Samuel E. Pittman II

 

Author: Antwan Eady

Illustrators: Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey

Genre: Fiction Picture Book

Prime Audiences: Children and Grandchildren of Farmers

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

Publication Year: 2024

 

Earl's Pumpkins, Peppers, Plums, & Eggs is the last stand at the local Farmer's Market, and each Saturday, Little Earl helps Papa load up the blue truck with their harvest to bring to the market.  But one Saturday Papa is too tired, and it's up to Little Earl to bring the harvest to the market for Ms. Rosa, Mr. Johnny, Mrs. Brown, and everyone else who depends on the last stand.

 

I can always count on finding a good new book whenever I visit Book People in Austin, and Antwan Eady and the Pumphrey brothers' The Last Stand is another great find!  Papa reminds me of my grandfather on my father's side, Paw-Paw, and of the gardens he and my grandmother grew.  Eady's text is a garden of imagery, especially Little Earl's descriptions of Papa— the honor and respect for him is a clear nod to the real farmers who inspire the book.  Eady adds a heartfelt author's note about Black farmers, calling the book "a love letter" and "an apology, too."

 

If gardening is in your blood, if the memory of fruits and vegetables from your parent's and grandparent's gardens is still fresh, The Last Stand will make your heart smile!

 

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Author and Illustrator: David Soman

Genre: Fiction Picture Book

Target Ages: 3-8

Prime Audiences: Adventurous Children Who Love the Outdoors

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Year: 2021

 

When Anna and her brother Finn climb the high stone wall of their village, they see the Mountain and the beautiful world around it.  Soon they are walking through the gate of the village to climb the mountain, despite the fearful warnings of those in the crowd, bravely into the unknown.  Their goal: go through the woods, past the river, and up the cliffs to reach the top of the Mountain.

 

David Soman's The Impossible Mountain is a wonderful adventure, and his illustrations pair well with his figurative language, such as "The stones stood in the water like a parade of turtles."  Anna and Finn face each obstacle with creativity and hope, and they are ultimately rewarded for their courage and determination.  And readers will be rewarded for travelling along with them!

 

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Author: Susan Grigsby

Illustrator: Nicole Tadgell

Genre: Historical Fiction Picture Book

Target Ages: 5 - 8

Prime Audiences: Children Who Enjoy Nature; Aspiring Gardeners

Publisher: Albert Whitman & Co.

Publication Year: 2010

 

When the Jesup Agricultural Wagon pulls up one Sunday, Sally's community and classmates at school are privileged to learn about nature from Dr. George Washington Carver.  By the end of his visit, the school has its own garden and Sally has the lasting wisdom of the great Dr. Carver.

 

As soon as you open Susan Grigsby and Nicole Tadgell's In the Garden with Dr. Carver, Tadgell's endpapers grab your eyes and you begin to study the watercolor illustrations and labels of various plants and animals, setting the tone of wonder and curiosity.  With Sally and her peers, the reader learns about plants, animals, and the earth itself.  The reader also learns about George Washington Carver's influence on agriculture and on the lives of people, supplemented by Grigsby's biographical information about Dr. Carver at the end of the book. 

 

This book will find a great home in an elementary science classroom or on the shelf of an aspiring young gardener!

 

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Author: Rita Lorraine Hubbard

Illustrator: Oge Mora

Genre: Picture Book Biography

Target Ages: 4-8

Prime Audiences: Struggling Readers; Advocates for Literacy; Readers Interested in African-American Biographies

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade

Publication Year: 2020

 

Does the possibility of education have a time limit?  Is there a point at which it's pointless to attempt to learn something new?  Mary Walker, a former slave who finally learned to read at the age of 116, would tell you, "You're never too old to learn."

 

In The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read, Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora create a wonderful tribute to Mary Walker and her courageous and inspiring effort to learn to read despite her well-advanced age.  Hubbard does state in her author's note that "Very little is known about Mary's life from her emancipation at age fifteen until she learned to read at 116," and that she (Hubbard) "chose to imagine other details to fill in the blanks," and those details serve as the bridge between Walker's inauspicious beginnings to her triumph in mastering words a century after her physical emancipation.  Mora's art, which includes patterned paper and book clippings, skillfully amplifies the tone of Hubbard's narrative of Walker's journey.  The endpapers contain black and white photos of Walker, including her teacher, Helen Kelley, presenting Walker with her first graduation certificate.

 

If you want to be encouraged, read The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read!

 

 

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Author: Stephanie Parsley Ledyard

Illustrator: Chris Sasaki

Genre: Fiction Picture Book

Target Ages: 4-8

Prime Audiences: Children Experiencing a Family Move to a New Home

Publisher: Neal Porter Books

Publication Year: 2019

 

Home is that familiar place with all the familiar things than make it comfortable, that make it "home."  But more importantly, home is the family who love you, no matter where your physical home might be, even if that place changes.  This is the comforting message to readers of Stephanie Parsley Ledyard and Chris Sasaki's picture book Home Is a Window. 

 

Ledyard's narrative is a "quiet" story about moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar.  It echoes the unnamed protagonist's comfortable routine of living in her family's home but also the gentle uprooting when her family moves away to a different town.  The refrain "Home is" is interrupted as her family arrives at a new home, but she quickly identifies the comforts of their new home, especially "the people gathered near," her father and mother and brother.  And so the narrative ends with that pleasant word– "Home."  Sasaki's illustrations, especially the color tones, deftly match Ledyard's words, and the endpapers frame the journey from the old neighborhood to the new neighborhood. 

 

Readers who are apprehensive about a family's move will identify with the protagonist and find the same comfort she does in knowing home is always where your loved ones are— in fact, your loved ones themselves.

