November is Picture Book Month

November is Picture Book Month ,which  libraries, book stores, authors and illustrators happily celebrate.  Amidst the eBook revolution, picture books have been about the last to participate.  However, publishers are providing more and more app versions of preschool favorites.  Controversy over electronic vs paper has inevitably ensued.  In addition to the social and tactile aspects, the educational quality of learning language and how to read on a tablet is also being challenged.  The New York Times published an article last month entitled Is E-Reading Story Time? questioning the value of using a tablet for a preschooler’s reading adventures. 

Regardless of how you approach using eBooks with young children, the following books definitely come off better in paper: large pictures that showcase the illustrator's artistic technique without any distracting sound effects.  All are new offerings from favorite award winners.

  Misadventuresof Sweetie Pie (Chris Van Allsburg).  Poor hamster Sweetie Pie goes from one irresponsible owner to the next before she is finally freed by an unexpected ally.  Van Allsburg, best known for the Christmas classic The Polar Express, uses his precise drawings and ground level perspective  to sympathize with the hamster. The children in this story are naughty, not nice.

  The  Animals’ Santa (Jan Brett) Those of us who are Jan Brett fans love to pore over her detailed scenes and accompanying borders filled with delicate intricate designs.  She always gives us two stories in one. Here, Little Snow Hare is skeptical that there is a Santa for animals.  The other woodland creatures are sure, because they get gifts every year, but no one has seen a Santa.  Little Snow’s big brother figures out a way to help discover whooo (I’m giving it away) is the animals’ Santa. All the while we see animal “elves” making the gifts for Santa to deliver. 

  Give and Take (Chris Raschka)  This Caldecott award winning author/illustrator (A Ball for Daisy) combines  a traditional folktale with some word play and a morality lesson.  Give and Take are two little gnomes who urge a farmer to “Take, Take, Take” one day, and “Give, Give, Give” the next.  Neither result is satisfactory.  The bold, expressionistic brushwork and multiple imagings give this story the feel of video.

  Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas (Lynn Cox, Brian Floca) Floca’s previous award winning book, Locomotive, brings to life the excitement of riding the newly built transcontinental railroad in the 1800’s.  Now he illustrates a true story about an elephant seal in Christchurch, New Zealand, who repeatedly returns to the local river where she also likes to sunbath in the middle of the street.  Despite being taken hundreds of miles away to live in a more appropriate environment, she travels back on her own Incredible Journey.  Floca’s illustrations tell the story sweetly and simply, culminating  with a wonderfully atmospheric scene of Elizabeth swimming up the river in the moonlight.
So settle in, open the cover and turn the page for some wonderful reading time together.

Latino Authors

Last week Luis Alberto Urrea visited Lake Forest to talk about his novel, Into the Beautiful North, as part of Lake Forest Reads: Ragdale our city’s one book/one community program.  This funny, poignant story deals with topical issues surrounding the United States’ relationship with Mexico and our policies along the Mexican-American border. 

Nineteen-year-old Nayeli is the heroine of this tale.  She works at a taco shop in her Mexican village and dreams about her father, who journeyed to the U.S. when she was young. He hasn't been home since then and his letters have stopped. While watching the film, The Magnificent Seven, she decides to go north herself and recruit seven men -- her own "Siete Magníficos"-- to repopulate her hometown and protect it from the bandidos who plan on taking it over.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, there are still plenty of copies at the library. Stop by and check one out. But there are also other Latino authors that you may find interesting; you can’t go wrong with these classics:

Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is set in Mexico at the beginning of the 20^th century.   Tita, the youngest daughter of a well-born rancher, has always known her destiny: to remain single and care for her aging mother. When she falls in love, her mother prohibits the liaison and insists that Tita's sister marry Pedro, in her place.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is told in a series of vignettes. It is the story of a young girl, Esperanza Cordero,  growing up in the Latino section of Chicago.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. Four sisters recount their adventures of growing up in two cultures after they are forced to flee the Dominican Republic and arrive in New York City in the 1960s.

Check out this list of books by other Latino authors including recently released Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano and This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz.