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Bugs Up Close
by Diane Swanson
Photographs by Paul Davidson
Kids Can Press, 2007

Category: Nonfiction Picture Book


Here in Canada, Diane Swanson is somewhat of an icon in children's nonfiction. We've never met, but I'm a big fan and longtime admirer. Known for her clear, engaging, conversational style, she delivers here in spades, covering everything 'buggy' from eyes and spiracles to reproduction and defense.

Each spread is illustrated in glorious oversized macro-photography. Open Bugs Up Close to any page and you will, indeed, be up close with a bug of some kind. How does a 12-inch katydid or a 9-inch grasshopper grab you? I guarantee you won't get to the end of this book without uttering a few "Wow"s sparked by Davidson's crisp images.

The design of this book is brilliant. Many children's science books are compartmentalized into bite-size blurbs in boxes, starbursts, and tiny sections. I'm so pleased the book designers didn't do that here, instead opting for a simple clean design. The images are so spectacular, you don't need to dish things out in small servings to keep the reader's attention. Text, images, design -- all in tune.

When I was a child, photo-illustration was my favourite. Real images of real things in real places tapped a truth and invoked a fascination about the world that drawings and paintings couldn't quite muster. This is a book the nine-year-old me would have lovingly dog-eared in no time. And, well, actually, those corners are already starting to look a little bendy. Old habits die hard.

Bugs Up Close was nominated in the Nonfiction Picture Book category of the Cybils Award.

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Today, I'd like to welcome Loree Griffin Burns, author of Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam,
and the Science of Ocean Motion
(Houghton Mifflin, 2007 - middle grade nonfiction ).

Tracking Trash chronicles the work of scientists who study ocean currents by following cargo -- everything from rubber ducks and basketballs to computers and sneakers -- that has fallen off container ships. The book then looks at how this science is being used to help preserve and protect ocean habitats.

Loree and I met in an online group of children's nonfiction writers shortly after she'd received the contract offer for Tracking Trash. Since then we've "talked" many times via email and shared many cups of cyber tea. We came "this close" to meeting in person during one of her research trips to the left coast (next time, for sure!) Loree is a smart cookie, a fabulous writer, and simply one of the nicest people you could ever meet. It's been a pleasure to follow her journey to publication, and to share the excitement of her successes. I'm so pleased she's here today to tell us more about it all.

FIONA: So, Loree, Tracking Trash was released to wide critical acclaim. It received a constellation of starred reviews, and went into a second printing within a couple of months of first hitting book store shelves. It has been recognized by prestigious awards, including the Orbis Pictus, Boston Globe-Horn Book, Suburu SB&F, and Cybils awards. Whew! By all accounts, girl, this book is a success. When did you know it? What was it that made you say, "Yes! It's a success!"?

LOREE: That's a tough question. There was a moment when I knew I had gotten the book to a place I was happy with, that it was Finished. That was a nice moment. But a "Yes! It's a success!" moment? Not really. Just a string of amazing "OH MY GOD!" moments ... each of which I am extremely grateful for.

Oh, please share the string of OMG moments! What were they and why did they make you say OMG?

This feels dangerously like tooting my own horn, Fiona. And I have never been comfortable with that. Tell your readers to skip ahead if they want.

So, dear readers, consider yourselves told. :^) But I hope you won't skip ahead, because what comes next is Loree sharing her genuine joy and delight -- no tooting of her horn here, I'm sure you'll agree.

Loree's OMG moments:

--- First printed review arrives, from VOYA, and it is very, very good. OMG!

--- First starred review arrives, from School Library Journal. It's good, too. OMG!

--- I get an email from Sally Walker. Sally -- Secrets of a Civil War Submarine -- Walker! She tells me she read Tracking Trash, found it "totally fascinating", and is adding it to her spring book talk lists. OMG! Sally's books have meant so much to me ... Fossil Fish Found Alive is the very book that inspired me to try my hand at writing about science for a young audience. It was so kind of her to take the time and send that email, and finding it in my inbox remains one of my favorite OMG! moments of all time.

--- My high school biology teacher -- a man who inspired me in so many ways and to whom I dedicated Tracking Trash -- surprises me by coming to my release party. Seeing him for the first time in twenty years was incredible, acknowledging him and all that his teaching has meant to me in such a public forum was a gift.