 

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Author & Illustrator: Inga Moore

Genre: Fiction Picture Book

Target Ages: 3-7

Prime Audiences: All Readers Who Love Libraries

Publisher: Candlewick Press

Publication Year: 2021

 

When Moose runs out of stories to tell his family, he attempts to borrow books from his neighbors— but nobody has any books!  So Moose goes to the city and borrows books from the library, and soon his family's home is overfilled with neighbors who enjoy listening to him read stories.  Moose's solution?  Transform an old bus into a book bus and drive the countryside providing books for his neighbors!

 

Inga Moore's Moose's Book Bus is a quaint story about the love of stories, and anyone who has experienced the joy of getting books from a bookmobile/book bus will enjoy reading about Moose and his neighbors.  It's a story that promotes storytelling, literacy, and neighborly goodwill, and Moore's illustrations deftly capture the tone and mood of her tale about tale-telling.  After the final page, readers will be on the lookout for a book bus in their neighborhood!

 

 

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Author: Angela Johnson

Illustrator: E.B. Lewis

Genre/Format: Historical Fiction Picture Book

Target Ages: 5-9

Prime Audiences: African American Descendants of Slaves and Former Slaves and All Americans Who Value Freedom

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Year: 2014

 

On the morning of June 19, 1865, a slave girl wakes to the smell of honeysuckle, sweet but not enough against the bitter reality of slavery.  And on the morning of June 20, the honeysuckle will once again come to wake her and her family, but all will be different because of the proclamation that has finally reached the slaves of Texas— You are free.

 

"To be given freedom for the first time in your life-- wouldn't that be truly awesome, but also somehow surreal and dreamlike?"  These words of E.B. Lewis from his Illustrator's Note of the picture book All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom, capture the tone of Angela Johnson's story of a group of slaves in Texas experiencing their first day of freedom on June 19, 1865, now known and celebrated as Juneteenth.  Lewis's watercolor scenes of a first day of freedom match the thoughtful and straightforward words of Johnson through her fictional narrator, nameless yet symbolic of all those real souls who suffered enslaved, whose sufferings are not forgotten though their names may be unknown to us today.  Lewis also writes "I illustrated not just jubilation and celebrations, but expressions of repose, disconnect, surprise, and contemplation."  And this is a book of all those things, a book that speaks quietly, yet clearly to all who enjoy freedom today, a book that speaks in solemn remembrance of those whose precious dream of freedom finally became a reality.  

 

 

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Author: Daniel Bernstrom

Illustrator: Shane W. Evans

Genre: Picture Book

Target Ages: 4-8

Prime Audience: Children Who Don't Like School; Children Who Struggle with Fear; Children Who Are Close to Their Grandparents

Publisher: HarperCollins

Publication Year: 2020

 

When Big Papa shows up with his time machine because his grandson doesn't want to go to school, he takes him on a ride through his personal history.  And during each stop on their ride through time, Big Papa's grandson sees Big Papa overcome a fear.  "That's called being brave," Big Papa says before they move on.  And by the time they return to the present day in front of the school, Big Papa's grandson understands many more things about life and, most importantly, Big Papa's love for him.

 

Big Papa and the Time Machine is a heartful story of a grandfather and his grandson, one that echoes Daniel Bernstrom's relationship with his own grandfather as he depicts in his author's note at the end of the book.  Shane W. Evans's bright, bold colors bring the present and the past to life, and the reader rides along with the grandson in experiencing the important moments in Big Papa's life.  This book will prompt the grandchild to ask and it will prompt the grandparent to share as it reminds us that our memories— our histories— matter to the ones we love.

 

 

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Author: Diana Murray

Illustrator: Zoe Persico

Genre: Picture Book

Target Ages: 4-8

Prime Audiences: Children Learning Colors; Families Who Love the Outdoors

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Publication Year: 2018

 

What can happen on a hot summer day?  You can sit on the porch eating popsicles with your cousins, you can explore nature beyond the yard, you can watch neighbors fish from the dock…and you can run back inside and wait for the storm to pass!

 

Summer Color, a rhyming picture book by Diana Murray and Zoe Persico, is a colorful look at what happens on a hot, summer day.  Murray's verse emphasizes the colors that Persico puts in her illustrations, making a fun pairing of word and picture throughout.  And Murray's verbs she uses to describe the actions contribute to a book that's sure to grow the vocabulary and wonder of its young readers and hearers!

 

 

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Author: Erin Entrada Kelly

Genre: Fiction

Prime Ages: 11-14

Prime Audiences: Junior High/Middle School Students Dealing with Family Conflicts, Anger Problems, Personal Short-Comings, or Just Feeling Out of Place; Adolescents Interested in Space Exploration

Publisher: Greenwillow Books

Publication Year: 2020

 

We're all in orbit, circling each other's lives, navigating the spaces of life, taking each day as a new frontier.  But the universe is not always a kind place, not even the spaces we inhabit within our own thoughts.  But it's within those spaces where the greatest discoveries can be made, the ones that make navigating all the other spaces easier.

 

Erin Entrada Kelly's fantastic middle-grade novel We Dream of Space is about three siblings, Cash, Fitch, and Bird, and their tumultuous month of January 1986, set against the backdrop of the anticipation of the Challenger shuttle launch and its subsequent tragedy.  Readers will get these characters, along with the other characters within their orbits, and Kelly's use of a changing third person point of view between the siblings gives readers a full view of the Nelson Thomas's universe.  And while this is definitely not a "happily ever after" story, the after is hopeful— and that's enough to make Cash, Fitch, and Bird's spaces, individually and collectively, happier places to navigate.   

 

Read We Dream of Space!

 

 

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