – and I’m really into it too. Yes, it helps that one of my favorite artists of all time illustrated it, but, as a nerdy pop culture guy in his ‘30s, Zombie in Love speaks to a lot of my interests.

Now my daughter has her own definite areas of interest – princesses, astronomy, the music of Debbie Harry and David Bowie, words that rhyme with “poop” – and perhaps my favorite of her latest reoccupations is her growing interest in monsters.

That interest isn’t manifesting itself in a bad “terror-under-the-bed” way or in a cutesy “Sesame Street-making-monsters-safe” way. She’s just become very, very interested in traditional old-school monsters, and we have frequent conversations now about vampires, werewolves, mummies, and zombies, to name a few. And those are fun conversations to have. (They’re a lot more fun than debating if Jasmine or Belle is the prettiest.)

My daughter is a kid who’s prone to nightmares, so my wife and I spend a lot of time vetting what books, TV shows, or other various media forms may or may not be fodder for her potential night terrors. (I’ve come to accept that we’ll never see eye-to-eye on Scooby Doo. I’m pro, my wife is con.) This is a child who sleeps with nightlights, hates loud sounds, and refused to see 3D movies until two weeks ago. (Don’t even mention 4D movies to her. Oh, that was an ugly day at the zoo.)

But she isn’t afraid of traditional monsters. It’s like she was born with a respect for classic movie monsters, in particular, and has the voracious appetite for learning about Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, and, believe it or not, Godzilla. (She’s over-the-moon for Godzilla, so if anyone knows of any good picture books about kaiju or the giant monster genre, please send on your recommendations.)

So, like we vet potential nightmare material, my wife and I started vetting monster-related materials that might speak to her interest without totally freaking her out. Scooby Doo, in my opinion, can great media franchise for the monster-curious. (If your kid is up to it – some of the monsters can be a little freaky. And some SD series are MUCH better than others. My daughter and I are particularly big fans of Cartoon Network’s new Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated show.)

Nightmare Before Christmas costume

Monster-loving three-year-old girls are super, super cool.

There’s the Monster High dolls, which are really popular right now and… sigh, I guess they marry together the “princess” and “monster” interests for young girls and my daughter is besotted with them right now, but… why do their outfits have to come from the Czech prostitute fashion outlet? Their clothes are HORRIBLE. We let my daughter have one for her birthday – after months of pleading – but we insisted on picking out an “appropriate” one (i.e. had most of her clothes on) and that’s the only one she’s ever getting.

The monster property that clicked the most with my daughter is Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. At first, I was afraid the movie would be too dark for her, so I started out showing her some YouTube clips and gauging her interest and comfort level. She got really comfortable really fast and instantly fell in love with both the movie and Burton’s very cool picture book version of his original poem. (When she was three, she went as Jack Skellington for Halloween and, let me tell you, they don’t make Jack costumes for three-year-old girls.) [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part Three: Leon the Chameleon and You’re Finally Here

by Tom B.

I’ve spent two posts so far lauding the comedic storytelling talents of author-illustrator Mélanie Watt – apologies again for the delay in getting the third part of the trilogy online – and now it’s time for us to take a look at what’s left. And by “what’s left”, I mean, what other Mélanie Watt books I’ve read with my daughter. Let me warn you – my exposure to Watt’s works is achingly incomplete. At the Kids Can Press website, Watt is listed as the creator of 18 different picture books and my family has read about 8 of them. Granted, we have read most of Watt’s two most acclaimed and widely-known series, Scaredy Squirrel and Chester, so we’ve covered most of the big hits, but there are still a lot of deeper album tracks that we still haven’t explored yet. (We particularly want to check out her Learning with Animals series and the picture book Augustine.)

Leon the Chameleon

Leon the Chameleon: Watt's first picture book

However, we have read two of those “and the rest” titles – Leon the Chameleon and You’re Finally Here – and, let’s get this out of the way up-front, both are really strong titles that you definitely should pick up at your local library, if you can. You’re Finally Here is definitely the better of the two books, but there’s a reason for that. And that reason is… there’s a ten-year gap between the publication of Leon and You’re Finally Here. Leon the Chameleon was the first picture book that Watt ever published – she originally created it as part of a design class assignment at the University of Quebec – and You’re Finally Here was published in early 2011. So, Leon was the product of an up-and-coming artist experimenting with the picture book format for the first time and You’re Finally Here is that same artist checking back in with almost a decade of publishing experience under her belt.