--- My editor, Erica Zappy, calls to tell me Tracking Trash was named a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book. I played it very cool on the phone with Erica, but there was a lot of OMG-ing when I hung up! Then I realize I will have to give an acceptance speech. Live.

--- Favorable review in the The LA Times and, shortly after, in The NY Times Book Review.

I've had more OMG! moments than I probably deserve. But I never grow tired of them and I try very hard not to take them for granted.

Let's talk a bit about process. I know a book like this takes a tremendous amount of planning. I also read on your website that some parts of the process were "organic". I'd love to hear how the planned vs. organic balance shifted at various points along the way.

There was a point when the book was ostensibly done, but not finished: I had told Curt and Jim's story, and Charlie's story, and well, then the book just sort of ended. It was not a satisfying conclusion and, worse still, I didn't know how to fix it. While I was struggling with what to do about this, I got a call from a friend. He had heard an NPR piece about scientists collecting net debris in Hawaii and wanted to be sure I had heard it too. I was too worried about my bad ending to be listening to the radio (!) and hadn't heard the story. But I quickly found the report online, learned about the work of ghost net hunters Jim Churnside, Tim Veenstra, and Mary Donohue, and began to envision a new ending.

Several weeks later I interviewed Jim Churnside by phone and asked him how he and his colleagues knew where to look for the ghost nets. His answer gave me goosebumps: "Our first step was to talk to Jim Ingraham about where in the North Pacific Ocean we should look for the ghost nets." These trash trackers -- people I knew nothing about when I started writing the book -- were using computer programs perfected with Curt's tub toy data to find their ghost nets. The story had come full circle ... and I had no idea in the beginning that it would.

I am anal by nature, and so had the writing meticulously planned: proposal, check; interviews, check; drafting of chapters, check; collection of photographs, check; meeting deadline, check. But I found that each step caused me to reexamine the step before.

Did these organic shifts affect the overall shape of the book? If so, how?

During my first sit-down interview with Curt [Ebbesmeyer - oceanographer] he told me that up to 10,000 cargo-laden containers fell into the ocean each year. That translates into a lot of floating garbage. This got me thinking about his work in an entirely new way. My thinking moved away from the oceanographically important aspects of tracking trash (learning about how currents move) and toward the darker side of the story: what happens to all that trash? The book I had planned -- a book about an interesting man practicing quirky science -- grew into a book about several interesting men and women trying to protect the ocean and everything in it.

Will this change the way you approach your next books?

The lesson I've taken from this is to loosen up, to let go my stranglehold on "process" and allow myself to meander as I research and even as I write. Sometimes the next step simply isn't ready when I want it to be. And so I wait, live, wander, talk to my radio-listening friends. Eventually, things sync and I get there.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tracking Trash. Please share a bit about what writing it was like. What part of creating this book was. . .

. . . most exciting?
The entire thing ... all of it was new and thrilling.

. . . most frustrating?
There was a period of time when I struggled with how to pull the book together. I had submitted a first draft and it was good, but not good enough. I felt (and my editor agreed) that the book was missing something. But I didn't know what. Blech.

. . . most gratifying?
Before I worried about readers and reviewers, I worried about how Curt Ebbesmeyer would like the book. I had spent two years corresponding with Curt, interviewing him, getting to know him and his work and his passion for understanding and protecting the ocean. Handing him a copy of Tracking Trash, watching him read it, and seeing him smile in approval was very, very gratifying.

. . . most fun?
1. Visiting John Anderson's house. He's a beachcomber in Forks, Washington, and his collection of beachcombed debris is astounding.
2. Collecting water samples on the Pacific with Charlie Moore. We were in sight of land the whole time, which was just fine by me.

You live with three young kids. What do they think about all this author business?

The day the first hardcover copies arrived, my kids were more relieved than excited. I had been talking about it for so long that they had started to think my book was simply a ploy for alone time. As in: "My mom's up in her office ... working on her book." You have to imagine their little hands making air quotation marks around the word "book" to get the full effect.

During a visit to the Worcester Public Library we passed a huge Tracking Trash display at the entrance to the Children's Room. My kids walked right by, unfazed. "Uh, guys? Did you notice anything over here in the doorway?" They remained UNIMPRESSED. Bored even. Instant grounding. :^)

All in all, they are tremendously patient with me and how much of myself is now put into things besides them.

So, what's next, Loree? I know you've got some cool projects in the works. Anything you'd like to tell us about them?

