June's Book of the Month--Jim!

June’s Book of the Month is JIM! SIX TRUE STORIES ABOUT ONE GREAT ARTIST: JAMES MARSHALL, written and illustrated by Jerrold Connors.

The book opens with a story about how James Marshall’s friend Harry was “full of wild ideas.” Apparently, Harry called “Jim” one night to tell him “Miss Nelson is missing!” The next day, Harry brought over the story, written out, and pretty quickly Marshall “whipped Harry’s story into shape” with sketches and a name for the substitute teacher (based on a teacher of his own who told him he would never be an artist).

Story Number Two is about how Marshall hated when his work wasn’t taken seriously, so he tried playing classical viola. But he liked drawing better. He also meets his partner Billy in this chapter.

Story Number Three is about his friendly rivalry with Maurice Sendak and it’s pretty sweet. Arnold Lobel makes an appearance as a James Marshall-style pig with a mustache, while Sendak is a bulldog.

Story Number Four describes how much Marshall wanted to win an award for his work, with a few fun thoughts on his illustrations for The Owl and the Pussycat.

Story Number Five offers some pertinent wisdom during a school visit, and Story Number Six describes how sick Marshall eventually became, without specifically mentioning AIDS (that’s in the backmatter.)

I love, love, love this picture book biography about one of my kidlit heroes, James Marshall. The narrator is a fox, based on the character he thought was most like him. Text is broken up into six distinct stories (or chapters), and it’s paced like the chapter books Marshall wrote. The excellent backmatter enriches the book with context and additional, thoughtful information. Ink and watercolor illustrations, digitally enhanced, are reminiscent of Marshall’s “cartoony style,” but don’t call them “cute” or “zany”—Marshall hated that. Connors even includes a colorful timeline which graphically displays some of the elements in this picture book. It’s not the easiest of reads—it’s hectic, chaotic, and full of depth, but it feels like the biography James Marshall would want and deserves.

--Lynn

Shelf Awareness--Dream for the Land

PB Review: Dream for the Land

Dream for the Land by Laekan Zea Kemp, illus. by Leo Espinosa (Anne Schwartz Books, 40p., ages 4-8, 9780593710302)

Dream for the Land is a moving and ultimately hopeful look at how one family in the Southwestern U.S. works and dreams of rain during a megadrought.

A child with brown skin and messy pigtails chases bunnies away from crops on her family's small farm. But this is the second batch of tomatoes that looks "withered on the vine" and the squash is being destroyed by spider mites. When a horned toad "skitters across the soil," Pá demonstrates how to catch it, kiss its head, and make a wish. The hardworking family prunes and weeds, but the drought means clouds refuse to "burst open over [their] small farm." When Pá was a boy, this same land "used to be green as jewels" and he would swim in the "cobalt river"; now, the river is only a memory. The child realizes the family needs some magic: they find another horned toad and "plant a gentle kiss on his head," dreaming of "the world as it once was" and "the world as it could be."

Laekan Zea Kemp (Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet) tells a tenderhearted story that depicts the hardships of tending a drought-stricken land yet maintains hope. Illustrator Leo Espinosa (Islandborn) uses pencil and Photoshop to illustrate both sweeping landscapes and intimate emotion; an earth-toned palette uses gentle colors that realistically show the stark climate. Though the child's situation is dire, the story ends optimistically. A powerful author's note points out that although the Southwest is experiencing its longest megadrought in 1,000 years, there are "Indigenous communities and other communities of color that know exactly what the earth needs to heal." --Lynn Becker, reviewer, blogger, and children's book author. Originally printed in Shelf Awareness.