The Power of the Picture Book: Sara Grochowski

Sara Grochowski

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love books. In fact, books have always been the one true constant in my life.

Not all readers are raised on picture books. We all know that some readers do not develop a love of books until they find that perfect chapter book or young adult novel; there is no one path to a love of books and reading. For me, it was the picture book that forever changed my life… and continues to do so.

Before I was born, my mother enrolled in a subscription program for picture books. My research leads me to believe that this was a subscription program created by Parent’s Magazine Press - I find references to it here and there on Goodreads - but the name of this program is of little consequence. It’s the books that arrived by mail, that were read over and over, and now, years later, appear in pictures, stories, and memories, that matter.

There was Grandma Tildy in Jerry Smath’s But No Elephants, who came to regret her changing stance on elephants; Sam Bear in Frank Asch’s Popcorn, whose hijinks (and nausea upon seeing one more bag of popcorn) never failed to make me laugh; disaster-prone Henry the Duck from Henry’s Awful Mistake by Robert M. Quackenbush; and the couple who teach a valuable lesson about improvisation and poverty in Jack Kent’s Socks for Supper.

Whenever I pick up one of these old favorites, I’m transported back to my childhood and the transformative power of the picture book. Grandma Tildy, Sam Bear, Henry the Duck, the couple – they were more than characters on a page. Their frustration, regret, obsession, and creativity influenced how I viewed and interacted with the world… how I continue to view and interact with the world.

Today, as a bookseller, blogger, aunt, and reader, the powerful magic of the picture book is never far from my mind. I am grateful that I am in a position to connect young readers with books that will have a positive and lasting impact on their lives and to spread awareness about the power of picture books and reading to your child, even before birth.

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Sara Grochowski is the Children’s Specialist at Brilliant Books in Traverse City, MI. You can visit the Brilliant Books website and learn more about their subscription programs for kids here. Sara also reviews books for Publisher’s Weekly and blogs at The Hiding Spot. You can follow her on Twitter, where she tweets as @thehidingspot.

The Power of the Picture Book: Melissa Guerrette

Melissa Guerrette

Let's Make Memories, Baby!

Lately my life has been consumed by everything baby. My younger sister is expecting her first baby, and “Baby M” will be my first niece. I spent most of last weekend positioned behind my sewing machine beneath yards and yards of mint and coral fabric. Sometime while I was pinning the umpteenth yard of material to make ruffles for her crib skirt, the break from the dull roar of the sewing machine let me overhear my sister from where she was situated in the middle of the floor in the next room. She was following directions to construct the baby’s first bookcase.

“Chicka, chicka, boom, boom! Will there be enough room?” Kristin recited, followed by a few more hammer taps.

The rhythm and cadence of her voice struck me as she spoke this very familiar line from our past. In that instant, I was once again curled up on the couch in our childhood home with Kristin and her twin sister Carrie, their 3-year old selves tucked right up beside me turning the bright and bold pages of Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom together. And most certainly, nearby would have been a stack of other favorite picture books, too.

“...up the coconut tree,” I finished.

Kristin went on to talk aloud to Baby M, telling her about the bookcase she was making and all the picture books she will read.

Listening to my little sister, now 30, telling her baby about favorite picture books illustrates just one of the many, many reasons why picture books are powerful. Picture books, shared among readers--in families and in classroom communities--foster connections, evoke feelings, and become memories.

My parents are responsible for our appreciation for picture books, having stocked our shelves abundantly and promoting the love of reading. Whether it was the silliness of Robert Munsch’s I Have to Go Pee!, the solemnity of The Tenth Good Thing About Barney, the tongue-in-cheek intentions of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, or the strange satisfaction that in The Napping House *nobody* was sleeping, we grew up reading picture books together again and again and again. It mattered little if the reader was a parent, a babysitter, or me--the oldest--reading to my six-year younger sisters.

The role of picture books in togetherness and making memories has sustained over time and across settings. My nephews, Ethan (8) and Austin (4), have not only shared old favorites like Caps for Sale and The Polar Express time and time again, but the boys are known to request repeated readings of their own new favorites, like Wolfie the Bunny and Goodnight Already. The time spent with my nephews gathered close and a picture book across our laps has resulted in some of my favorite memories together. Ethan and I lost it once when Austin was trying with all his might to interject something into our conversation and finally, channelling Dot (Wolfie the Bunny), resigned, “Ah, skip it!” When Austin is working hard to assert his independence, I’ll sometimes say, “I can do it myself,” ala Little Red Henry. I can’t stifle my laughter when he wrinkles his brow and says to me, “I’m not Henry!”