I am working on a new "Scientists in the Field" book about the dream team of scientists working to understand the baffling disappearance of our managed honey bee populations. That book is called The Hive Detectives (for now) and is scheduled for publication in Spring 2010. I've also written a picture book biography of French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre that I am terribly excited about. More on that one soon. . .

Thanks, Loree, for giving us this terrific peek into your process and writerly life.

Please visit Loree Griffin Burns at her website and blog where she tells the behind-the-scenes story of her Tracking Trash journey. And if you haven't read Tracking Trash yet, do. It's a fascinating read, clearly written in Loree's engaging style and beautifully ilustrated with fresh photos by Betty Jenewin (who also deserves credit for Loree's author shot above).
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Now that our shortlist has been officially announced on the Cybils blog, I can talk about it here, too. I'll be posting about the process in later posts, but for now, here are the books my fellow panelists (see my last post for who they are!) and I picked for the 2007 Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book shortlist
(in no particular order):

1) Lightship

AUTHOR &
ILLUSTRATOR: Brian Floca
Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum

The fog seems to waft off the page in this delightful look at the work and life aboard the lightship Ambrose -- a floating lighthouse anchored offshore. The writing is rich and engaging without talking down, and humour permeates both text and illustration. Floca's detailed watercolour illustrations and deceptively simple text sprinkled with sensory language have readers practically feeling the dampness, tasting the sea air, and tilting with the deck.


2) Vulture View

AUTHOR: April Pulley Sayre
ILLUSTRATOR: Steve Jenkins
Henry Holt

Simple conversational rhyme and Jenkins' signature cut paper illustrations provide a lovely early introduction to vultures -- fascinating creatures that don't usually get their own book. The bold palette and interesting, sometimes eerie perspective are a perfect complement to Sayre's kid-friendly text, the rhythm of which cleverly reflects the birds' daily rhythm. Precise meter and rhyme, and the inclusion of some repetition make this a great interactive readaloud.


3) Let's Go! The Story of Getting from There to Here

AUTHOR: Lizann Flatt
ILLUSTRATOR: Scot Ritchie
Maple Tree Press

Distilling thousands of years of tranportation history into a picture book for a young audience is a tall order, but Flatt and Ritchie pull it off brilliantly. Fresh word choices -- those unexpected verbs are a treat! -- and rhyme so subtle, as though folded into the shadows, contribute to Flatt's lovely lyrical style. The fun, kid-friendly illustrations are abuzz with activity, and the text wends across each page to echo the transportation theme.


4) Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed...and Revealed

AUTHORS:
David M. Schwartz
& Yael Schy
PHOTOS: Dwight Kuhn
Tricycle Press

A refreshing selection of ten camouflaged animals beautifully photographed are presented as a "find-the-critter" challenge. Snappy titles and delicious poems cleverly hint at the animals' identities (form and meter match each animal! Yowsa!) , and fold-out pages reveal the animals and cool information about them. Clearly written in a kid-friendly conversational style.


5) Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg

AUTHOR &
ILLUSTRATOR: Mia Posada
Millbrook Press

Posada's charming cut paper and painted illustrations zero in on the eggs of six different animals, her interesting angles and close-up views providing hints at which animals laid them. Rhyming couplets add more clues as readers are encouraged to "Guess what is growing inside this egg." Answers and more information about the animal appear on the following page. Backmatter includes a spread with all of the eggs drawn to scale, and another showing what happens inside a developing duck egg. A great egg readaloud.


6) One Thousand Tracings - Healing the Wounds of World War II

AUTHOR &
ILLUSTRATOR: Lita Judge
Hyperion

First person point of view (Judge's mother as a child) makes it easy for young readers to connect with this beautifully written and illustrated story of kindness and hope from a difficult time in history. After discovering hundreds of foot tracings and letters in her grandmother's attic, Judge learned of her mother's and grandmother's efforts to supply much needed shoes, clothing, food, and other supplies to Europeans left homeless and starving after WWII. An amazing story, told well. Good as a readaloud, but with brief text and easy language, it is also accessible to young independent readers.


7) Living Color

AUTHOR &
ILLUSTRATOR: Steve Jenkins
Houghton Mifflin

A rainbow of familiar and exotic animals in gorgeous cut and painted paper pops from the page in this fresh approach to looking at animal coloration. Each animal, sorted according to colour, is accompanied by a short paragraph of supporting information subtitled with plenty of humour. Jenkins isn't afraid to have animals straddle spreads when colours overlap (cool!). Excellent for non-linear readers who prefer to browse and read smorgasbord-style -- a feast.

