Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. ~ Emilie Buchwald
Picture books are always a delight for imaginative children. Here at the Literary Duck, we’re happy to say that 2013 has produced a bumper crop of stunning, amazing, beautifully illustrated picture books that are sure to become family favorites. So whether you’re adding books to your own library or starting to think about the winter holidays and gift giving, check out these ten titles that we love.
Cinders: A Chicken Cinderella
By: Jan Brett
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As in The Three Snow Bears, Brett gives a timeless story a wintry setting: in this case, 18th-century Russia. Her watercolor and gouache pictures take full advantage of the country’s ornate architecture and exquisitely patterned aristocratic costume, and even make a henhouse elegant. After a girl named Tasha brings oats to Cinders and the other chickens, a blizzard prevents her from leaving the tower that houses them. Tasha curls up by the stove to sleep, giving the ensuing story a dreamlike quality. Largessa and her daughters, Pecky and Bossy, are all aflutter when an invitation to a “feathered frolic” arrives from Prince Cockerel. After the other hens depart for the ball, a fuzzy Silkie hen arrives to transform Cinders into a beautiful pullet in “a splendid silver sarafan dress.” A gatefold depicting the feathered revelers in all their finery underlines the humor of the premise and Brett’s bountiful imagination. Images in the windows of miniature sideline structures complement and foreshadow the unfolding plot, and the careful details Brett brings to the setting and characters give the story a true sense of enchantment. Ages 3 – up (Publisher’s Weekly)
Snowflakes Fall
By: Patricia MacLachlan
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A gentle picture book created as tribute to the victims of the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. In his dedication, Kellogg expresses his hope that this book “celebrates the laughter, the playful high spirits, and the uniqueness of the children of Sandy Hook and of children everywhere.” And indeed, the image of falling snowflakes—”Flake/After flake/After flake/Each one a pattern/All its own-/No two the same-/All beautiful”—makes an affecting metaphor. MacLachlan’s lyrical and understated poem describes snowflakes swirling “together/Like the voices of children” to blanket backyards and sleeping gardens, rolling countryside, and the town’s familiar sites. Though a nighttime storm may bring shadows that “darken dreams,” morning always comes again, revealing a shining world and the opportunity to play outdoors. In springtime, “when the flowers bloom/The children remember the snowflakes/And we remember the children-/No two the same-/All beautiful.” Throughout, Kellogg’s paintings dazzle with brightly clad kids joyfully romping through winter scenes. As flowers bloom, some of the youngsters dance into a still-snowy sky, and the back endpaper shows a row of 20 snow angels taking flight from a moonlit hillside and soaring into the heavens. Accentuating the rebirth found in nature’s cycle, text and images depict the process of healing and renewal, the comfort of memory, and the power of hope. Adults can share this book to address tragic events, discuss grief and the recovery process, and remind children of the precious beauty of life. Ages 3 – 7 (School Library Journal)
Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey
By: Emily Winfield Martin
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An invitation to “close your eyes” and “snuggle in” to be transported by a menagerie of dream animals to magical adventures. When readers fall asleep at night, “animals from long ago / And twice as far away” could carry them to their dreams on “wing or paw or fin.” A bear might carry them to a never-ending feast. A fox might take them to an “elfin hollow / Hidden underground.” Robins may fly them above the trees or a narwhal dive them beneath the seas to a mermaid tea party. A tiger could take them to a circus or perhaps a moth will carry them to the “very moon and stars.” Neatly enclosed within line borders on a serene, pale blue background, the enticing rhyming text accompanies a fluid sketch of a sleeping child in a real-world setting with a toy animal, foreshadowing the dream animal that, on the opposite page, transports the child to a fantasy destination revealed in the subsequent double-page spread. These stunning, full-color illustrations rely on polished brush strokes, midnight blue backgrounds and ethereal light to produce an almost surreal atmosphere in which children quietly ride their dream animals to fantastical venues, silently suggesting the infinite possibility of dreams. A visually elegant and textually cadenced bedtime treat. Ages 2 – 5 (Kirkus Review)
The Bear’s Song
By: Benjamin Chaud
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In this engaging, oversize picture book, Papa Bear is just settling down for winter when he realizes that Little Bear has run off. The cub is chasing a bee, first through the forest and then through a French metropolis. Papa Bear searches everywhere, finally catching sight of his son on the steps of the Opera House. But inside, now where did he go? Young readers will enjoy figuring out the answer as they search page by page for Little Bear and the bee. Each large spread features a scene filled with dozens of figures, many of which serve as decoys for Little Bear. What makes the watercolor and line illustrations even more fun are the humorous details, such as the two woodcutters who have scurried up a tree as Papa Bear runs past them in the forest. With its rich colors, heavy paper, and cosmopolitan locale, this is more than a seek-and-find book, and the story has a very sweet ending involving honey and Papa Bear’s song. A pleasing choice for kids who just can’t get enough “Waldo”, and even those who can. Ages 3 – 5 (School Library Journal)
Journey
By: Aaron Becker
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In the tradition of Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon, this wordless story shows a bored young girl living in a monochromatic world who is able to draw herself into other worlds with the help of a red crayon she finds on her bedroom floor. Unlike Harold, the worlds she enters into are lush and detailed—a deep green forest with blue hanging lanterns, an elaborate castle with an intricate canal system for transportation, a multilevel steampunk airship carrying ominous soldiers, and a walled city in the desert. There are dangers she avoids by drawing herself new forms of transportation, including a hot-air balloon and a magic carpet, and she gets pulled into a rescue mission involving a purple bird, which eventually leads her to a door in a palm tree that takes her back to her own world and to a boy with a purple crayon she had never even noticed outside her apartment building when the story began. He, it seems, had been searching for the purple bird. There is much to pore over in the watercolor and pen-and-ink illustrations, and when the boy and girl ride off together at the end on a tandem bicycle with one red wheel and one purple wheel, readers will want to follow them. Ages 4 – 7 (Horn Book Magazine)
I’d Know You Anywhere, My Love
By: Nancy Tillman
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“There are things about you quite unlike any other.