For as long as I’ve been an aunt, I’ve considered it a responsibility and a privilege to supply my favorite little people with picture books that shape their world and our memories together.

Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that housing a library of picture books has been important to me as a teacher, too. My fifth grade classroom is lined with baskets of chapter books and novels that I happily book talk and recommend to readers, but there are also spaces reserved for my expanding picture book collection. I let students treat themselves to picture book reading as part of their reading life. And I read aloud picture books to my fifth graders. Often.

Gathering my students together on the carpet for picture book read alouds is hardly a stretch from the picture book experiences I’ve shared with my family. There are many purposes for reading picture books as a class: sometimes for content, sometimes for theme, and sometimes just to feel together. Our classroom is family, too. We grow closer with each picture book we share, letting our emotional responses conjured by picture books tangle with one another and marking time and events in our classroom with picture books that will serve as an imprint in our minds and on our hearts. My students may not all have the good fortune that I did, with plenty of picture books to read and share at home. I try to provide our classroom family plenty of shared picture books to enrich our relatively short time together and make lasting memories.

And this is what I look forward to in anticipation of a new niece, too. She’ll be welcomed into our family with lots of love and lots of picture books. Together we’ll have-and she’ll help make-lots of new picture book memories.

Among all the baby things I’m collecting to take to my sister’s baby shower next weekend is a stack of picture books I’ll bring to start filling that brand-new bookcase. Atop that pile of favorites is her own new copy of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

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When Melissa Guerrette is not acting in her superhero role as Greatest Nerdy Aunt Ever, she is a 5th grade Humanities teacher in Oxford, Maine. (Although, this week she might be lost underneath more fabric as she races to finish baby things for the baby shower!) Her professional passion is empowering students and helping them uncover their individuality–as readers, as writers, and as people–for themselves. You can follow Melissa on Twitter at @guerrette79 or visit her blog at www.melissaguerrette.blogspot.com.

The Power of the Picture Book: Lesley Burnap

Lesley Burnap

The Enduring Power of the Picture Book: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel

Next February my dad will turn 78 years old. While I consider that a significant amount of time, there are things about my father which have not changed much over the years-the way he laughs, his dry sense of humor and his love for his family. One of my favorite picture books, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton was also “born” in 1939. Like my dad, not much that has changed about this book over the years. It has not been rewritten or redone, nor have any of its original pencil-drawn illustrations changed. Yet, nearly 78 years later, it endures.

What delights me about this classic book are the thoughtful, well-planned pictures. Although they are a bit dated (Popperville’s “fire engine”, for example), the pictures at once draw the reader in, and in the fashion of the “I Spy” or “Where’s Waldo?” books, allow your eyes to wander across the page searching for the artistic details that add to the written story. The limited color choice of the times does not diminish the illustrations, rather, they evoke childhood itself with their primary hues. The hand-drawn pictures coax emotion from the reader as we watch the actions of Mike, Mary Anne and, of course, the nameless little boy unfold before us. Notice Mary Anne’s expression when she and Mike stand on the ledge, witness to the fate of other steam shovels as they are replaced by the newer, more modern mechanical shovels. The reader cheers on Mike and Mary Anne as they race against time to complete digging the town hall basement, as more and more people come around to spur them on. You cannot help but be moved by these illustrations that add such depth to the storytelling.

Fans of this gentle book were perhaps initially attracted to the mechanical giant featured on the cover, however it is the theme of friendship, the special relationship between Mike and Mary Anne, that keep us returning to its pages. Throughout the story we learn that Mike was “very proud of Mary Ann (p. 3)”, and that they had been together “for years and years (p. 4).” The numerous, near-impossible tasks they complete together, from digging canals to the enormous cellars, showcase their hard work and dedication. They are not boastful; as the narrator notes on several occasions that it was “Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne and some others (p. 5)” who accomplished these great feats of civil engineering. It is the development of the relationship between Mike and Mary Anne that makes us care about them. The reader roots for Mike and Mary Anne as they test Mike’s theory that Mary Anne “could dig as much in a day as a hundred men could dig in a week, but he had never been quite sure that this was true. (p. 3)” Your heart stops when Mike and Mary Anne realize that they have dug themselves into the cellar of the new town hall without an exit. A smile crosses your face when the little boy suggests a change of occupation for both MIke Mulligan and Mary Anne and you know that everything will be okay.

