Gorgeous book celebrates both art, New York City

 

Mona Lisa in New York

Written and illustrated by Yevgenia Nayberg

Prestel Publishing, 2021

Mona Lisa from the famous painting at the Louvre in Paris one day decides she wants to go to New York City so people from far away can admire her beauty.

She sails across the ocean and goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Yorkers line up to see her and admire her beauty.

On her last day in the city, Mona Lisa secretly leaves her painting so she can explore the city. She gets lost and then meets Tag, a character created by a Brooklyn graffiti artist.

Together the two listen to jazz in Harlem, eat pizza in the Bronx, dance salsa on the High Line, and go swimming at Brighton Beach.

Tag brings Mona Lisa back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and sadly walks across the Brooklyn Bridge heading back home.

When he gets home, he can’t believe his eyes. There’s Mona Lisa smiling her mysterious smile.

“My home is Paris,” she says. “But my heart is in New York City.”

The author-illustrator Yevgenia Nayberg creates a beautiful book with her collage illustrations. Hidden in the pages are many images from paintings by Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Filippo Lippi, and many others.

At the back of the book, Nayberg gives a thank-you to all of the paintings she has referenced in her images. Children can have fun looking up the paintings and then searching for them in the pages of this book.   

Like Mona Lisa, Nayberg is not a native New Yorker. She was born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine. In this book, she shares many of the places she has come to love in New York City.

About the Author/Illustrator

Yevgenia Nayberg is a children's book author, illustrator, painter, and set and costume designer. She has written and/or illustrated many children’s picture books including “Anya’s Secret Society” and “Typewriter,” which she both wrote and illustrated; “Martin and Anne: The Kindred Spirits of Martin Luther King and Anne Frank,” written by Nancy Churnin; and “Drop by Drop: A Story of Rabbi Akiva” by Jaqueline Jules, for which she won a Sydney Taylor Silver Medal. Her illustrations have also appeared in magazines and on theatre posters, music albums, and book covers; her paintings, drawings, and illustrations are held in private collections worldwide. Nayberg was born and raised in Kiev, Ukraine, but now makes her home in New York City.

Little girl conquers night-time fears in sweet story

Mindi and the Goose No One Could See

Written by Sam McBratney and illustrated by Linda Olafsdottir

Candlewick Press, 2021

Mindi is afraid of a big goose in her bedroom that no one else can see. Illustrations show shadows of a curtain rod and a lamp frightening Mindi at night.

Her parents try to convince her that the goose isn’t real, but she doesn’t believe them. They talk about what they can do after she runs into their bedroom and falls asleep between them.

Her dad comes up with the idea of asking for help from Austin, a wise old man in their village. He walks halfway up Shelling Hill to visit Austin, where he lives with many farm animals.

He tells Austin his story and watches the old man give a young goat a cuddle and feed him an apricot. Then Austin tells him to bring Mindi to him.

“Make sure she knows I live a long way away,” he says. “Make sure she knows that she is going on a journey.”

Her dad and Mindi set out on their trip. When they arrive, the old man introduces them to his animals, including two noisy geese. They go inside for juice, and the young goat pokes open the door and walks in.

Austin hands an apricot to Mindi to give the goat. Then he lets her name the goat. She names her Black-and-Whitey.

A week later, Austin brings Mindi the goat as a gift, but he tells her she needs to give him an animal in return. He asks for her goose that no one else can see.

Mindi sits on the floor next to her pet goat feeding her plums and whispers, “I love my Black-and-Whitey.”

Two months later, Mindi’s dad goes to visit Austin and thanks him. He says Mindi hasn’t spoken of the big goose that no one else can see since she got her new pet goat.

Mindi’s dad wants to pay him something, but Austin says, “Oh, I’ve been paid well enough. Come and see.”

He guides him through the farmyard until they come upon three thriving geese. The joke is that Mindi’s imaginary goose has become real.  

This book is being published posthumously by Sam McBratney, who passed away on September 18^th, 2020 at the age of 77.

The mixed media illustrations complement the warm tone of the story. The characters’ faces are expressive, helping to tell the story.   

 About the Author

Sam McBratney wrote more than fifty books, including several best-selling and award-winning ones for children. His best-known book is “Guess How Much I Love You,” which is illustrated by Anita Jeram. Now considered a classic, “Guess How Much I Love You” has sold over fifty million copies worldwide and has been translated into fifty-seven languages.   