Things always known by your father or mother.
So if you decide to be different one day,
no worries… I’d know you anyway.”
Every child is special and unique, but every child also loves to dream of being something different. Bestselling author and artist Tillman (On the Night You Were Born) creates a heartfelt masterpiece celebrating the joys of imagination, and the comfort of always knowing that “you are loved.” Ages 4 – 7 (Publisher’s Marketing)
Tap the Magic Tree
By: Christie Matheson
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Every book needs you to turn the pages. But not every book needs you to tap it, shake it, jiggle it, or even blow it a kiss. Innovative and timeless, Tap the Magic Tree asks you to help one lonely tree change with the seasons. Now that’s interactive—and magical! It begins with a bare brown tree. But tap that tree, turn the page, and one bright green leaf has sprouted! Tap again—one, two, three, four—and four more leaves have grown on the next page. Pat, clap, wiggle, jiggle, and see blossoms bloom, apples grow, and the leaves swirl away with the autumn breeze. The collage-and-watercolor art evokes the bright simplicity of Lois Ehlert and Eric Carle and the interactive concept will delight fans of Pat the Bunny. Combining a playful spirit and a sense of wonder about nature, Christie Matheson has created a new modern classic that is a winner in every season—and every story time! Ages 4 – 8 (Publisher’s Marketing
The Blessing Cup
By: Patricia Polacco
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Polacco has a gift for turning her own family stories into picture books that can touch the hearts of all. The Keeping Quilt is now 25 years old. In this brand-new companion, Polacco turns to her great-grandmother Anna’s story of how she came to America. The pictures, vibrant and brilliantly suggestive of movement, are mostly black-and-white, shaded with her signature use of color to highlight certain details. Devotees of The Keeping Quilt will recognize Anna’s babushka, which became the border of the quilt, on the young Anna when the czar’s soldiers come to their Russian town to burn the temple and expel all the Jews. The family packs up its most precious possessions, including her papa’s sewing machine and the beautiful china teapot and cups that were a wedding present. Even as they travel, they continue the ritual of drinking from the cups for God’s blessing, breaking bread so they will never know hunger and using salt so that their lives will have flavor. When Anna’s papa’s health breaks down from hauling the cart with all their possessions, a widowed doctor takes the family in and cares for them until, once again, they are forced to leave. In gratitude for the doctor’s care and for his supplying them with passage to America, they leave him the tea set, save for one cup. Polacco closes with the journey of that particular cup to the present day. History, religious persecution, immigration, and the skeins of faith and love that connect a family are all knit together in this powerful, accessible and deeply affecting story. Ages 4 – 8 (Kirkus Reviews)
The Tortoise & the Hare
By: Jerry Pinkney
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After his Caldecott triumph with The Lion & the Mouse (2009), Pinkney returns to Aesop for inspiration, this time setting the familiar story in the American Southwest. The endpapers indicate the race route around a cacti-laden barnyard, and the title page shows our titular competitors setting the challenge, before taking off, cheered on by a group of avid animal spectators. The fable plays out as expected, and Pinkney alternates the action between the tortoise’s diligence and the hare’s overconfidence. To mark the tortoise’s progress, Pinkney unveils the moral of the story cumulatively, beginning with just the word slow and adding another word to the phrase at each milestone, until, at contest’s end, the entire phrase slow and steady wins the race celebrates the tortoise’s victory. The tortoise sports an engineer’s cap and kerchief; the hare, a checkered vest; and most of the other animals, a variety of town and country clothing, adding a note of homespun vibrancy to Pinkney’s elegant watercolor paintings. Adjacent to an informative artist’s note, we see the hare tying a checkered flag about the tortoise’s neck, and the final endpapers depict a victory party. The tortoise may have won the race, but the real winner here is the listening and viewing audience. Ages 5 – 8 (Booklist)
Mr. Wuffles
By: David Wiesner
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Once again Wiesner dips into his irrepressible imagination to deliver a mostly wordless conceptual picture book where the mundane and the magical collide. Mr. Wuffles, an aloof, perspicacious black cat, takes no interest in his playthings, save one peculiar toy that looks something like a hobnail tea strainer. Closer inspection, like only Wiesner can provide, reveals that it is a miniature alien spacecraft experiencing mechanical trouble. Its little green passengers evade Mr. Wuffles and retreat to a hole beneath the radiator, where they discover a series of cave paintings immortalizing battles between the cat and troops of ants and ladybugs. The aliens and the bugs join forces and, speaking in rectangular pictographic word balloons (that some readers will thrill to decipher), hatch a plan to repair the spaceship, foil the feline, and return home. The drama plays out across long, low panels full of kinetic energy and comic detail, all captured in the artist’s careful watercolor renderings. In the end, the mission is successful and the aliens escape, but not without leaving behind a few reminders of their visit and an updated record of the epic conflict on the inner wall. Wiesner’s many fans will delight at poring over the detailed account of this master plan, again and again, discovering something new with each successive reading. Ages 5 – 8 (Booklist)