Revisiting this beloved book to write this post for Picture Book Month has been like reliving a favorite childhood memory. Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel is meant to be savored and shared with a new generation of young readers. I predict a resurgence of love for “Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne and some others (5)” when author Sherri Duskey Rinker (Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site) and illustrator John Rocco (How to Train a Train) release their picture book biography of Virginia Lee Burton, Jinnee and the Big Machines (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) in the fall of 2017.  

Whatever your reason for coming into this well-loved story of Mike and Mary Anne, this children’s classic is ageless. We readers are like the end-of-story Henry B. Swap, waiting for Mike to tell us about another adventure with his beloved Mary Anne.

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Lesley Burnap is a third grade teacher in Massachusetts. She is grateful to Kurt and the OG crew for friendship and fun. You can find Lesley on Twitter at @LBurnap90 and as part of #classroombookaday.

The Power of the Picture Book: Julie Falatko

Julie Falatko

Reading About Cars, Dogs, and Ourselves

Picture books might not look powerful. They’re small, thin, sometimes skinny softcovers that get lost on the shelf. Some of them have glitter on the cover. How can something with glitter be powerful?

I had trouble writing this post, because picture books are so powerful, in so many ways, that it became a long, flabby, meandering treatise on the wonder and magic of picture books. I wrote about how kids can see themselves in picture books, how kids can learn about people who live differently than they do, how kids’ emotions can be validated, how picture books transport readers to new worlds, and the power of sitting in a caring grownup’s lap to hear a story. I talked about how some people love picture books I don’t particularly care for, and vice versa, and how powerful those tiny stories are, that they can elicit such feelings in us, that we can say, “this spoke to me” about this very short stack of papers.

But you know all these things, right? You maybe even just skimmed the previous paragraph, as soon as I started listing reasons, because it was nothing new. So in the end, I’ll tell you about two ways picture books have been powerful for my own children.

In 2003, when my son Henry was three days old, I read him his first book, My Car by Byron Barton. He was only three days old, so I didn’t know yet that he would have preferred a book called something like My Car is a Winged Dragon from the Deepest Realms of Nefzalar. No matter. We’d figure that out eventually. Mostly I didn’t really know what to do with a baby once the diapering and feeding was done, so I read him a book.

And read him a lot more.

And so picture books are powerful because they have helped me parent my kids, because there is nothing that soothes a hurt feeling or heals a rotten day like curling up on the couch and reading a pile of books together.

Books are the currency to help them navigate this new world, and also the shared currency that reminds us, as a family, that we are facing the dragons of the world together.

And then, in a more practical sense, picture books help kids read. The process of watching someone learn to read is pretty amazing, watching them go from sounding out letters to recognizing words to happily tackling long complicated unknown words like “dumptruck.” 

My daughter Ramona is in first grade, and has gone from knowing some words to reading board books on her own (My Car!) to choosing picture books that look interesting and giving them a try. Last week she picked up The Complete Adventures of Big Dog and Little Dog by Dav Pilkey. Ramona’s first word was “dog.” She has to pet every dog she sees, and if that’s not possible (like, we’re driving by in a car and I refuse to pull over and let her out to run after a Yorkie), she just screams about how cute the dog is. We have two dogs. One is little, and one is big. So she was pretty chuffed to find this book about a big dog and a little dog. 

She read it. It’s a longish book, because it’s really five books in one. But she took her time, buoyed by her interest in reading, and mostly by her interest in dogs, and made it through. Then she read it to every person in the family. Then she read it to the dogs. Then, I guess feeling like there was still more to be done, she copied the entire book. She spent three days rewriting all the text.

Is there anything more powerful than that? A book you love so much that you copy it?

Plus, as she told me, “now I know how to spell ‘little.’”

In short: picture books are powerful because they know so much. They are us and we are them. It is the hugest privilege to write these things, and the greatest pleasure to be a reader of them.

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Julie Falatko writes about misunderstood characters trying to find their place in the world. She is the author of Snappsy the Alligator (Did Not Ask to Be in This Book), illustrated by Tim Miller (Viking, 2016); the upcoming Snappsy the Alligator and his Best Friend Forever (Probably) (Viking, 2017); The Society of Underrepresented Animals, illustrated by Charles Santoso (Viking, 2018); The Great Indoors, illustrated by Ruth Chan (Disney-Hyperion, 2019) and Help Wanted: One Rooster (Viking, 2019).

