May’s Brave Day – written and illustrated by Lucy Morris
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2023

Books for children about starting a new school should be realistic but gentle.  Lucy Morris’s May’s Brave Day fulfills both those requirements, and uses a novel conceit about butterflies.  May has the proverbial butterflies in her stomach at the thought of beginning a new experience, but she is also drawn to the calmness and freedom of the outdoors. The book centers on her unrealistic hope of avoiding her fears by jumping, skipping, or outrunning the creatures in her stomach.  When she inevitably has to confront the source of her anxiety, a gradual and believable resolution is comforting to readers. 

Both the text and illustrations are understated.  Morris portrays May in a series of scenes: looking down at an uneaten slice of toast, retrospectively exhibiting courage while learning to ride a bicycle and swim, peering into a pond of goldfish.  The following sequence of pictures brings in May’s mother, who reminds her that her worries are to be expected, and gives examples of birds, frogs, and ducklings or need to acquire skills.  Then there is a visual transition from the natural word to the interior of a bakery, as May walks along the street, wearing a backpack that is the first clue about the source of her mood. She is so distracted that even the bread and cakes depicted in each frame of the window are invisible to her.  In an unusual strategy for books about beginning school, May’s feelings initially take precedence over their cause. 

The schoolyard is full of other equally unsure children, some clinging to parents. This scene of isolation soon becomes one of community, at first represented by coat hooks labeled with names, and then by purposeful activities and friendship.  Children are engaged in different projects and interact with one another, but there is space between them, expressing a sense of respect for their individuality.  May’s fears abate, and the loneliness that had been implicit in earlier pages disappears.  She embraces her new friend against a background of multicolored butterflies and a lush carpet of flowers.  Instead of an ending reinforcing that the previously resistant child is excited at the prospect of returning to school the next day, May is simply able to eat that slice of toast.  The butterflies are not gone, but they are outside where they belong. A sense of patience imbues this carefully paced story about a universal but outsized event in a child’s life.

Polka Dots for Poppy – written and illustrated by Amy Schwartz
Holiday House, 2016

Sometimes a child develops an attachment to a particular color or pattern.  Plaid, pink, houndstooth, unicorns, can all become elements of style and of her personal identity (some examples are here and here and here and here). The much missed Amy Schwartz, as gifted an author as an illustrator, has many books that capture how children feel about themselves and the world and people around them. In Polka Dots for Poppy there are four sisters and a mother who understands each one’s need to be different. (Schwartz, who grew up in a family of four daughters, dedicated the book to the memory of her mother, Eva Schwartz.). She combines realism about family life and the fairy tale archetype of multiple children and a parent, only happier and healthier. 

The four girls are not the sisters in Little Women, but readers can’t be blamed for thinking about them, either. Instead of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, these sisters are Ava, Isabelle, Charlie Ann, and Poppy. They all. need new school clothes, requiring an outing with their patient but determined mom.  These four are not obsessed with external standards of fashion.  They first appear in simple nightgowns and pajamas (Charlie Ann), and their mother is wearing flowered pajama pants and a purple robe. Her outside clothes, leggings and a jumper, resemble these in simplicity. 

Ava favors princess dresses, Isabelle demands purple, Charlie Ann is eager for cowboy clothes, and Poppy craves polka dots so much that she doesn’t even ask for it in a complete sentence: “Polka Dots!”  The other sisters have specific visions of their desired outfits, which are made complete by crowns, pockets, and even apples for the cowboy’s horse.  Poppy is singularly focused. Polka dots are enough all by themselves.  Schwartz creates characters through a minimum of carefully selected words, and active, bright pictures. There are scenes are daily activities, including trying on cowboy boots in the shoe store and riding the escalator up to the “girl gear” department.  There is also a two-page spread of the sisters’ ideal designer pieces floating against a black background punctuated by stars.