About the Illustrator

Linda Olafsdottir is the illustrator of several books for children, including “Play?” which she also wrote and “In Grandma’s Garden” by Brenda West Cockerell. This is her first book with Candlewick Press. Her artwork has also appeared on stamps, cereal boxes and children’s clothing. Linda Olafsdottir lives in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Counting book proves learning to count can be fun

One-osaurus, Two-osaurus

Written by Kim Norman and illustrated by Pierre Collet-Derby

Candlewick Press, 2021

“One-osaurus, Two-osaurus” is a counting book that proves learning to count can be fun.

Told in rhyme, the story almost sings a story about dinosaurs playing.

“One-osaurus, two-osaurus, three-osaurus, four…

“Five-osaurus, six-osaurus, seven-osaurus …

“Roar!”

The dinosaurs are counted as they gather, stampede and hide.

“Everybody quiet now. Tuck your tails and necks.

Closer, closer …”

The surprise comes after all the dinosaurs hide behind their numbers. The biggest dinosaur appears.

“It’s ten-osaurus rex!”

He chomps, stomps, sniffles and snuffles.  The reader Is nervous now, but it turns out that ten-osaurus is the “king of hide-and-seek.” He finds all the dinosaurs.

Then it’s time to play another game – Simon Says-osaur.

Pierre Collet-Derby’s colorful digital illustrations help tell the story. He shows the smiling dinosaurs become fearful as they run and hide.

When he first appears, ten-osaurus rex looks scary and foreboding in shadow with sharp teeth.

But the dinosaurs are smiling again after they’re found and think about the next game they’ll play.

About the Author

Kim Norman is an artist, actress, and singer as well as the author of many children’s books, including “Give Me Back my Bones!,” “Puddle Pug” and “The Bot that Scott Built.” She visits schools around the country sharing her love of books. She lives in Virginia, but you can visit her at kimnormanbooks.com.

About the Illustrator

Pierre Collet-Derby is an author and illustrator of many children’s books. He worked for many years in the animation and video game industries before devoting his days to drawing, writing and strumming his ukulele. Born and raised in France, where he studied animation, Pierre Collet-Derby now lives in Canada. You can visit him at pierrecolletderby.com.

Beautiful book teaches kids about Haitian custom

My Day with the Panye

Written by Tami Charles and illustrated by Sara Palacios

Candlewick Press, 2021

Fallon lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a beautiful, colorful island. She is excited when her mom, Manman, invites her to go to the market with her.

Manman balances a panye, a basket, on her head. She will carry their purchases home in the panye. This is a tradition dating back to ancient times and practiced in many parts of the world, the author Tami Charles explains in an author’s note at the back of the book.

More than anything, Fallon wants to carry the basket on her head like her mother does. She asks if she can try. Her mother lets her try, but the basket falls onto the floor.

Manman tells her to be patient. “Pitit, pitit, zwazo fen ich li. Little by little the bird builds its nest.”

As they continue on their trip, they notice the tap-tap bus carrying laughing people and the colorful walls of shops that survived an earthquake. But all Fallon can think about is carrying the panye. She keeps begging her mother to let her try again.

Manman tell her again and again to be patient: “Pitit, pitit. Almost there.”

When they get to the market, people are selling all kinds of vegetables and fruits on tables and stands. Manman pulls out gourdes she exchanges for food she piles into the panye.

Fallon notices many mothers and daughters carrying panyes full of food. They walk gracefully keeping their panyes still in spite of a light wind.

Charles’ language is lyrical, “The sun dances across the sky. The tap-tap chug-a-lugs by. Women pack their goods, close their shops, and we begin our walk home.”

Again, Fallon begs to try to carry the panye. Finally, her mother helps her balance it on her head. It’s heavy and it wobbles, bobbles, and crashes to the ground. Fallon is upset and is ready to give up.

Manman encourages her to try again. This time Fallon stands very straight and carefully walks. She feels like a queen as she walks all the way home.

Her mother asks her what the panye means to her. She says, “The panye means we are graceful when the load is heavy. We are strong, even when the earth is not. We are family, fed from love.”

The story ends as Fallon’s little sister Naima begs for a turn. This time Fallon tells her sister to be patient. She’ll show her. Soon Naima will have her chance.

Illustrator Sara Palacios brings the book to life with her beautiful, vibrant images that were created with guache and a digital program.

About the Author

Tami Charles loves the beautiful island nation of Haiti, her husband’s homeland. She is the author of “Freedom Soup,” illustrated by Jacqueline Alcantara, and “All Because You Matter,” illustrated by Bryan Collier, and many other picture books and novels for children and young adults. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and son.  

