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Most of The Day-Glo Brothers takes place in the 1930s, when Bob and Joe Switzer began experimenting with inks and paints that glowed under black light while moving ever closer to their discovery of daylight fluorescence.

For some additional context about that era, I've assembled a list of some of my favorite picture books set (at least partially) during the 1930s. There are undoubtedly some worthy subjects and titles that I've overlooked and would do well to add in updates to this post -- I'd love to hear your suggestions.

Aliens Are Coming! The True Account of the 1938 War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast
by Meghan McCarthy
Alfred A. Knopf
2006
McCarthy revisits Orson Welles' famously panic-inducing radio play by combining a smattering of the original script, a matter-of-fact description of the aftermath ("One man thought he saw a Martian spaceship"), and illustrations that offer the old-fashioned kick of cheesy sci-fi.

Amelia Earhart: The Legend of the Lost Aviator
by Shelley Tanaka, illustrated by David Craig
Abrams Books for Young Readers
2008
Tanaka's stirring account of the aviator's daring and determination awakened my own, long-dormant childhood fascination with Earhart.

Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman
by Marc Tyler Nobleman, illustrated by Ross MacDonald
Alfred A. Knopf
2008
Nobleman and MacDonald make a dynamic duo in their depiction of how mild-mannered teens Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster parlayed the strength of their imaginations into an enduring hero.

Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa
by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Brian Pinkney
Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children
2002
Hip feline "Scat Cat Monroe" takes readers on a stylish, jazzy tour through Fitzgerald's rise from big-dreaming Yonkers girl to unforgettable First Lady of Song.

Hoover Dam
by Elizabeth Mann, illustrated by Alan Witschonke
Mikaya Press
2001
Mann's Wonders of the World books are wonders in their own right. Her words and Witschonke's art pay as much tribute and attention to the underappreciated workers as they do to the feat of engineering that tamed the Colorado River.

Seabiscuit Vs. War Admiral: The Greatest Horse Race in History
by Kat Shehata, illustrated by Jo McElwee
Angel Bea Publishing
2003
The story of the 1938 contest runs on two tracks -- a ticker-tape version in the staccato stylings of a stadium announcer, and another in the warm prose of an author who knows how to unfold the winning tale of an unlikely champion.

Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building
by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by James E. Ransome
Schwartz & Wade Books
2006
A boy with a newly unemployed father watches the rise of the New York City landmark -- from the 50-foot toss of a red-hot rivet to the finished tower's glow against Manhattan's nighttime sky -- with wonder and inspiration. Readers will, too.

That Book Woman
by Heather Henson, illustrated by David Small
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
2008
Henson and Small depict a pack-horse librarian's impact on a farm family, told through the skeptical eye and mountain vernacular of a non-reading boy named Cal.

Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People
by Bonnie Christensen
Alfred A. Knopf
2001
With a generous dose of Guthrie's own lyrics, Christensen shows how the singer and activist came to give voice to Americans in need through "This Land Is Your Land" and a thousand other songs.

Today marks 49 years and 11 months since the Soviets launched Sputnik. A few years ago, I predicted that major children's book publishers would make a fuss over the golden anniversary of the inauguration of the space race -- maybe not a fuss of Wright-brothers-in-2003 proportions, but something.

Well, I guessed wrong, but not before I'd done a few drafts of the sort of Sputnik picture book I thought my boys might like. A few editors had a look and passed, and once the time remaining until the anniversary date shrank to less than the picture book production cycle, I set my manuscript aside.

Until today, that is. Below, for your watershed-commemoration and reading pleasure, I've posted my full manuscript for What-nik?!? Enjoy, comrades!

When I woke up on October 4, 1957, all I could think about was professional wrestling.

[Poster on bedroom wall:

One night only! Friday, October 11! Come see Mr. Spectacular! The Bruiser Brothers! The Masked Whacker! And more!]

When I went to bed that night, all I could think about was Sputnik.

[Family gathered around the radio:

“What-nik?!?”

“He said ‘Sputnik.’”]

We heard about it after dinner. The Russians -- the Russians! -- had launched this ... thing into space, and it was sending back beeping signals.

It was called Sputnik. Sputnik weighed 184 pounds, and it was orbiting around and around the earth. Even over the United States.

[“Hey, 184 -- same as me.”

“Shhh, listen.”

Beep-beep-beep... beep-beep-beep]

Part of me was amazed, and part of me was scared. I wasn't sure which part was bigger.

Amazed because I didn't know anything about satellites or orbits or things that went “beep” in space. My dad knew a little, but he’d never tried to explain it before.

[“What makes Sputnik stay up there? Why doesn't it fly off into space or come crashing down?”

“Um, well... Gravity.”]

