Books referenced: Sharing the Bread: An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving Story -Pat Zietlow Miller and Jill McElmurry, Schwartz & Wade, 2015; Mad About Plaid – Jill McElmurry, Harper Collins, 2000; It’s a Miracle: A Hanukkah Storybook – Stephanie Spinner and Jill McElmurry, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003

This past August, we lost the wonderful illustrator, Jill McElmurry.  It is surprising how few mainstream media publications reported her death or described her life’s work. McElmurry is probably best known as the illustrator of the popular Little Blue Truck series, written by Alice Schertle.  Jill McElmurry was 62 years old.

Oddly, I learned of her death today when I decided to post a short piece for Thanksgiving, based on her beautiful homage to a traditional American Thanksgiving celebration, Sharing the Bread, with text by Pat Zietlow Miller.

 

Continue reading “On Thanksgiving: Thank you, Jill McElmurry” →

The Doll People –Ann M. Martin and Laura Godwin, illustrated by Brian Selznick, Disney-Hyperion, 2003

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower – Rumer Godden, illustrated by Jean Primrose, Macmillan, 1961;      Reprint edition illustrated by Sarah Gibb, Pan Macmillan, 2016

This is My Dollhouse – Giselle Potter, Schwartz & Wade, 2016

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  “Dolls are not asked.” Rumer Godden, Miss Happiness and Miss Flower                          

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Dolls are not asked and neither are kids.  Both categories of small people need larger beings to control them, but sometimes a doll or a child just needs to take matters into her own hands.  Continue reading “Review Essay: Revisiting the Dollhouse” →

The experience of reading or listening to a picture book can be both expansive and comforting for a child. Some of the best books for children enable this dual sense of wonder and familiarity by providing both experiences within the same text and illustrations. 

Scottish author and illustrator Alice Melvin, in The High Street (Tate, 2011) and Grandma’s House, (Tate, 2015), draws readers and listeners into fully created universes of carefully constructed buildings and interiors populated by reassuring people.  The people are parents, children, shopkeepers, police officers, dog walkers, and grandparents.  The interiors are filled with an almost endless collection of the familiar objects in a child’s, or an adult’s, daily life.

In The High Street, the protagonist, Sally, goes shopping in a series of stores peopled by owners and customers of different races, backgrounds, and genders.  Continue reading “Review Essay: The Welcoming Universe of Alice Melvin” →

A Review of  Was the Cat in the Hat Black?  by Philip Nel, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2017

The recent opening of the newly renovated museum dedicated to the work of Dr. Seuss in Springfield, Massachusetts, has brought attention to a more controversial aspect of the beloved author and illustrator’s work, his unthinking acceptance of racial stereotypes in some books and early political cartoons. 

At the same time, the just–released book by Philip Nel, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? (Oxford University Press, 2017) analyzes the implicit racism in much of children’s literature partly through the lens of Dr. Seuss, arguing that his famous zany and white-gloved cat is rooted in appropriation and distortion of black culture.

Yet Nel’s book reflects the same oblique racism of which he accuses other authors.  Continue reading “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think about Dr. Seuss” →