Learning to Play the Bassoon

Caldecott Honor Titles

The Boats on the River story by Marjorie Flack; pictures by Jay Hyde Barnum

This straightforward story, told in singsong text, describes the variety of boats to be found on a river, including those in a busy port that head out to sea and a brief interlude following sailors on leave into the city. According to the author information on the book flap, the illustrator is the author’s son. His realistic watercolors fill the book with bold colors (as could be predicted, especially blue, though yellow is the primary color in the city scenes). The way the blues (and yellows) bleed into the white space that serves as the text background helps give the feel of water movement throughout. As the day fades to night in the story the colors also become darker and more muted. The overall softness of the watercolors matches well with Flack’s rhythmic, repetitive text.

Timothy Turtle by Al Graham; pictures by Tony Palazzo

Told in a jaunty rhyme, this is the story of Timothy Turtle who is not content just to plod through life and instead wants to be famous. So his animal friends encourage him to go on an adventure (climbing a hill). Though the journey is tough, he learns his life is pretty wonderful after all. Pen-and-ink drawings depict Timothy’s journey. Most of the drawings sprawl across both pages in a spread though there are a few smaller pictures, too. The text is creatively incorporated with the pictures, fitting around them, sometimes even printed in curves or diagonally rather than in straight, horizontal lines. This works really well with the bouncy rhyme. The drawings are all black ink sketches with a wash of a single pastel color per spread laid over them (limited to alternating blue and sepia).

Pedro the Angel of Olvera Street by Leo Politi; illustrated by the author

This title tells the story of Pedro, a boy who sings like an angel, and the celebration of Christmas in his Mexican-American community of Olvera Street in Los Angeles. Incidentally, this is a community with which author and illustrator Politi was very familiar as he got his start selling his artwork among the artisans there. The art is done as pen-and-ink drawings filled in with paint (watercolor or gouache?). Some pictures are multicolored while others are shades of a single reddish hue. The pictures vary in size from small embellishments to double-page spreads. The palette sticks to one of natural tones – cool blues and greens with warm reds and golds.

Rain Drop Splash story by Alvin Tresselt; pictures by Leonard Weisgard

This title is illustrated by a favorite Caldecott illustrator. Weisgard received both his second honor and first medal this year. This honor title follows the journey of water from raindrop to pond to brook all the way to a river that flows to the sea. Various plants, animals, and people are passed along the way. Mixed media – looks to be some paint and pen-and-ink combined with possible stencils and collage – create a layered three-dimensional effect. The illustrations make good use of composition to demonstrate the flow of the water. The first few pages contain lots of vertical lines as the rain falls down (tree trunks, window frame, blades of grass), then as the water starts to accumulate there are more horizontal lines (tree limb, shoreline, fish in the water). As the water becomes a brook tumbling towards a lake, the art is set diagonally across a double spread that starts on the top corner of the left page and flows down to the bottom of the right page. Predominantly in gray-scale with pops of yellow and reddish-brown the colors accurately depict an overcast, rainy day with yellow filling most of the final page as the sun reappears over the sea after the storm.

Sing in Praise: A Collection of the Best Loved Hymns Stories of the Hymns and Music Arrangement by Opal Wheeler; illustrated by Marjorie Torrey

This honor title is similar to the collaboration of the author and illustrator on the previous year’s Sing Mother Goose. The format throughout the book mostly follows this: one to two pages of text providing the history behind a hymn and its creator accompanied by a page with the music and lyrics of the hymn and another page filled with a full-color drawing related to it. Black and white pencil sketches are also sprinkled throughout on the pages with text as space allows. The illustrations are realistic drawings of mostly human (and angel) figures in a variety of historical and contemporary (for the time) clothing.

Caldecott Medalist

The Little Island by Margaret Wise Brown with illustrations by Leonard Weisgard

Originally published under Brown’s pseudonym Golden MacDonald, this is a reteaming with illustrator Leonard Weisgard. The pair also worked together on the 1946 honor title Little Lost Lamb. Winning the medal this year, The Little Island begins with descriptions of a small island and its flora and fauna throughout the seasons. One day, a kitten lands on the island in a boat sailed by its people. When the kitten arrives the story switches to a more fantastical, playful tone with the kitten exploring and talking to the island itself as well as a fish that shares with the kitten the secret that deep beneath the sea the island is actually connected to all the other land on earth. Throughout the book, the text appears on the left-hand page with full-color paintings filling the facing page. On some spreads the text page also contains an additional black and white painting. Bold blues and greens are the predominant colors, appropriate for the subject matter. The naturalistic illustrations that accompany the descriptions of nature at the beginning and end of the story match the realistic tone of the text. Then when the tone of the story shifts with the kitten’s arrival, the style of the illustrations changes slightly as well – they become a little more cartoonish, including the kitten’s playful expressions, and there is some play with the perspective. On one page the kitten appears almost as big as the island itself. Overall this is an excellent match of text and illustrations.