I was scared because the Russians were our enemy. We’d always heard that everything in the USA was better than in Russia. But we’d never launched a satellite, and now Russia had.

The worse an enemy is, the more names you have for them. We had a lot of names for the Russians.

[Russia
Soviet Union
Soviets
U.S.S.R.
Russkies
Communists
Commies
Reds
Pinkos]

The Russian leader once bragged, “We will bury you.” And if that wasn't frightening enough, at school we had to practice hiding under our desks in case a Russian bomb ever fell on us.

[“I’m not sure this will help.”]

The next day was Saturday. Instead of playing Mr. Spectacular vs. the Masked Whacker, my friends Ronnie and Dave and I talked about Sputnik.

[“Why don’t we just shoot it down?”

“Because it’s 560 miles up and going 18,000 miles an hour.”

“Do you think it’s got an A-bomb or an H-bomb?”

“Maybe a death ray.”

“Do you think it’s spying on us?”

“We aren't doing anything.”

“What does that ‘beep-beep-beep’ mean, anyway?”

“Someone told me that it’s really ‘deep-beep-beep.’”

“Well, what does it sound like to you?”

“‘Bleep-bleep-bleep.’”]

Most everyone took Sputnik seriously. Some people took it really seriously. My Uncle Earl, for one. My dad tried to be funny.

[“Not only are the blasted Russkies watching us, but you know what they’re gonna do next? Paint the moon red, just to show us they can!”

“Oh, come on. I weigh 184 pounds. How come no one’s scared of me?”]

All weekend, we could hear Sputnik beeping on the radio. We didn't know if it was doing anything else. The Russians said it wasn't, but who believed them?

Politicians told us not to panic. But then they gave us reasons why we should.

[“If the Soviets can launch a Sputnik into orbit, what can’t they do? What can’t they do?”]

I learned everything I could about Sputnik, but even with three TV channels and two newspapers, it wasn't much. At school on Monday, everyone was talking about flying saucers. I tried to set them straight.

[“It’s actually round. Like a beach ball with antennas.”]

Our teachers told us how hard school was in Russia, and that was why they had the first satellite. We got twice as much homework as usual.

My mom went out and bought every science book she could find so that I could catch up with Russian kids.

[“Mom, this is about earthworms.”

“You think rocket scientists don’t need to know about earthworms?”]

I began to worry about Friday’s wrestling matches. Uncle Earl was supposed to take me, but he said Sputnik’s beeps were a secret code, and he wouldn't rest until he’d broken it.

[“Uncle Earl?”

“I’ll be out when I’m finished!”

Beep-beep-beep...

“‘Boo hoo hoo?’”

Beep-beep-beep...

“‘Bwa ha ha?’”]

I heard you could actually see Sputnik before sunrise or after sunset if it passed overhead. So I got up early and ate dinner late so I could watch for it.

Sometimes my friends joined me.

[“I bet we’ll beat ‘em to Mars.”]

Sometimes my dad did.

[“I don’t see why all the fuss. After all...”

“I know, Dad -- you weigh 184 pounds, too.”]

But Sputnik must have been over some other part of the world whenever I was looking.

Friday evening came. Mom was playing bridge. Dad said he had to work late. I sat on the porch to wait for Uncle Earl, just in case.

And then I saw a bright orange glow begin to streak across the sky. It was speeding along, but the sky was so big, it seemed to take forever. At that moment, I wasn’t scared at all. I was just amazed. People had put that streak up there.

[“It’s beautiful. No one told me Sputnik was beautiful.”]

My uncle showed up a few minutes later.

[“Did you break the code?”

“No. It broke me. Let’s go see some rasslin’.”]

Just before the main event, the announcer spoke to the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a special guest tonight, joining us all the way from Moscow, Russia, in the U.S.S.R.”

The rest of the crowd booed, but I didn’t. The masked grappler looked familiar. And ridiculous.

“Weighing in at a mighty 184 pounds, it’s... Sputnikolai!”

The boos turned to laughter. Sputnikolai winked at me.

Now I really wasn’t scared.

To the list of Alan Lomax's contemporaries with children's-book biographies, we can, of course, add Lady Bird Johnson, who died this afternoon at age 94. She's the subject of Miss Lady Bird's Wildfowers: How a First Lady Changed America, a splendid collaboration by Kathi Appelt and Joy Fisher Hein.

The gravitational pull of my current project is such that it's even changing the way I'm choosing U.S. history books for 8-year-old S and 3-year-old F.

