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Stretch your students knowledge of information writing by trying a unit of narrative nonfiction.

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This month on Five First Book Favorites you’ll find books that help kids understand civil rights and fair wages, explore different cultures… or even explore the moon!

For PreK – 1^st (Ages 2-6)

Take Me Out To The Yakyu By Aaron Meshon

The narrator of this delightful book is a boy who loves baseball – in two different countries! He goes to games in the U.S. with his American grandfather (pop pop) and games in Japan with his Japanese grandfather (ji ji). Bold, colorful illustrations show, side-by-side, the trip to each stadium. It’s a wonderful invitation for kids to compare and contrast two different experiences and also reflect on the countries and cultures of their own families.

For Grades 1-3 (Ages 5-8)

Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 written by Michelle Markel and illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Clara Lemlich immigrated to New York with nothing aside from her family, clothes, and a few words of English. When her parents were unable to find work, she took a job as a garment factory worker – earning a few dollars a month for countless hours bent over a sewing machine. With a blend of vivid watercolors and stitched fabrics, this book tells the story of how Clara led her coworkers on strike to protest their horrendous working conditions. Bosses of the factories paid for Clara to be beaten and arrested repeatedly, but nothing could stop this gritty, five-foot tall woman from securing a better life for millions.

For Grades 2-5 (Ages 6-10)

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca

The moment Apollo 11’s Eagle touched down on the Moon, it became a defining moment for a nation that had lived up to a President’s lofty goal. With stunning illustrations,  this poetic story allows you to join Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin as they prepare for liftoff, follows them at every stage of the mission, and doesn’t let go until they are safely back home. Brian Floca has created a work of art worthy of inspiring young readers to dream beyond what is easy, and strive for what is hard.

For Grades 5+ (Ages 10 and up)

The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights by Steve Sheinkin

Loading 500-pound bombs into a Navy warship is, to say the least, a dangerous job. On July 17^th, 1944, the fears of the untrained men who held this job became reality when an explosion claimed the lives of 320 men, the majority of whom were black. During this time, the Navy, like every other part of the United States Military, was segregated,frequently leaving black men to be treated as second class citizens serving menial roles. This masterfully crafted nonfiction book follows the fifty men who refused to go back to this life-threatening and degrading work, and the court case that followed.

 

For Grades 6+ (Age 11 and up)

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

There are few characters you will ever root for more than Doug Swieteck. On the surface, he is a good for nothing, skinny thug with a reading disability. Just ask his teachers and they’ll tell you. However in the depths of Doug Swieteck, where this book takes place, you find a boy who is trapped – one brother a bully, one a vacant shell of his pre-war self, and an abusive alcoholic for a father who has left a horrific mark on his youngest son. The secrets Doug is holding back from the reader are gut-wrenching, but with the help of a few strangers-turned-friends and a newfound passion for art, this fourteen-year-old will inspire every person lucky enough to pick up his story.

The post Our Five Favorite Books This February appeared first on First Book Blog.

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Earlier this month, Caldecott Medal-winning children’s books creator Brian Floca spoke at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During his presentation, he talked about the creative processes behind Locomotive, Ballet For Martha, and The Racecar Alphabet.

Floca (pictured, via) also shared several pieces of writing advice. We’ve collected three of Floca’s tips below—what do you think?

(1) Take the step of “writing what you know” a little further and “write what you want to know.”

(2) “Writing is all about re-writing.”

(3) “Research helps to guide the writing. Writing helps to guide the research.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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The New York Times Book Review has unveiled its annual list of the “10 Best Illustrated Children’s Books” of the year.

Shelf Awareness children’s editor Jennifer M. Brown, Caldecott Medal-winning artist Brian Floca, and Caldecott Medal recipient Jerry Pinkney sat on this year’s judging panel. See the complete list below.

Here’s more from the press release: “Since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of three judges from the world of children’s literature to select picture books on the basis of artistic merit. Each year, judges choose from among thousands of picture books for what is the only annual award of its kind. Lists of past winners of the Best Illustrated Children’s Book Award can be found on NYTimes.com/Books, along with a slide show of this year’s winners.”

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Every single book on this list is purely entertaining, each in their own special way. Like all good picture books, the illustrations are winning. As per usual, we've shared our hand selected list of the most popular picture books from the nationwide best selling picture books, as listed by The New York Times.

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Three of the books in The Children's Book Review's best selling picture books list for July fall under the category of American history. Each of the books are deliciously rich in visual cues.

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The Children's Book Review's best selling picture book for this month is the gorgeously illustrated picture book from Jon J. Muth, The Three Questions. As per usual, we've also shared our hand selected list of the most popular picture books from the nationwide best selling picture books, as listed by The New York Times.

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The Children's Book Review's best selling picture book for this month is a lovely illustrated story for little ballerinas, Too Too Many Tutus by Suzanne Davis Marion. As per usual, we've also shared our hand selected list of the most popular picture books from the nationwide best selling picture books, as listed by The New York Times.

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Spring is here, the season of regeneration that brings plenty of flowers with nectar which worker bees gather and convert into honey. The Children's Book Review's best selling picture book for this month is full of information on the wonderful and very much under-appreciated honeybees, The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci.

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Readers of this blog this past fall will know exactly why I am linking to this month’s School Library Journal‘s cover story: kudos to Brian Floca, Locomotive, and our own Robin Smith!

The post Worlds collide appeared first on The Horn Book.