Can you tell the difference between the two books? In a word, yes. Leon is a fun book, but it’s very straightforward, very predictable. Now, predictable isn’t always bad. Listening to someone sing “Danny Boy” is predictable – you know how the song goes – but that doesn’t stop you from tearing up when someone really, really talented sings the heck of the song and brings down the house. Leon the Chameleon doesn’t bring down the house, but it’s earnest and fun and shows a TON of promise. [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part Two: Scaredy Squirrel

by Tom B.

Scaredy Squirrel

This is Scaredy.

In my last post, I discussed how, thanks to the picture book Chester, my daughter became a big time fan of Mélanie Watt, a seriously talented author-illustrator from Quebec. The hook of Chester is that a the title character, an ego-driven fluffy cat, absconds with a red marker and starts editing the book to favor himself, which kicks off a minor war between Chester and the book’s author, Mélanie Watt. It’s a nice slice of high-concept fun that turned Watt into a minor celebrity in our house and permanently placed the author on my daughter’s book-finding radar. We now know, when we hit the library or a bookstore, if we encounter a Mélanie Watt book, my daughter is going to latch onto it like an alien facehugger.

With that in mind, it was probably inevitable that my daughter would discover Scaredy Squirrel one day, another picture book series by Watt and the literary creation that she’s probably best known for. We actually first encountered Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach, the third Scaredy book, at our local library – “Dad! DAD! Mélanie Watt’s name is on this book, Dad!” – and it got such a big reaction at home that we quickly knew that we’d eventually be reading the entire series.

And I have to say reading Scaredy Squirrel books is a pleasure, particularly for adult readers. Because they’re funny. Really funny and they’re a total blast to read aloud. Every adult – parent, relative, friend – who has sat down with my daughter and read one of her Scaredy Squirrel books has loved the experience and asked for more. In fact, when I first launched this blog, my awesome sister-in-law, Erin, immediately sent me an email – subject line “me want scaredy squirrel!” – asking me when was I going to write about Scaredy Squirrel. (Hey Erin, the answer is “now.”)

There are five Scaredy books so far – Scaredy Squirrel, Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend, Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach, Scaredy Squirrel at Night, and Scaredy Squirrel Has a Birthday Party. We’ve read all of them, except for Scaredy Squirrel at Night, and have seriously enjoyed them all.

Scaredy Squirrel

Scaredy is concerned for your safety.

Scaredy Squirrel as a character is simple yet complex. He’s a squirrel with a laundry list of phobias, anxieties, and unbreakable daily routines. To quote Scaredy’s prologue in the first book (these prologues are the only place where the squirrel speaks in first-person): “I NEVER leave my nut tree. It’s way too dangerous out there. I could encounter germs, poison ivy, or sharks. If danger comes along, I’m prepared. I have antibacterial soap, Band-Aids, and a parachute.” And, in each book, Scaredy is confronted with some normal social situation – leaving home, going to the beach, trying to make friends – and we get to watch while Scaredy goes to absurd lengths to remove all variables or sense of risk from each situation, which, as we all know, is totally impossible. [read the rest of the post…]

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In Praise of Mélanie Watt – Part One: Chester

by Tom B.

We have a lot of affection for Mélanie Watt in our house for several reasons. To start with, she’s the first children’s author-illustrator that my daughter really became a fan of all on her own. Now, on a whole, I think my daughter has not-bad taste when it comes to kids books – with a few notable exceptions – but I also realize that my wife and I do a fair bit of work to make sure that she has relatively higher-class material to choose from. I’ve essentially spent the first five years of her life whispering in her ear, like her own personal Screwtape, directing her towards the books I want her to read and making her feel like she has a choice in the matter.

Melanie Watt

This is Mélanie Watt. But I didn't add the red marker edits. She did it to herself.

“Oh, OK, I guess you’ve got to pick between this Tomie dePaola or this Roald Dahl book… you know, these ones that you picked out. YOU did. All by yourself. No. No, I don’t know what happened to that princess book. No, forget about that, I think someone else took it. No. And it was ripped, so we’re not going to buy it. So, between these two, the two that YOU picked out, which one are we going to get? Great choices, by the way.”