This month, we're focusing on biographies of Americans born within a decade of Alan Lomax -- between 1905 and 1925. The subjects are an eclectic bunch:

• Black Cat Bone: The Life of Blues Legend Robert Johnson by J. Patrick Lewis and illustrated by Gary Kelley
• Morris and Buddy: The Story of the First Seeing Eye Dog by Becky Hall and illustrated by Doris Ettlinger
• Clyde Tombaugh and the Search for Planet X by Margaret K. Wetterer and illustrated by Laurie A. Caple
• Rosa Parks: My Story by Rosa Parks with Jim Haskins
• Joe Louis: America's Fighter by David A. Adler and illustrated by Terry Widener
• Rachel Carson: Pioneer of Ecology by Kathleen V. Kudlinski and illustrated by Ted Lewin
• Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and illustrated by Robert Andrew Parker
• Babe Didrikson Zaharias: The Making of a Champion by Russell Freedman
• Grace Hopper: Computer Whiz by Patricia J. Murphy
• When Everybody Wore a Hat by William Steig

This seems to be just as true in nonfiction for children as it in human relations in general. At least, that's my interpretation of the relative lack of nonfiction titles for young children about American pacifism and peacemakers, diplomacy and diplomats, compared to titles focused on the wars we've been in.

Maybe it's because war seems to have greater potential for drama, not to mention cooler technology. Or maybe -- just maybe -- this country simply has a richer history of conflict engagement than conflict avoidance, nonviolence, etc.

As peaceful topics go, Martin Luther King, Jr., is an obvious exception, and for this month's U.S. history reading for 8-year-old S and 3-year-old F, I brought home Doreen Rappaport and illustrator Bryan Collier's Martin's Big Words.

There's also a four-decades-old gem by Betty Baker and illustrated by Robert Lopshire, The Pig War.

Beyond that, I found a contemporary fiction picture book reflecting on our relationship with Japan (Jean Davies Okimoto and illustrator Doug Keith's Dear Ichiro), whimsical cautionary tales both Seuss (The Butter Battle Book) and Seussian (Dav Pilkey's debut, available here in its entirety), Todd Parr's conceptual The Peace Book, and Vladimir Radunsky's highly appealing (but, sadly, Belgiancentric) Manneken Pis: A Simple Story of a Boy Who Peed on a War.

(Many -- shoot, maybe all -- of these titles are featured at Weapons of Mass Instruction; thanks to Kids Lit for that link. I'd also hoped to bring home Paths to Peace: People Who Changed the World, but whoever last checked that one out from my library has been sitting on it for nearly a month past its due date. When I get my hands on that lousy so-and-so who hasn't turned in that razzafrackin' peace book, I'll...)

Anyway, here's my Memorial Day Weekend question for you all: For young children -- readers of picture books through early chapter books -- what other nonfiction history titles can you recommend on this topic?

Until next week -- peace, y'all.

Hey Batta Batta Swing!: The Wild Old Days of Baseball
by Sally Cook & James Charlton and illustrated by Ross MacDonald
Margaret K. McElderry Books
2/07

With baseball books, it's easy to take the subject too seriously: It's a metaphor for life! For America! For innocence (or the loss thereof)! Ancient stats and facts get a lot of play because they all mean something.

There's a lot of history and a lot of lore in this new collaboration by Cook, Charlton and MacDonald, but most importantly there's a lot of fun. Packed with old-time lingo and comically over-the-top art, Hey Batta Batta Swing! makes for a great leadoff book in this month's U.S. history reading for 8-year-old S and 3-year-old F.

The other titles in this month's lineup (which overlaps a little with the list offered recently by The Miss Rumphius Effect) include:

• Ballpark: The Story of America's Baseball Fields by Lynn Curlee
• Take Me Out to the Ball Game by Jim Burke, with lyrics by Jack Norworth
• Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth by Robert Burleigh and Mike Wimmer
• Players in Pigtails by Shana Corey and illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon
• Teammates by Peter Golenbock and illustrated by Paul Bacon
• Say Hey!: A Song of Willie Mays by Peter Mandel and illustrated by Don Tate
• Free Baseball by Sue Corbett (Yes, it's contemporary rather than history. Yes, it's fiction rather than nonfiction. Still, the ump says it's safe.)
  

Money can't buy everything, it's true, but it's nonetheless been on the minds of 8-year-old S and 3-year-old F lately. S's interest owes equally to a money-management kit that his accountant uncle gave him for his birthday and to his newfound love of all things Yomega. F just likes repeatedly filling and emptying whatever is serving as his piggybank in any given week.