About the Illustrator

Sara Palacios has illustrated many picture books, including “Between Us and Abuela: A Family Story from the Border” by Mitali Perkins. “My Day with the Panye” is her first book with Candlewick Press. She lives in San Francisco with her husband.

‘The Last Tree’ tells ecological fable about hope

The Last Tree

Written and illustrated by Emily Haworth-Booth

Pavilion Books Company Limited, London, 2021

“The Last Tree” is an ecological fable for children.  The story begins when a group of friends look for a place to live and settle in a forest.

They’re happy playing among the trees and sleeping on the mossy ground until winter comes. They cut down branches for firewood.

They need more protection from the weather so they chop down trees to build shelters. When their shelters aren’t warm enough, they chop down more trees to build cabins.

“Soon it seemed the more wood they took, the more they needed to take,” writes Haworth-Booth.

When summer returned, the sun was hot but there weren’t enough trees for shade. The people cut down more branches to make porches.

When the fall winds came, there were no trees to stop it.  The people decided to cut down the rest of the trees and build a wall. They left one scrawny tree standing because they thought it was worthless.

With nothing to look at but a wall, the villagers changed. They forgot their games and songs, and became cold and hard. They became suspicious of one another.

All the parents asked their children to cut down the last scrawny tree before anyone else could.

But when the children crept out beyond the wall and found one another by the little tree, they laughed and played. They tended the tree, and each day it grew taller and prouder.

The children talked to their parents about the tree and how it made them feel, but their parents wouldn’t listen. To satisfy their parents’ desire for more wood, the children secretly cut down boards from the wall and brought them to their parents.

They boarded up their windows and built fences, but when the wind rushed into the village, the people ran outside and saw that in spite of all their new wood, the last tree still stood.

When they heard their children playing by the tree and saw how the cool wind twisted gently though the tree’s branches, they remembered how things used to be. Suddenly, they understood what they had done wrong and decided to try to begin again.

They took the wall down, planted seeds and tended the saplings. They talked and sang, and as their children grew, a new forest grew with them.

The story ends, “And the last tree became the first.”

The simple brown, green, and blue drawings complement the story, and give it an old fashioned, classic feel.

About the Author-Illustrator

Emily Haworth-Booth is an award-winning author, illustrator, and educator who teaches at the Royal Drawing School in London. In addition to her children’s picture books, Emily is working on a graphic memoir. Her short comics have appeared in print in the “Observer” and “Vogue.” She is a passionate environmentalist.  

Picture book celebrates joy of being Dominican

 

If Dominican Were a Color

Written by Sili Recio and illustrated by Brianna McCarthy

Denene Millner Books, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2020

“If Dominican Were a Color” is a gorgeous picture book about the colors of the Dominican Republic. The author says her goal in writing the book is to encourage black children to love the color of their skin no matter what shade it is.

The story is told in lyrical, rhyming prose. “If Dominican were a color…” it begins.

“It would be the sunset in the sky, blazing red and burning bright.

The shade of cinnamon in your cocoa, the drums beating so fast, they drive you loco.”

The author Sili Recio goes on to list her grandma’s mahogany skin and her other grandma’s yellow tint, shades of orange in the sunrise, deep green tints of palm trees, and neutral browns of lips and café con leche. Later, she refers to the curls and kinks of her hair, the blue-black of dreams, and all the seasons of the year.

 She also makes more poetic references to the color of swaying hips, neighbors’ chatter, a Dominican accent, games of hopscotch and jacks, and the roar of the ocean in the deep of night.

She includes several Spanish words in italics, maiz (corn) and amarillo (yellow).

Brianna McCarthy’s mixed media illustrations are stunning in their bold use of color to portray the beauty of the Dominican people and their land. “The lush foliage, the impossibly blue skies, and the otherworldly pinks and oranges spring off the page with joy and verve," writes a Kirkus reviewer. 

Just as Recio mentions her grandmothers’ different skin tones in the text, McCarthy depicts Dominican people in all shades from white to all hues of brown.

In the author’s note at the back of the book, Recio writes that she grew up in the Dominican Republic surrounded by family and friends in all tones of brown. She was showered with love and taught to love herself and “appreciate the skin she was in.”

She and her mother are both “java,” she writes, a term used on the island to describe people with light-colored skin and black features. Her father and sisters are as dark as Embajador chocolate, a Dominican brand of dark chocolate. As children, she and her sisters thought all of their skin colors were beautiful.