Don’t get me wrong. I give in to her reading preferences A LOT and I try to listen, but I’m not going to stop fighting the good fight when I’ve spent this many years gently manipulating her for the greater good. (I wish that sounded less sinister, but, eh, what are you going to do? Welcome to parenthood.)

But I have to give my daughter credit. She found Mélanie Watt all on her own. On a trip to our local library around two years ago, she emerged from the stacks grasping onto a copy of a picture book called Chester by Mélanie Watt. She plopped it down in front of me and said, “I want this one. It’s funny.” And, with an impassioned plea like that, we just had to take it home.

And my daughter was right. It WAS funny. And she absolutely loved it. Chester has a very funny premise, which Mélanie Watt executes exceedingly well. The gist is that an author and illustrator named, coincidentally enough, Mélanie Watt is trying – operative word: trying – to draw a picture book about a mouse who lives in a house in the country, BUT a big, ego-driven cat named Chester has swiped a red marker and is editing the story to make himself the star. Chester is constantly arguing with Watt via his red marker – they bicker on the jacket flap copy, Chester edits her author bio, the cat even changes her dedication on the copyright page.

(Also, since my day-job is being an editor at a publishing company, the idea of someone wreaking that much havoc with a red pen is just inherently funny to me.)

Chester

This is Chester. Blame him for the red pen.

The set-up is deliciously meta, but not in an inaccessible way. Sometimes when a kids book plays around with the idea of actually being a book, it can either get a little too cutesy with the premise OR it can get obsessed with parent-skewing in-jokes that fly right over your kid’s head. Some of the best examples of a meta kids book done right are The Three Pigs by David Wiesner, We Are in a Book by Mo Willems, and Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. I think Chester would make that list too.

Chester eventually ignites a war with his creator, which is an extremely fun sequence to read aloud. When he redraws a page, she fights back with her omniscient author powers and changes the scene or dresses him up in a pink tutu. It turns into this large-scale argument with a fictional character refusing to listen to its creator – which is a really hilarious concept – but, since the creator becomes such a big part of the story, she becomes a character as well. [read the rest of the post…]

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Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein

by Tom B.

In my post about Imogene’s Antlers the other day, I mentioned how rare it is to find a book that can make your kid really laugh out loud. It’s fairly easy to find your kid a book where, upon reflection, they’ll say, “yeah, that’s a funny book.” But finding a book that inspires pure, spontaneous laughter, those titles are few and far between.

That being said, Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein doesn’t just make my daughter laugh, it makes her lose her mind.

Interrupting Chicken

Finally. A book that teaches kids the joys of interrupting their elders...

Honestly. She goes bonkers for this admittedly very, very funny picture book in a way that I’ve never seen her react before. And the funny thing is – Interrupting Chicken should be an ideal bedtime book. It’s about a father chicken trying to put his young daughter down to sleep and read her a final bedtime story, but, as the title suggests, she keeps interrupting him. It’s a book built around the bedtime ritual, so, originally, I thought this would be a perfect new bedtime book for our family.

Interrupting Chicken

So cute when she's not interrupting...

I was WRONG. I find I can’t read Interrupting Chicken to my daughter at bedtime anymore because it has the opposite effect of a good bedtime book – it actually wakes her up. It doesn’t just wake her up. It makes her hyper. She loves it SO much and she’s created such a weird, funny little ritual surrounding the book that, while we read it, she becomes such an active participant that she freaks out a little bit. Which, don’t get me wrong, is HILARIOUS to witness. However, when it’s already past 8:00 pm and it’s a school night, it gets to be a bit much. So, full disclosure, Interrupting Chicken is a book about bedtime that we only read during daylight hours at the moment, but it is still one of our favorite semi-recent additions to our home library.

This is the first David Ezra Stein title that our family has read, and he’s a major talent, both as a writer and as an illustrator. Interrupting Chicken has a fantastic visual style that brings together various different mediums – the main spreads with the chicken and her father are watercolor paintings with a great palette of reds, greens, and browns; there are sepia-toned storybook pages interspersed throughout the story; and we even get the chicken’s own attempt at making her own picture book that’s illustrated in crayons. The sheer design of the book is really impressive.