Congratulations to all of the authors, illustrators, editors, art directors etc., who created these gems. Now it's up to the judging panel to choose a winner from among them. It ain't gonna be easy, I tell ya.

And if you'd like to hear fellow panelist Tricia and I talk a bit about the process, head on over to Just One More Book!! where Andrea and Mark have posted a podcast interview. Anyone want to give me a nickel for every time I said "Uh..."? I figure that should finance at least one mocha cappucino at the local coffee bistro. With extra foam. And chocolate shavings. And sprinkles.

Links to all of the shortlists:

• Nonfiction Picture Books
• Fiction Picture Books
• MG/YA Nonfiction
• Middle Grade Novels
• Young Adult Novels
• Poetry
• Fantasy/Science Fiction
• Graphic Novels

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Christmas 2007 has come and gone. We had a white Christmas, with about 8" of the white stuff falling on the 25th. It was like living in a snow globe. Eldest daughter returned home from university to spend a quiet family Christmas Eve and big boisterous aunts-uncles-cousins-grandparents-filled Christmas Day with us. It's been a long time since we were all together---this mother's heart was swelled. . . lots of smiling, laughing, and contented sighing on my part.

Book fiends that we are at Casa Bayrock, "books" was a definite theme under our Charlie Brown tree this year. Everything from hubby's The Physics of Star Trek (hey, it's actually pretty cool) and 30 Minutes or Less Spicy Recipes (I'll let you figure out where the comma goes there) to tiny niece's Not a Box and my Zinsser's On Writing Well (my very own copy!). Especially exciting were:

A Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare)
The teeniest, tiniest version I've ever seen. Actual size: less than 3.5" by 5". This was a used book store find---old, loved, written in where-are-those-bifocals? delicate script---the perfect stocking stuffer for Fabteen#2, a thespian with a fondness for Shakespearean comedy. She was tha-rilled, let me tell you. I was almost as excited to watch her open it.


Bird: The Definitive Visual Guide (DK)
Dorling Kindersley has teamed up with the Audubon and BirdLife International folks to create this amazing volume full of Drop. Dead. Gorgeous. Photography. and pretty much anything worth knowing about birds. I already own and adore Animal: The Definitive Visual Guide to the World's Wildlife. In fact, if I ever have to pack for that proverbial time on a desert island, it's the first book in the suitcase. If you haven't seen Animal or Bird, do look for them. So many times you see books labeled "suitable for all ages" These books truly are.






The Encyclopedia of Immaturity (Klutz)
I can't think about this one without smiling. I tripped across it in the book store. If cameras had been rolling, you would have seen me do a classic double-take: Wait. Did I just see the Mona Lisa with black marker eyeglasses, mustache and goatee? I did. I did. I did see a puddytat (a prize if you know that reference), er, the Mona Lisa, black marker and all. With a bright red cloth cover and large coil binding, I had to check it out. It was teaming with quick, easy tricks, parlour games, and cool stuff kids can do with little or no equipment. Zing! Copies for all the nephews ages 10-13. It was a hit. _Here's an excerpt of Christmas Day conversation (the names have been omitted to protect the gullible (Hi, Alyson!):

Nephew: Hey, mom, did you know that linguists have discovered that if you say "green beans" really slowly it sounds like "gullible"?

Nephew's Mom: Guhhhhhhh-lihhhhhhhh-buhlllllllll

Nephew erupts into uproarious laughter.

Nephew's Mom, realizing she's been had, rolls her eyeballs and joins the rest of the room in laughter.

And that's what I wish for you all in 2008. . . much laughter!
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Not a Box
by Antoinette Portis
HarperCollins 2006
Category: Picture book



A bunny and a box. An ordinary bunny and a run-of-the-mill cardboard box big enough to stand in, sit on, and wear. With a healthy dose of make-believe, bunny demonstrates that the box is, indeed, not a box. It is a racecar, a mountain, a spaceship, or a number of other things plucked from his imagination.

I don't know if using boxes in imaginary play is on the official list of universal childhood experiences, but really, do you know a kid who hasn't turned a box into something else entirely---a train, a boat, or in the case of my preschoolers years ago, the Starship Enterprise, complete with a control panel made with milk caps and sour cream container lids. Brad pins rule, man!

