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Time for another addition to the Thinking Outside the Box List**














Forest Bright, Forest Night
by Jennifer Ward
Illustrated by Jamichael Henterly
Dawn Publications, 2005
Category: Nonfiction Picture Book

This book looks at forest animals, nocturnal (night critters) and diurnal (day critters). Open the front cover that reads, "Forest Bright, Forest Night" and the bright daytime illustrations show day critters doing what forest day critters do: deer splash, woodpeckers tap, squirrels dash, etc. Read to the middle of the book where you'll find instructions to "FLIP THE BOOK FOR FOREST NIGHT". Flip, close the blook, and then open the new front cover---which was the back cover when you first started reading the book---that now reads, "Forest Night, Forest Bright". Ta da! The illustrations are dark night-time images featuring active nocturnal animals.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Night/day. . . a great use of the flip-the-book structure. But wait, that's not what bumped this book onto the Thinking Outside the Box List. Look closely at each night page and you'll see that while the focus is on the night activity of one animal, another animal---one of the diurnal critters---is sleeping somewhere in the background, and in turn, a nocturnal animal slumbers in the background on each "day" page.

But...the very cleverest part is that Ward pairs the same animals together in both parts of the book.

Day page: deer active, owl asleep
Night page: owl active, deer asleep

Day page: woodpecker active, possum asleep
Night page: possum active, woodpecker asleep

and so on, and in a beautiful finesse, the pairings appear in the same order, regardless of whether you start with "Bright" or "Night".

The simple, short and punchy text (verb heaven) are uncluttered, allowing the reader to focus on the lush illustrations and the justaposition of nocturnal-diurnal.

Brilliant. Thinking Outside the Box!

The rest of the Thinking Outside the Box List is here.

**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk of that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're blazing new trails.

Another book to add to the "Thinking Outside the Box" List**



Quack!
by Arthur Yorinks
Illustrated by
Adrienne Yorinks
Harry N. Abrams, 2003
Category: Young Picture Book


Quack! is the simple story of little duck who builds a rocket to the moon, but when he gets there discovers he misses his friends, so parachutes back to Earth. A cute story, to be sure, but the genius of this book is revealed in the teeny yellow printing in the lower left corner of the cover, which claims this book is:

Written in the International Language of Ducks!

...and it IS! [giggle giggle] The text is made up almost entirely of the word "quack", with just a few other words thrown in. The words on the page are various sizes, bolded and not, and move around in ways that give clues as to how they should be read. I'm sure a three-year-old nonreader could "read" this book according to what the quacks on the page look like. For example, on one page a series of quacks grows from teeny tiny font to in-your-face bold font. The reader *knows* to start the series in a tiny soft voice and escalate to excited shouting by the end.

It's hilariously brilliant. Fresh, clever marriage of words and format. Definitely on the "Thinking Outside the Box" List. The rest of the list is here.
**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk of that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're blazing new trails.
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Happy Nonfiction Monday!

As promised on Friday, here's the first entry on my "Thinking Outside the Box" Book List**.

What's Up, What's Down?
by Lola M. Schaefer
Illustrated by
Barbara Bash
Greenwillow Books, 2002
Category:
Nonfiction Picture Book

What's Up, What's Down? begins with a mole in mid-dig:

PAGE ONE: What's up if you're a mole?
PAGE TWO: Loose rich soil sewn together with thread-fine roots. What's up if you're a root?
PAGE THREE: Proud, new grass pushing emerald blades toward the sun. What's up if you're the grass?

The book continues in an upward direction as we find out what's up if you're a toad, wildflowers, a butterfly, tree, bird, the sky and eventually, the pearly moon. Schaefer's language is beautiful, visual, lyrical, powerful---ingeniously brilliant in its approach and simplicity. But aside from that, what bumps this book squarely onto my Thinking Outside the Box Book List is how the physical design and illustration flow contribute to the way the reader experiences the subject. To read this landscape book you rotate it 90 degrees and turn the pages by flipping them down. This provides a generous cross-section that changes with each step on the vertical journey. When readers reach the pearly moon in the middle of the book, a 180-degree rotation of the book launches the journey back down:

What's down if you're the moon?
Feathery white clouds swirling over land and sea.
What's down if you're a cloud?
Rows of ocean waves, swelling, surging, splashing, crashing.


. . . and so on, down, down, down through ocean layers to "the loose mud blanketing the ridges and canyons of the rocky crust at the bottom of the world." Up through land, down through ocean---a fresh way of looking at the world, perfectly supported by the clever physical design. Innovative...definitely thinking outside the box.

Anastasia has the rest of the Nonfiction Monday round-up here.
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**Books that break expectations in delightful ways to wow me with their cleverness. Usually ingenious format causes this step out of the norm, but it could also be an oh-so-perfect-whoda-thunk-of-that treatment involving approach, style, voice, or some other facet. These books aren't just great books, they're standouts blazing new trails.