[read the rest of the post…]

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A Tribute to the Great Florence Parry Heide and The One and Only Marigold

by Tom B.

Sometimes the world is a weirdly bittersweet and wonderful place. I spent most of this evening typing out a long tribute to The One and Only Marigold, a picture book that I dearly love and a book that my daughter adores. As I finished the article and began searching for hyperlinks to accompany the text, I saw on the internet that it was just announced that Florence Parry Heide, the author of the book, had passed away in her sleep last night. She was an amazing 92 years old and authored over 80 children’s books during her prolific career. What an amazing woman and what a huge loss for children’s literature.

Lane Smith helps his collaborator on Princess Hyacinth (The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated) (Random/Schwartz & Wade), Florence Parry Heide, celebrate her 90th birthday at ALA.

Lane Smith helps his collaborator on Princess Hyacinth (The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated) (Random/Schwartz & Wade), Florence Parry Heide, celebrate her 90th birthday.

I had the pleasure to meet her once in 2009 and she couldn’t have been more charming. So, in tribute of the favorite daughter of Kenosha, Wisconsin and an author that has created far too many books that my daughter has fallen in love with, I offer this heartfelt tribute to The One and Only Marigold and of Florence Parry Heide herself. Honestly. If you love great children’s books, pick up ANY of her titles and you’ll be happy you did.

My tribute to The One and Only Marigold now feels a bit self-indulgent – Mrs. Heide deserves a better elegy than I could ever write – but I want to leave my original article pretty much intact to simply show off the sheer fanboy-ish glee that this wonderful woman inspired in a grouchy thirty-something dad. You will be missed, Mrs. Heide.

And now, onto The One and Only Marigold …

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As I’ve mentioned before, when looking for books for my daughter, my favorite thing in the world is the unexpected surprise. I LOVE stumbling upon a book I’ve never heard of before and having that moment of discovery – like all the secret knowledge of the world has just fallen into my lap.

Now the hilarious irony of these moments is that, usually, when I have them, I’ve accidentally “discovered” something that is already WIDELY known and HUGELY famous. The only person that hasn’t heard of these titles yet is ME. I call them my “Christopher Columbus” moments. I charge ahead and plant a flag on a book, screaming, “LOOK WHAT MY GRAND INSIGHT HAS PLUCKED FROM OBSCURITY! I CLAIM THEE!” And, then, after a proud few moments, someone normally takes me aside and quietly explains that the book was a best-seller, won the Newbery Award, and has been the subject of 10 movie adaptations (5 of which I’ve probably seen).

The One and Only Marigold

The One and Only Marigold

Case in point – I have that oblivious sense of discovery pride about The One and Only Marigold by Florence Parry Heide and Jill McElmurry. However, I think I’m mostly just happy that I lucked into finding such a delightful picture book, because finding Marigold not only introduced us to a wonderful book, but it also introduced us to the great Florence Parry Heide, who quickly became one of our favorite authors.

I’m not going to try to recount Mrs. Heide’s insanely impressive resume here – try this link or that link for some background – but her prolific career that has included collaborations with a breathtaking variety of authors and artists including Edward Gorey, Sylvia Van Clief, Jules Feiffer, and Lane Smith. She even has her own holiday in her hometown of Kenosha, Wisconsin. And, like an idiot, I hadn’t heard of her until 2009.

I was attending the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago and had been hunting the convention floor for a copy of Princess Hyacinth: The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated, a picture book that I’d heard raves about and that had artwork by Lane Smith – one of my favorite illustrators ever since I first read The Stinky Cheese-Man. When I finally found the table where Lane Smith was signing copies of the book, I was introduced to a charming older woman, who, as it turns out, actually wrote Princess Hyacinth. This was Florence Parry Heide.

[Note: If you don’t already own Princess Hyacinth, go buy it now. Right now. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Honestly, it’s that good. I’ll do a write-up of it one day, but Marigold didn’t nearly get the same level of popular attention as Princess Hyacinth, so it can wait. Oh, and her books with Edward Gorey are fantastic too. OK, more on Florence Parry Heide soon.] [read the rest of the post…]

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