But as she grew up, she learned that others thought it was better to have lighter skin and insulted those with darker skin. She found this prejudice in her native country and after she moved to the United States.

Recio says she wrote this book “for the little boys and girls who felt as if they did not belong because of their dark complexions or curly hair texture or the width of their noses,” she writes. “This is for those who’ve been told they are ugly simply because they wear their African ancestors’ beauty on their faces and in their hair.”

“If Dominican Were a Color” is published by Denene Millner Books, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. The imprint, which launched in the spring of 2020, is directed by Denene Millner, an award-winning journalist and bestselling Afro-American author. The imprint publishes books by African American authors for readers of all ages.

About the Author

Sili Recio is an Afro-Dominican storyteller. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Rollins College. She lives in Florida with her daughter, whose nickname is the Frog Princess. This is her first picture book. Visit her at SiliRecio.com.

About the Illustrator

Brianna McCarthy is a mixed media visual communicator and self-taught artist interested in the issues of beauty, stereotypes, and representation. She works in masking and performance art, fabric collage, traditional media, and installation pieces. She lives in Trinidad and Tobago. This is her debut picture book. Visit her at BriannaMcCarthy.com.

Biography introduces youngsters to folklore storyteller

 

Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston

Written by Alicia D. Williams and illustrated by Jacqueline Alcantara

Athenium Books for Young Readers, 2021

Alicia D. Williams has written a lively biography that will make young people curious about Zora Neale Hurston, an African American writer of the 1920s and 1930s.

 Also an anthropologist, Hurston was interested in folk tales. Williams, a storyteller herself, tells Zora’s story using colorful, folksy language.

“Jump at the Sun” begins when Zora is a child in Eatonville, FL. Williams writes that Zora was “attracted to tales like mosquitoes to skin.” She liked to listen to townsfolk swap stories at the general store.

She made dolls from a bar of soap and ears of corn, then she told stories about her characters. She enjoyed telling stories to anyone who would listen.

Her mother approved of her storytelling and thought she might use her talent to go far in life. She encouraged her to “jump at de sun.”

Unfortunately, her mother grew sick and died when Zora was still a child. Her father shipped her off to boarding school. Zora was happy enough because she enjoyed school.

But then her father remarried a woman who “was stingier than a peacock.” School fees went unpaid, and Zora had to come home.

Zora said, “The walls were gummy with gloom.” Her little brothers were dressed in ragged, dirty clothes. She was angry at her stepmother and the two of them didn’t get along. Finally, when she was 14, her stepmother threw her out.

She stayed with friends and tried to earn a living working, but she was better at storytelling than holding down a job. For twelve years, she went from job to job. She moved from town to town, and was in and out of schools.

In Baltimore, twenty-six-year-olds couldn’t go to public school for free, so Zora said she was 16. She stayed there for two years and graduated. Then she got into Howard University. She was in the literary club and wrote for their magazine. She met one of her favorite authors, W.E.B. DuBois.

Then she decided she’d like to be a writer, too. She got a typewriter and began writing stories. She left school to go to New York City, where she met other writers. She sent stories to writing contests and won many awards.

Bernard College offered her a scholarship and friends also helped her. For her last semester, she traveled through the south collecting Negro folklore. Folklore includes stories and beliefs passed down from generation to generation, like the tales Zora listened to as a girl at the general store.

Even after she graduated, Zora kept collecting tales. She traveled all over the South and even to Haiti and the Bahamas gathering folklore. Then she settled in Florida and began typing up her stories in books. She also wrote her own stories.

Jacqueline Alcantara used markers, gouache, and Photoshop to create the lively, colorful illustrations for this biography. She details them with snippets of dialogue and storytelling in speech bubbles.

At the back of the book, Williams offers more background about Hurston in an author’s note and lists additional reading including two books for children, “The Skull Talks Back: and Other Haunting Tales,” and “Lies and Other Tall Tales,” both by Hurston and Joyce Carol Thomas.

About the Author

Alicia D. Williams is the author of “Genesis Begins Again,” which won many awards including the Coretta Scott King – John Steptoe Award for New Talent. She graduated with an MFA from Hamline University. She is an oral storyteller in the African American tradition and a school teacher in Charlotte, N.C.

About the Illustrator

Jacqueline Alcantara is the illustrator of several picture books, including “Freedom Soup” and the critically acclaimed “The Field.” Her favorite days are spent drawing, painting, writing, and walking her dog. In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural We Need Diverse Books Illustrator mentorship. Visit her at JacquelineAlcantara.com.