Ah, but I digress.

In Not a Box, all of the text is dialogue---no description. The snappy immediate quality this creates reminds me of Mo Willem's pigeon books, except unlike Willems' imperatives, Portis goes the Q&A route. The questions seem to come from an adult or sassy older sibling outside the book, and the answers from bunny as "any child". For example:

______"Why are you sitting in that box?"
______"It's not a box."
______"What are you doing on top of that box?"
______"It's not a box."

And as with young children in real life, when the questions keep coming, the bunny becomes increasingly indignant at the adult's inability to see the obvious: "It's NOT NOT NOT NOT a box!"

The text is delightfully lean. It would have been easy to include explanations such as "It's a racecar!" or "It's a boat!" after each "It's not a box.", but Portis wisely chooses not to do that. Instead, the answers are contained in the illustrations, which allows young nonreaders to chime in with answers they've figured out all by themselves (and oh, wouldn't parents the world over be rich if they had a nickel for every time their preschooler said, "I can DO it mySELF!"). Target audience bullseye.

Engaging kids in the reading process changes the typical book reading session from a passive experience to one in which the child is an active participant. I'm convinced that experiencing the joy and excitement of knowing and proclaiming the next part of the story before it's told contributes to a love of books and reading later in a child's life. My kids are teens now, but when they were younger, discovering a book like this at the library or book store was like finding treasure. More often than not, these books became family favourites, read over and over and over again.

A sequel Not a Stick is due out at the end of this year. If my kids are any indication, Not a Toilet Paper Tube and Not a Milk Carton would be right behind.

Not a Box paired with Who's Hiding? by Saturo Onishi (I heard about this gem from Loree Griffin Burns this week) will make a perfect Christmas gift for my four-year-old niece. Two books wrapped up in a big box. No, a spaceship. No, a boat. No, a. . .
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Written Anything Good Lately?
by Susan Allen and Jane Lindaman
Illustrated by Vicky Enright
Millbrook Press, 2006
Category: Nonfiction picture book

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Six-year-olds will likely stare at you blankly if you tell them that writers write things other than books, magazines, and newspapers. How words get on maps, signs, birthday cards or video games is not something most of them have ever considered. Drop a casual "Any time you see words somewhere, someone wrote them." and the blank looks will morph into those of stunned amazement and then to revelation as the neural gears start turning. You can practically see the thoughts flash through their heads as they note the myriad ways writing appears in their lives.

Written Anything Good Lately? is the perfect follow-up to just such a conversation. This book ---written by two teachers I wouldn't be surprised to discover had similar conversations to the one I described above---is an ABC romp through 26 (you didn't expect a different number, did you?) types of writing kids might do. Starting with autobiographies, book reports, and Chanukah cards, the book covers an interesting assortment of writing forms,---some predictable, some not---to end with a classroom "word wall", "X's and O's" for a friend, and a "yearbook" (it does go all the way to z, but I'm saving that for later).

The text is sparse, which makes for a quick read and leaves lots of time for discussion and lingering among the detailed illustrations. Speaking of which, Enright's illustrations are laidback and friendly, light and welcoming. Each page contains a visual representaion of the featured writing, as well as happy kids engrossed in the writing process. (It's easy to forgive a little propaganda when the cause is encouraging young writers, isn't it?)

My very favourite entry is Z---"zed" to us Canadians---because it so beautifully incorporates how inspiration and contemplation are part of the writing process.

______"Zigzags and zeros
__________until the next idea comes along. . ."

Ha! This writer has had days like that. The ending of the book is appropriately the beginning of another writing project. Bravo.

Written Anything Good Lately? is a sequel to Read Anything Good Lately? by the same authors. I'm on my way to find it now.
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Cheep! Cheep!
by Julie Stiegemeyer
Illustrated by Carol Baicker-Mckee
Bloomsbury, 2006
Category: Fiction picture book

Seven little words. Seven. That's all. Repeated and woven together to create a satisfying beginning-middle-end in only 41 words, all rhyming with the title, Cheep! Cheep!. Little homogeneous four-word groups take turns as the story unfolds with the judicious use of exclamation marks, question marks, and no marks at all. What a feat.

The illustrations are photographs of the most adorable three-dimensional terry-cloth chickens. You can't help but smile at the cover, and the warm fuzzies continue---both on the page and off---throughout the ten spreads, as the birds eagerly anticipate (cheep?) and witness (eep!) the hatching of an egg, and welcome the hatchling into the "heap".