A basket of art supplies appears on the floor of the girls’ bedroom, and later plays an important role in establishing Poppy’s creativity and persistence, as well as her sisters’ supportive natures. (A sketchpad and paints also accompany the book’s dedication.) Dressing up and acting out are paired together, as the girls enjoy toast and chocolate milk, decked out in their dream apparel.  Concrete tools from their project lie randomly on the floor, the ball of yarn, scissors, and stray markers left as evidence of their cooperation and imaginative solution to a problem.  Poppy is triumphant, with even the soles of her shoes configured to be unique. As Amy Schwartz demonstrates with humor and empathy, sometimes children need to display who they are.

Wolfboy is Scared – written and illustrated by Andy Harkness
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2023

Wolfboy, the molded clay monster who befriends rabbits rather than eating them, has returned.  The woods are still full of moonberries and the moon itself looms in the sky, its surface covered by swirls of thick yellow instead of craters.  In the first book, Wolfboy was transformed from hangry to happy. Now he has reliable friends, but he is subject to fears. Who wouldn’t be, walking through a forest of ghostly trees, whose roots could well be the toes of a dangerous and aggressive monster?  The tension builds, but never to an overwhelming point, and finally resolves in a calm bedtime.

Andy Harkness includes a brief explanation of his artwork preceding the story. His creative process involves virtual reality, photographed clay, and the careful use of lighting, but the result is difficult to reduce to that information.  Wolfboy looks both real and fantastic and the same time, and so does his adversary, Grumble Monster.  Harkness’s use of color is key, from Wolfboy’s bright blue fur to his orange and black eyes moving at expressive angles. Magenta butterflies are guiding lights in the gray and taupe woods, while bunnies look like carefully shaped cookie dough. The pictures’ tactile quality is immersive, and appealing to young readers.

The visual element predominates in bringing Wolfboy to life, but his words complement the unfolding of his personality.  Children love repetition, and they also like to ask questions.  Wolfboy’s repeated requests for reassurance from the bunnies come in this form.  “Are these creepy monster claws?” and “Are those glowing monster eyes” are not meant to elicit information, but to hear the answer, “no,” followed by an alternative.  When he offers food to assuage his possible enemy, there is deliberate ambiguity.  Is he cleverly manipulating Grumble Monster by identifying with his feelings? (“I know how you feel”) Maybe he is just following his instincts, holding up a pyramid of moonberries that would make any monster content, at least for the moment.

In the last picture, Wolfboy is asleep, next to a plate of cookies and a glass of milk. A static calm replaces the ominous atmosphere.  Outside the window, a single butterfly appears against a light blue sky, with no evidence of fear-inducing creatures in sight.  Even Wolfboy needs a rest.

Just Snow Already! – written and illustrated by Howard McWilliam
Flashlight Press, 2023

Since we are gripped in the terrifying effects of climate change, a picture book based on a child’s frustration at the lack of snow may seem ironic. It’s not.  There are many classics based on this age-old premise, and more are published every year. Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day, Uri Shulevitz’s Snow, and Alvin Tresselt’s White Snow, Bright Snow, all date from the era when snow seemed like a strong possibility.  Other more recent books include Waiting for Snow by Marsha Diane Arnold and Renata Liwska, James Gladstone and Gary Clement’s My Winter City, Blizzard by John Rocco, and Snow Falls by Kate Gardner and Brandon James Scott. In Just Snow Already!, Howard McWilliam conveys the impatience of a child eager for the best part of winter, and oblivious to everything else.

My favorite sentence in the book is “Make it snow, Mom.”  This plea is preceded by his coffee-drinking dad checking the weather app on his phone, and remarking that the event could be imminent.  Next, McWilliam’s two-page spread familiarizes us with the boy’s neighborhood, populated by a diverse range of people living in lovely Victorian houses. His illustrations combine bright colors and broadly-drawn figures with an animation element, but also realistic interiors that could be updated Dutch domestic scenes.  The breakfast table features open cereal boxes, a bright green mug, Mom’s croissant and a bowl of fruit. It looks like the family is off to a good start of their day, if only it would snow. 