Picture Book Independent Study Bibliography

Caldecott Honor Titles

Little Lost Lamb by Golden MacDonald with illustrations by Leonard Weisgard

A young shepherd boy takes his flock out to graze, and the literal black sheep of the flock wanders away and gets lost. The shepherd takes the rest of the flock home at the end of the day, but in the middle of the night he is unable to sleep and goes back out to bring the black sheep home. The first part of the book consists of text on the left page of each spread accompanied by a full-color illustration on the right page. Then when night falls in the story, the spreads change to a monochrome full-page illustration on the left and text on the right. I’m not completely sure of the medium used, but I think it might be gouache, or perhaps gouache combined with other media. The illustrations are primarily landscapes with the shepherd and his flock (and his dog) depicted throughout, seen from various distances. The boy and animals are stylized in a somewhat impressionistic style – almost realistic but soft around the edges with black ink used in some pictures to show detail. I especially like the choice Weisgard made of using a slightly purple monochromatic color palette for the nighttime scenes. Overall, these are really lovely illustrations that help set the comforting, pastoral tone of the book.

My Mother Is the Most Beautiful Woman in the World A Russian Folktale retold by Becky Reyher; pictures by Ruth Gannett

In this Russian folktale told to the author by her mother, young Varya is out in the fields with her parents as they bring in wheat and prepare for the upcoming harvest festival. When Varya is separated from her parents she tells the villagers who try to help her find them that her mother is “the most beautiful woman in the world,” so beautiful women from all over the area are sent to possibly reunite with the young girl. Everyone gathered for the harvest festival is shocked when a woman none of them would describe as beautiful turns out to be Varya’s mother, and she shares the proverb, “We do not love people because they are beautiful, but they seem beautiful to us because we love them.” Gannett’s illustrations depict an old Russian village with inhabitants in traditional dress. Outlines are created through dots reminiscent of pointillism. The limited color palette of golden yellow, red, blue, and green creates a cohesion throughout. Even though the text explains that Varya’s mother is not traditionally beautiful like many of the other women in the village, I appreciate that Gannett chose to depict her as a slightly plump woman with a warm smile rather than a hideous monster. Gannett is also known for illustrating Newbery Honoree Miss Hickory and her stepdaughter Ruth Stiles Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon series.

Sing Mother Goose Music by Opal Wheeler; illustrated by Marjorie Torrey

In this illustrated songbook, each Mother Goose song is accompanied by an illustration and often other decorative flourishes are added as well. Illustrator Torrey, making her Caldecott debut, generally draws figures in a realistic style, though occasionally characters may be a bit exaggerated for comic effect. Illustrations vary in size, perhaps to best fit the space left by the music and text they are accompanying, which, of course, vary in length. Some illustrations are full color while others have only touches of red and others are only black and white. The illustrator’s whimsical style, as well as her attention to detail in the characters’ body language, facial expressions, and clothing styles, bring an element of fun to the book.

You Can Write Chinese written and illustrated by Kurt Wiese

Framed as a lesson for an American school boy in a class with Chinese students, the author-illustrator introduces some Chinese characters through illustrations that help explain the characters’ meanings. The illustrations are primarily made up of bold black ink brushstrokes, similar to those used to write the Chinese characters themselves, with a few flourishes of red and blue pastel or crayon. Wiese, another debut Caldecott honoree, creates his drawings in such a way to show how the characters look like the objects they represent. For instance, the character “Mu” which means “tree” or “wood” looks like the tree he has drawn to accompany it. I can’t speak to the accuracy of the characters in the book (though information on the book flap notes that Wiese “has lived for several years in China”), but this is a clever method to use for introducing it to English speakers through the eyes of young student Peter.

Caldecott Medalist

The Rooster Crows: A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles by Maud and Miska Petersham

The husband-wife duo return to win the medal after being honored in 1942 for An American ABC. These illustrations are done in a similar style – the faces of both humans and animals are highly expressive, and bodies are posed in motion, giving most of the illustrations a lighthearted, humorous feel. This book is an illustrated collection of traditional American rhymes and songs. Illustrations range from small decorations up to full-page spreads and, while mostly muted in tone, occasional pops of blue, red, and yellow do appear. Overall the text and pictures combine to celebrate these American rhymes of old.

Picture Book Independent Study Bibliography