Given all that, what better theme for our U.S. history reading this month than money? Here's what we've amassed for March:

• The Story of Money by Betsy Maestro and illustrated by Giulio Maestro. Come for the currency, stay for the overview of how civilization in general has evolved.
• Money, Money, Money: The Meaning of the Art and Symbols on United States Paper Currency by Nancy Winslow Parker. Somewhat outdated now that the currency has been redesigned, but interesting just the same. You'd probably forgotten that Grover Cleveland is on the $1,000 bill.
• The Long March: The Choctaw's Gift to Irish Famine Relief by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick. This is a beautiful, heartbreaking tale of how generosity can spring even from poverty.
• Henry Hikes to Fitchburg by D. B. Johnson. Based on F's reaction to this wonderful introduction to Thoreau -- and his preference for walking over working to earn train fare -- we'll be reading the next three in the series in no time.
• Vision of Beauty: The Story of Sarah Breedlove Walker by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Nneka Bennett. I was looking for a good rags-to-riches picture book biography, and I found one.
• The Buffalo Nickel by Taylor Morrison. Huge animals and complicated machinery (of the coinmaking variety)!
• Leah's Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich and illustrated by Michael Garland. Terrific story, and a nifty introduction to the Dust Bowl and the Depression.
• Follow the Money! by Loreen Leedy. The everyday history of a single quarter named George.

I'm adding one more title to this month's reading list: astronaut Gene Cernan's memoir, The Last Man on the Moon.

Why this adult title* for my two boys? Because on our Thursday night visit to Space Center Houston, Cernan was there. 8-year-old S got to ask him what liftoff felt like, and 3-year-old F (and his dad!) got to shake the man's hand.

Every month should end this way.


* I should note that the first chapter, a nongraphic yet foreboding buildup to the fatal Apollo 1 fire in 1967, was a bit much for S. I'll be selecting only choice bits from here on out.

When 7-year-old S becomes 8-year-old S later this month, we're going to celebrate in Houston at NASA's Johnson Space Center. To help get him and 3-year-old F fired up for the trip, we've rented Apollo 13 and loaded up on books about the history (mostly) of the U.S. space program.

Our shelves are currently sagging with these titles:

• Blasting Off: Rockets Then and Now by Steven Otfinoski
• Liftoff: A Photobiography of John Glenn by Don Mitchell
• One Giant Leap: The Story of Neil Armstrong by Don Brown
• The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins by Bea Uusma Schyffert
• Spacebusters: The Race to the Moon by Philip Wilkinson
• Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon by David West Reynolds
• To Space & Back by Sally Ride with Susan Okie
• Adventure in Space: The Flight to Fix the Hubble by Elaine Scott and Margaret Miller
• Floating in Space and Mission to Mars by Franklin M. Branley and illustrated by True Kelly
• The Adventures of Sojourner: The Mission to Mars That Thrilled the World by Susi Trautmann Wunsch

A couple of weeks ago I solicited suggestions for additional books connecting American music to American history.

Well, just look at what Becky at Farm School came up with. Thanks, Becky!

It's been a while since my last listing of U.S. history titles pulled together for the homeschooling of 7-year-old S and soon-to-be-3-year-old F, and there have been a couple of key developments in the meantime.

First, S has become all the more independent as a reader -- bedtime stories have become the exception, by his choice -- and as a result I'm focusing on picture books for the Barton boy who is still lap-ready.

Second, F received drums for Christmas, so this month, we're reading about musical figures -- singers, instrumentalists, and composers alike -- which means we've got aural examples of the work of most of the folks that we're reading about.

As I've noted before, there's a disproportionate number of picture books written about jazz musicians, but there's a lot to love about and learn from many of them. There's another way to look at the situation, however: It may be that other genres have simply been underrepresented so far, and there are encouraging signs that this is being corrected.

This spring will see the second children's history of country music in as many years. My friend Gary Golio has forthcoming picture book titles about Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. I myself have manuscripts in the works profiling a couple of overlooked giants in 20th century American music. For all of these as-yet-unveiled works, I'm hopeful that readers will come away with a sense not merely of key artists' popularity and how that success was measured -- gold records, Billboard rankings, and the like -- but of how their time, place and circumstances fired their artistry, and what their work meant to their audiences then and now.

As for those books already on the shelves, there are far more worthy titles than one family can take on in a single month. These that I've listed below are simply those that caught my eye. If you've read them already, what did you think? Which others would you recommend?

What Charlie Heard
by Mordecai Gerstein

If I Only Had a Horn: Young Louis Armstrong
by Roxane Orgill and illustrated by Leonard Jenkins

Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue
by Anna Harwell Celenza and illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel

Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa
by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Brian Pinkney

This Land is Your Land
by Woody Guthrie and illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen

David Gets His Drum
by David "Panama" Francis and Bob Reiser and illustrated by Eric Velasquez

When Marian Sang
by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Brian Selznick

Charlie Parker played be bop
by Chris Raschka

Looking for Bird in the Big City
by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Marek Los

Buddy: The Story of Buddy Holly
by Anne Bustard and illustrated by Kurt Cyrus

Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa
by Veronica Chambers and illustrated by Julie Maren