Gradually, the street becomes more filled with action.  Bicycle races, a postal worker who, unfortunately, trips on a hose and scatters her mail, a fire engine, and a truck full of exotic animals.  But this potential excitement is meaningless without snow.  The little boy is wiry and hyperkinetic, getting dressed as quickly as possible and leaping to the couch to look out the window.  He daydreams of all the activities that, in the absence of snow, will be denied to him. Although the book is sweetly humorous, readers will identify with his terror at the thought that it may never snow again.  Making leaf angels, or building mud men, are all too plausible as alternatives.

When the snow finally materializes, every figure and object in the final scene is dusted with joy.  Although this is not a look-and-find book, the final picture calls to mind the work of Richard Scarry, Brita Teckentrup, Marianne Dubuc, and Suzanne Rotraut Berner, working in the European tradition of the wimmelbuch.  Even without searching for specific items, readers will spend a long time noticing them.  Two monkeys play with a traffic cone. A mom takes a picture of a firefighter high fiving a child. Clowns entertain with balloon animals. By this point in the story, it’s evident that the boy’s priorities are not misplaced.  Snow is still the context for winter, even if it only arrives on the pages of a book.

Disagreement – Nani Brunini
Tapioca Stories, 2023

Disagreement was first published in Portugal in 2021, but there is no translator, because this is a wordless picture book.  If you are skeptical, there is a long tradition of such books for children, although this one will also be relevant for adults.  Just as there are people who view works of modern art and claim that a child could have created them, there may be readers who wonder why the author chose not to include words in his or her book.  But they haven’t seen Disagreement, which visually conveys frustration, anger, and the motivation to transcend the human condition. People will always disagree.

A man and a woman disagree.  Instead of words, uneven swirls of color emerge from their minds and mouths. Others join in, contributing their own incomplete perspectives and a range of emotions, which seem to correspond to hostility, confusion, puzzlement, and other less easily identifiable feelings. Even children participate in this frightening Tower of Babel. The cumulative range of frightening discord is personified as a monster which dwarfs a miniature mass of fleeing humans unable to resolve their differences.

Some pages reflect chaos with black and white drawings. But black and white also provides a background for images of creativity, when one person uses his imagination to twist white ribbons into a prancing horse, a peaceful bird, and more abstract objects.  Nani Brunini implies that negative and positive emotions are not necessarily opposites.  Elsewhere, color is used sparingly and deliberately, culminating in a red and blue-violet hot air balloon which serves as a kind of Noah’s ark, spiriting the conflicted crowd to the safety of compromise.

Obviously, this is not a plot summary.  Disagreement is a meditation of the failure to communicate and resolve differences, but Brunini avoids any simplistic ideas about agreeing to disagree or finding happiness in what we all have in common.  I think that children will relate to the idea that even adults can’t always work out differences, and that sometimes just drawing a horse, embarking on a journey, or even walking away from a fight are steps towards acceptance, but not resolution, of problems.  Sometimes emotions evade language, but there’s still a way to talk about them, as Brunini demonstrates in this wildly imaginative look at human imperfection.

A House Is a House for Me – written by Mary Ann Hoberman, illustrated by Betty Fraser
Viking Press, 1978

Poet and author Mary Ann Hoberman has left a distinctive legacy, particularly of intelligent and entertaining books in verse for children. There are so many to celebrate; one of the most memorable is A House Is a House for Me, a meditation of what it means to be a house to something or someone else.  With its hypnotic rhythm and philosophical bent, the book encourages kids to look at the world in a new way.

If you look at it long enough, almost every object or being is a container:

          Cartons are houses for crackers.

          Castles are houses for kings.

          The more that I think about houses,

          The more things are houses for things.

Each section of the extended poem is different, but they share certain qualities. There is repetition, rhyme, and emphatic punctuation. Note the period at the end of lines that represent complete thoughts.  In the verse above, Hoberman includes a reference to the process of thinking that frames the entire book. 