Made of medium-weight cardboard a little heavier than a manilla file folder, the pages are reminiscent of a board book, but the rhyming text and larger page size give it more of a picture book feel. Smart move, Bloomsbury. It'll withstand overly-loving toddler hands and new readers won't feel like "babies" as they enjoy quick success cruising through the rhymes. In fact, this would make a great book for a 6-year-old to read to a 3-year-old sibling. It caters to the attention of both.

Fun. Friendly. Beautifully designed and executed. Clever.
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A Drop of Water: A Book of
Science and Wonder
by Walter Wick
Scholastic, 2006
Category: Nonfiction picture book
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*fantastic - fan-'tas-tik adj.
__a) based on fantasy, not real
__b) seemingly conceived by unrestrained fancy
__c) so extreme as to challenge belief

Sometimes photographs are so fantastic you can't tear your eyes away from them. And when images like that are collected together in one volume, the resulting book is so striking, so beautiful, so mesmerizing, that one might just forget to read the text. I know this to be true because A Drop of Water by Walter Wick is just such a book, and the person who forgot to read the text is, uh, me.

Yes, I know, I didn't think a writer whose whole way of thinking revolves around words could ever ignore text, either, but I did. Had someone asked me about the book after a few times through it, I probably would have said it was a wordless book. The text---once you get to it [big grin]---is clear and uncluttered to match the photos, and does a great job of describing both the science and beauty one sees on the page.

Aptly titled, A drop of Water: A Book of Science and Wonder is about water---drops forming, dripping, falling, splashing, stretching, breaking apart, drying up, and all those other things water drops do. It is also, as the title promises, loaded with science and wonder. Via Walter Wick's drop-dead gorgeous photographs, the reader cruises through an amazing array of water science (elasticity and capillary action being my personal faves, science geek that I am). Close-up shots reveal images of water rarely seen with such clarity. Clean lines and uncluttered design echo the simplicity of the water itself.

It's hard to believe this book is ten years old. Still fresh and avant garde by today's standards, the content and design have weathered the decade well. A newcomer to its pages could easily be convinced it was a new release.

I love knowing backstory, so I was delighted to find a detailed author's note describing the journey from idea to finished book. I won't spoil the fun by revealing details here, but suffice it say it's enough to inspire any young photographer or scientist.

*Thank you, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
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An Egg Is Quiet
by Dianna Aston
Illustrated by Sylvia Long
Chronicle, 2006
Category: Nonfiction picture book
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This refreshing new spin on the subject of eggs is a beautiful book that begs to be cradled, poured over, absorbed. By page two, that's exactly what I was doing.

The text, illustration style, and design choices flow together to create a rich reading experience. Everything points to "egg". Even the use of white space gives a sense of anticipation, as though waiting for an egg to hatch.

Instead of starting with typical egg qualities, such as shape or colour or function, author Dianna Aston begins with the unexpected title: "An egg is quiet" and wraps up with--you guessed it--"An egg is noisy." Neither is a quality I normally associate with eggs, but each is entirely accurate, and I'm delighted to discover a new way to think about eggs. The unusual word choices continue throughout. Eggs are "clever", "artistic", and "giving"--a whole new language for eggs. Hmm. . . eggs. . . can there be a more universal symbol for "new"? And here is a book about eggs that generates a feeling of newness because the word choice itself echoes and underscores the subject matter. How brilliant is that? Was it intentional or simply the serendipitous organic creation of a skilled wordsmith? Either way, I'm in awe.

Sylvia Long's exquisite ink and watercolour images are a perfect match for the text. The natural, subdued palette gives a sense of warmth and safety--yet another notion of "egg" reflected in design! I was particularly pleased to see eggs rendered in actual size when possible (and notes indicating so), and with great attention to detail. Subsequent reads reveal additional touches, such as the subtle font tendrils anchoring the title to a plant as if it were a dogfish egg case.

My only quibble--and it is a minor, minor one--is with the font. The main text is in cursive writing, which is completely in keeping with the flavour of the book, and as an adult, I love, but I fear new readers will find it a challenge to read on their own.

The end result is a stirring blend of strong, gentle text and art. This is a book that, even after several visits between its covers, I had trouble putting down. I'm not surprised that An Egg Is Quiet won the 2006 CYBILS Award for nonfiction picture book. Much deserved.
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