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Category: illustrations

  • Black and White Drawings

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    Judy Butler
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    Picture books with black and white drawings are rare at library book sales. I’m always glad to discover one. Andrew Henry’s Meadow by Doris Burn (1965, 2005, 2012) tells of Andrew Henry Thatcher’s passion for building things. Andrew loved to piece together elaborate constructions. His mother could not tolerate the helicopter Andrew designed to hang…

  • Exquisite Collage x 2

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    Judy Butler
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    Once again, I came across two books with similar content. They are both beautiful. Dazzling pictures in colorful collage illustrate both.  Steve Jenkins and Robin Page earned a Caldecott Honor for What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? (2003). They illustrate portions of animals’ bodies and ask a question. For example, “What do…

  • Artistic Agony

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    Judy Butler
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    The Painter and the Wild Swans by Claude Clement (1986) is a story about an artist’s existential struggle. Art is life. Life is art. They coexist in Teiji as a fight for survival as intense as any person’s hunt for food and shelter. Frederic Clement succeeds in painting this synchronicity. Only now, after reading the…

  • Companion Biographies by Allen Say

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    Judy Butler
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    In his speech at the 2011 National Book Festival, Allen Say mentioned two autobiographies. The Ink-Keeper’s Apprentice (1994, Houghton Mifflin Company) is for readers in middle school and above. It’s a chapter book of 149 pages and has no illustrations. Drawing From Memory (2011, Scholastic Press) is for the older elementary school age student. It…

  • Kindness and Stone Paper

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    Judy Butler
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    The Lonely Mailman (2016) and A Mystery in the Forest (2020) are two stories about kindness published on Stone Paper. I sure hope that Susanna Isern and Daniel Montero Galán team up again to create more heartwarming picture books. A badger (I think it’s a badger) rides a bicycle to deliver mail to animals in…

  • lmnop

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    Judy Butler
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    Someone changed the melody to the English alphabet song. No more rushing through lmnop! Funny how, in all the years I sang that song as a child and then as an SLP, I never questioned the intelligibility of that middle section. This modification got me thinking about the many alphabet books I’ve come across. Some…

  • Sandra Louise Woodward Darling

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    Judy Butler
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    A friend pulled Carl’s Afternoon in the Park (1991) from a bookstore shelf and said, “You’ve got to see this.” That was in 1992. What fun it’s been finding books by Alexandra Day ever since. Carl is an enormous Rottweiler that looks after a child while his owners are away. The idea for this series…

  • Barry Moser’s Amazing Animals

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    Judy Butler
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    Energy literally flies off the page of Earthquack (2002) as the wings of a huge white goose extend beyond the borders of the cover. I nearly hear honking from the bird’s wide-open beak as it flails above the crumbling ground below its airborne feet. A small, bright yellow duck mirrors the panic. The sky isn’t…

  • Why the limited palette?

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    Judy Butler
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    The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World’s Coral Reefs by Kate Messner (2018) is the story of Ken Nedimyer’s heroic attempts to restore dying coral reefs. There’s more information, references, and vocabulary at the back of the book. A photo of Nedimyer is on the last page. I won’t be creating a Picture Book Talk lesson…