Hoberman worked with many illustrators, including Betty Fraser, whose pictures here are witty embodiments of Hoberman’s idea.  A boy lounging in a hammock dreams of seemingly disparate proofs of the house idea: a pincushion, a bowl of salad, a kangaroo and its joey, a hand covered in band-aids:

And if you get started in thinking,

          I think you will find it is true

          That the more that you think about houses for things,

          The more things are houses to you. 

A little time for quiet contemplation can lead to a new understanding.

Towards the end of the book, Hoberman raises a self-critical question; has she taken her idea too far?  Then she assures the reader, and herself, that thinking is a good thing. Don’t overthink that truth!

          Perhaps I have started farfetching…

          Perhaps I am stretching things some…

          A mirror’s a house for reflections…

          A throat is a house for a hum…

          But once you get started in thinking,

          You think and you think and you thinking

          How pockets are houses for pennies

          And pens can be houses for ink.

There are many mediocre books for children that directly impart messages.  Mary Ann Hoberman encouraged them to think, imagine, and question their own trains of thought.  That quality is only one of many that makes her work enduring.

One Present from Flekman’s – written by Alan Arkin, illustrated by Richard Egielski
HarperCollins, 1999

Yes, the great American actor, Alan Arkin wrote several children’s books.  While he was best known for his wonderful stage and screen performances, he was also the author of, among others, One Present from Flekman’s, a picture book from 1999 about a girl, Molly, and her grandfather, who visit an overwhelmingly sized toy store in New York City.  The store is a thinly disguised version of the legendary F.A.O. Schwarz, before it declared bankruptcy and was eventually reintroduced as a very pale imitation of its original self.  Arkin’s grace and humor as an actor comes through in this gentle story of how materialism affects childhood fun.

The book is illustrated by the prolific Richard Egielski, winner of the 1987 Caldecott Medal.  I’m a literary award skeptic, but I think it’s relevant that Arkin’s book was paired with so well-known and respected an artist. From the title page, where a grandpa in a checked coat and sweater vest addresses a little girl in cowboy boots, Egielski captures Arkin’s tone perfectly.  Molly and her grandpa take the train into the city to visit Flekman’s. A condition of their trip involves the number of presents the girl can choose: one.  In a store filled with life-sized stuffed animals, a Ferris wheel, costumed employees and a distracting marionette performance, that condition seems impossible. Why do adults expect children to conform to their optimistic expectations?

I’m intrigued by one picture that reflects the year of the book’s publication.  There is a shelf covered with dolls of every variety, “Raggedy Ann and Andys. Barbie dolls. Humpty Dumpty dolls. Rumpelstiltskin dolls. Pinocchio dolls. Dolls who drank from a bottle and burped.”  Aside from the references to classic folklore and literature, and to dated technologies, there is another cultural reference.   Non-trademarked version of both Babar and Madeline occupy two of the shelves. From 1988-2001, a popular series of Madeline shows were broadcast on television, and a Babar series debuted in 1989. At that time, tie-in toys based on the characters were widely available, only to sadly disappear later. They were high-quality toys, faithful to the original characters.

The toys are not the only dated element in the book.  Of the many distracting items in the store, none are based on screens.  A frenetic sales pitch for a game called Upsy Downzy Inzy Outzy entices kids with “dice and balloons and lights.” Players “had to pick cards and answer questions in a loud voice, then blow a whistle and run around like a crazy person.”  Arkin is satirizing what he sees as the ultimate challenge to a child’s attention span. He couldn’t possible have known the future, virtual play would subsume so much of a child’s time. 