The Power of the Picture Book: Jim Bailey

Some books make you laugh, some books make you cry, and some books make you laugh so hard you cry.  Naked, written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Debbie Ohi, is one of those special books that does both.  At first glance, it may seem strange to pick a light, comedic picture book for a blog post titled “The Power of the Picture Book.”  After all, it doesn’t have the life-inspiring message of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss or the historical significance of Martin’s Big Words by Doreen Rappaport.  This book does, however, have a far more personal connection for me;  it’s the first book my son, Griffin, fell in love with.  

Like most children, Griffin has always enjoyed listening to picture books.  Even from a very young age, he would sit and listen to book after book. However, it wasn’t until I read Naked! to him one night that he truly become of lover of picture books.  From page one, he was laughing hysterically. When it was finished, we were not allowed to move on to read the next book in the stack.  “Again” became Griffin’s new favorite word.  In fact, we didn’t go a single day for the next two months without reading Naked! multiple times.  He would “read” the book to us, he would demand we read it to him, and yes, he would even act it out.  As any parent of a little boy can tell you, there are two things they love: wearing a cape and running around naked.  Over a year has passed since the first time I read Naked! aloud to Griffin and it is still his favorite book.  

Griffin, age 3, “reading” Naked! to me one night:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnURhJNvn74

It wasn’t until we read the book numerous times that I noticed Griffin wasn’t just laughing at a naked boy in a cape.  He was picking up on an amazing amount of detail and craft from the story.  He noticed the potato from I’m Bored by Debbie Ohi.  He was mesmerized by the illustration of the boy running down the stairs.  “Look at how fast he is going, Deda.  He’s faster than the Flash,” were his exact words. He said he could tell the character was cold because of the “shaky lines” next to him. He realized the boy had his hands out “like Superman” when the mom carries him.  He even noticed that this boy was like David (From No David! by David Shannon) because they were both naked at some point.  He didn’t get bored hearing the story literally hundreds of times because he was constantly picking up new information.  

I took a picture of Griffin with the book for this article.  The first thing he said after “cheese” was “can we read the book now?”  He still laughed hysterically at every page and demanded to hear it again after we finished.

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Jim Bailey is the principal at Hemmeter Elementary in Saginaw, Michigan.  He has a passion for helping all students become lifelong readers.  Jim spends his time reading, cheering on the Detroit Tigers, and enjoying time with his family (wife, Laura, and two sons, Evan and Griffin).  He is an all-around nerd who probably spends too much time obsessing over Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Clash of Clans, and comic books.  You can follow him on Twitter @jcbailey3.

Introducing...The Power of the Picture Book

As teachers, librarians, parents, and readers we all know that picture books can be extremely powerful. They can be used to unite readers, to enjoy the language of a story, to ignite creativity, to learn more about ourselves, and to gain better understanding of others. Picture books not only tell A story, but they help us to shape OUR story...the story of ourselves and the world around us.

November is Picture Book Month and as a celebration of the power that picture books can hold, I have invited several teachers, librarians, authors, illustrators and booksellers to share their thoughts about picture books here on my blog.  Stay tuned for some amazing stories about "The Power of the Picture Book".

SAIL (Summer Activities In the Library)

Last night was our SAIL (Summer Activities In the Library) night!  My teacher-librarian colleagues had hosted their nights in June and July...August's night was at my school.  This year's theme was animals.

When families came in, they chose from a large assortment of animal books (fiction and nonfiction) and found a comfortable place to read together.

Students then gathered together to share what they had been reading this summer and to enjoy a couple of read alouds.  To go along with our animal theme, students enjoyed listening to Adam Lehrhaupt's Warning: Do Not Open this Book! and Please, Open this Book.

Watch the book trailers for these two awesome books.

Warning:  Do Not Open this Book

Please, Open this Book

Students were then free to return to their reading or explore book related stations.

After reading about spiders and insects, students were able to create their own and make a yummy treat!

Student use art supplies to create their own spiders and insects.

Ants on a Log

Students read about snakes, snake skins and other animal body coverings and then explored real snake skins.

Reading about snakes.

Taking a close look at a snake skin.

Students read about birds, investigated real bird nests and made bird bookmarks.

Students read directions to make origami animals.

Carefully following directions.

Finished!

And as always, students had the opportunity to exchange their summer reading books and take home a new bag full of great books!

Even the younger siblings of students get to take books home!

It was a fun night of reading, sharing, creating and exploring!