The desperate grandpa calls the Carnegie Deli and orders pastrami sandwiches and egg creams, affectionately alluding to Arkin’s early childhood in New York, as well as his Jewish identity.  But it has become too late for the grandpa to retrieve Molly from the dilemma of limiting herself to one toy. Egielski depicts her lying prone under a pile of bicycles, dolls, and teddy bears.  Eventually, he calls in medical help, in the person of Dr. Brower, who diagnoses “Flekman’s fever,” prescribing warm milk and distance from any toys.  (In an interesting example of sensitivity to representation in children’s book, both Dr. Brower and the store manager are Black.) The resolution to the story is double-edged, with Molly calmed down, but also identified by Flekman’s manager as a potential entrepreneur.  Her marketable idea, however, is a simple washcloth transformed through imagination into a multipurpose toy.  Over the long span of his life, Alan Arkin brought joy to many in his varied roles on stage and in the movies and on television. As a parent and grandparent, he couldn’t have predicted the way complex financial and social forces would conspire against an active little girl trapped in a toy store. 

My Self, Your Self – written and illustrated by Esmé Shapiro
Tundra Books, 2022

It’s important to note that the word “self” in the title of this book is separated from the possessive “my” and “your.” With her inimitable style, and sense of how children perceive both the world and their own feelings, Esmé Shapiro (whose work I have reviewed here and here) has created a creature out of each person’s inner identity.  This small being, with rounded eyes, four limbs, and a leafy plant growing out of its head, becomes the way for kids to visualize how and why they are each unique. 

Shapiro both ventures definitive statements and poses questions to her readers.  “MY self is not YOUR self” may seem obvious, but it also demands some definition: “What is a self? Is it INSIDE of us? Or OUTSIDE of us?” Then she becomes more specific, categorizing through examples of how the part of each person that confers individuality may include buttoning one’s coat a certain way, liking the personal attributes of his or her friends, and baking muffins meant to be shared.

Helping one another to manage fears is another attribute of selfhood, and that trait encourages children to think about empathy.  Someone who is secure in her own sense of self is more likely to respond to others.

In Shapiro’s books, reassuring lessons play a role, but the fantastic nature of imagining is never absent.  Having accepted that people, or creatures with plants growing from their heads, all have different selves, she extends the possibilities of what that means.  Do acorns also have selves?  That slightly off-kilter moment leads to some meditations on choice, including what color to paint mushrooms, and colors, which roses to stop and smell.  But she returns to her central premise.  Feeling comfortable in one own’s skin (or perhaps fur?) makes relating to others that much easier. Every word of the text and each picture reflects E.M. Forster’s adage to “only connect,” but translated for children.  Some scenes show the self happily alone, resting inside a flower as it floats on the water. Solitude doesn’t mean loneliness, because a strong inner core strengthens everyone and also ensures flexibility: “My self comes with HERE…it follows me THERE…I bring my self EVERYWHERE!” This feature brings joy, not instability.

Of course, at the end of the day, selves need to share their experiences with one another.  A warm embrace among the flowers shelters these sweetly odd-appearing friends. They are wide, slender, long-limbed, or curled as a snail, but all easily identifiable to children as their own distinct identities, no matter what color they paint mushrooms or what kind of boots they wear.

My Bus – written and illustrated by Byron Barton
Greenwillow Books, 2015

The Three Bears – written and illustrated by Byron Barton
HarperFestival, 1997 (originally published by Greenwillow, 1991)

Byron Barton’s wonderful body of work, including board books, for the youngest readers, illustrates the value of simplicity. He will be greatly missed. In his long career, he showed readers the importance of respect for children’s imagination, intuition about how they perceive the world, and unpretentious images and text. It’s impossible to select the best of his rich and varied contributions to children’s literature, but here are two places to begin.

“I am Joe,” My Bus begins. “This is my car. This is my bus.” There you have all the information needed to understand the story, which centers on counting animals who board different vehicles, but is also about the familiarity of a friendly character.  In bright, geometric images carefully placed in a community, readers follow Joe and his bus as they pick up a number of dogs and cats, and then deliver the animals to a plane, boat, and train. Where are they all going?  We don‘t know, because their destination matters less than their trip and means of transportation, always fascinating to children.  When Joe arrives home, one dog disembarks with him.  Wherever the other animals are headed, it’s reassuring to know that Joe has a dog and that they arrive home safely.  Two cats sit by a quiet bus resting under the moon. They may not belong to anyone, but they’re keeping the bus company.

There are an inexhaustible number of versions of The Three Bears. An author needs to justify each new one.  Barton’s starts out “Once upon a time there were three bears,” not disappointing any reader.  The cover shows the bear family and their house in the background. The opening pages change the perspective because, in spite of the sentence, there are no bears in the picture.  The house is surrounded by trees too numerous to count, each one a green circle on a small red trunk, accompanied by flowers on the ground. Mama Bear’s kitchen as a brick stove, and three bowls of porridge sit on a deep green table.  Again, the subsequent picture shift perspective, with the three bowls viewed through the window of the house.  An economic text highlights each event of the story, which has its own moment to settle in the reader’s mind.

Along comes Goldilocks, sampling porridge, breaking the little chair, and settling in for nap with her shoes neatly placed at the side of the bed.  When the bears return, they could not look less threatening, but children hear them exclaim their surprise at the unsettled condition of their home. No harm is done, but Goldilocks is definitely scared. She runs away and will never return.  The house reappears with the same trees, this time snugly set in their center instead of placed in the corner of a two-page spread. Home is what matters.  There are many other books about the bears to share with children, but Byron Barton’s sets them securely on the path to appreciating them when they are ready.  His work is inimitable.

Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton – written by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illustrated by John Rocco
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

Explaining to children how creativity works is both challenging and rewarding. Presenting  the process through which an author and illustrator of picture books produced some of their favorite characters is especially significant.  In Big Machines: The Story of Virginia Lee Burton, readers learn how a multitalented artist with a consuming vision accomplished magic.  Burton brought to life machines about to be made obsolete, houses threatened by urban expansion, and steam trains bored with jobs.  (She even wrote and illustrated a comprehensive history of life on earth called Life Story.) Sherri Duskey Rinker and John Rocco have constructed an accessible path towards understanding Burton’s gifts, motivations, and lasting importance.

Although Rinker refers to Burton as “magical,” it is clear at the same time that she is down-to-earth. A mother, a dancer, a gardener, and a neighbor, Burton could be any member of her community, except that she is different.  “With a few taps of a wand,” Jinnee, as she is known, “creates animals. She can also make the seasons change, and conjure heroes and people of all sorts.”  There is a risk in emphasizing the almost mystical aspect of artistic creation, but both words and pictures depict how Burton’s wand is a paintbrush, and that her innate talent only allows her to conjure and create through hard work.

Burton appears at her desk from a bird’s eye view, meticulously drawing and erasing.  Rocco does not attempt to reproduce her style, but rather to suggest it, perhaps even to conjure her artwork in a reflection of the way she herself created a world.  The machines that she loved are the central focus of the book. 

We see her, standing along the track with her son, drawing a life-sized steam train. Michael, her little boy, had inspired her work on Mike Mulligan. He observes his mother’s vision of Mary Anne come to life in all its functional detail.  Katy the snowplow transforms a blank sheet of white paper into bright color, as Burton draws and paints the tough red Katy into a determined character.  Burton and her children stand alongside the completed scene.

Readers may be reminded of Crocket Johnson’s Harold with his purple crayon, resolving dilemmas by drawing, but the meld of fantasy and reality in Burton’s biography has a somewhat different purpose.  Standing inside the little house as she draws it, the artist is not saving herself from danger or finding a missing home. Instead, she is realizing an idea of art and engineering as complementary, with both approval of change and nostalgia for inevitable loss. 

Burton’s sons are worried at the little house’s imminent displacement by “Roads! Buildings! Traffic!” and the inevitable darkened skies they bring.  But a flatbed truck hauls the house to safety and the big city remains. Rinker and Rocco establish that Virginia Lee Burton’s life wasn’t one of either/or, but of both/and.  Even as Mary Anne is rewarded for her hard work with a useful role in retirement, and Maybelle the cable car stubbornly keeps her route,  Burton’s genius is the animating force behind these contrasting approaches to progress. The artist’s “wavy and curvy, swoopy and swervy” lines are still a constant presence in the world of children’s books.