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Happy Columbus Day to you!  I’ve not particularly insightful encapsulations of the day to offer you, though if you’d like to read some preview posts I’ve done on the day (completely with book recommendations) feel free to go here.

• I will start today with this rather interesting post about a recent brouhaha that arose when a Macalester College student created a spoken word piece called “To JK Rowling, From Cho Chang”.  The internet being what it is you could certainly predict the nasty flaming war that would occur in the wake of her talk, particularly when the video went viral.  What makes the whole incident singular, to my mind, is the student’s response.  She sat down and calmly discussed the top five point folks made about her piece.  She admitted mistakes, reinforced certain points, and basically acted like a civilized grown-up.  The internet is shockingly devoid of civilized grown-ups these days, so in some small part of my brain I wish that high schools around the country could show kids this piece and teach them about internet etiquette in the 21st century.  Own up and also stand up for your beliefs.  It’s a hard lesson and this woman did it with class.  Bravo.

• Now even before I read Travis Jonker’s fun post, I was aware that the Fuse channel had created something called Fuse News.  I can’t blame them.  It’s a catchy phrase.  Travis’s post is notable, by the way, because it manages to incorporate the phrase “Way to ruin my joke, Weird Al” completely within context.  And just so long as they don’t sue me for the term, we should be fine.  A Google search of the term “Fusenews” yields only them anyway.

• Flowcharts.  We’re crazy about them.  After my little Noodle flowchart got such nice press I heard from a lot of librarians the cry, “Why can’t we do that?”  Turns out, you can.  I was alerted not so long ago to this cool Which YA Novel Is Right for You?  Feel free to fill in the blanks and come up with your very own personalized flowchart.  Fun for patrons and librarians alike.

• I’m sure you already saw it at PW Children’s Bookshelf, but how clever were they to interview Elisha Cooper about his contemporary picture book Train alongside Brian Floca and his nonfiction picture book Locomotive.  Someone asked me the other day if Floca might be in the running for a Newbery.  It hadn’t occurred to me before but now . . . oh boy, I hope so.

• Got the following note the other day and it’s a fun idea for small pubs.  A bit too small for its own press release, I’ll just post it here.

Beginning on Thursday, 10/10/13, at 10AM EST an original apple will be revealed every day until 11/10/13.  Readers, librarians, booksellers, and educators who follow Blue Apple Books on Facebook or Twitter are invited to guess the name of the artist who created the apple.  Whoever is first to guess correctly on either social network will receive a Blue Apple book illustrated by that artist.

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It's the 43rd anniversary of Apollo 11!  

I did a guest post for the IRA blog (International Reading Association) a few months back called "The Timeless Draw of Dinosaurs and Space" with some ruminations about CHRONAL ENGINE and LITTLE GREEN MEN AT THE MERCURY INN.  One thing I talked about was the fact that children (and young readers) can make scientific contributions and queries in these fields on their own, for example discovering fossils and asteroids.

Along these lines, a few days ago, I came across this great story on the CNN web site about "The 10-year-old who helped Apollo."  It's about Greg Force, a 10 year old boy whose father worked at the tracking station in Guam at the time.  It seems that, at the last minute, as the capsule was returning to earth, a bearing in the station's antenna failed.  Because it would've taken too long to replace the bearing, Greg was enlisted to lubricate it, which only he could do -- the access opening was only two inches wide...Anyway, check out the whole story at the link.

And for a gorgeous picture book account of the moonshot, check out Brian Floca's book: 

   

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Marty's back! You have to hand it to a third-grader who has no qualms about shredding her collection of princess paper dolls (unwanted gifts from a well-meaning but clueless grandmother) in order to recycle paper. In this second book of the series the students in Marty's school are on a mission to save the earth. A visiting environmentalist challenges the students to come up with projects to help the environment. When the glop of paper dolls fail to materialize into paper (and breaks the food processor to boot), Marty chooses a new project. With the help of Grandma Barb, her cool non-paper-doll-giving grandmother, Marty and her best friend Annie create a worm compost farm that will turn the leftovers from the school cafeteria into fertilizer.

Worms and third-graders make for an explosive mix, especially in the hands of Kate Messner. After the kids overfeed their slimy charges, the worms escape and Marty and Annie have to capture them. Patience isn't Marty's strong point, but over the course of the story she learns to wait for her worms to slowly process trash into compost. On the big day, the environmentalist returns to judge the projects. Will Marty's worms win or won't they? Messner cleverly keeps readers at the edge of their seats as the winners are announced and brought on stage.

Marty is an engaging character, one whom kids will be sure to root for. And the environmentalist message, while prevalent, is rarely heavy handed. The students at Orchard Street Elementary genuinely care about saving the environment. One girl, whose father sometimes throws soda cans in the regular trash and not the recycling bin, sets up a metal detector that will buzz if aluminum goes in. As she explains, "I really wanted to set it up so he'd get zapped with a shock, too, like those electric dog fences, but my mom said I couldn't." The story is heavily sprinkled with such humorous tidbits, making it an enjoyable read. Brian Floca's light-hearted illustrations add to the fun.

Marty McGuire Digs Worms!
by Kate Messner
illustrations by Brian Floca
Scholastic Press, 176 pages
Published: April 2012

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Marty McGuire
By Kate Messner
Illustrated by Brian Floca
Scholastic
$16.99
ISBN: 978-0-545-14244-1
Ages 5-9
On shelves now

It’s high time “tomboys” rescued their term from its negative connotations. One very rarely runs across parents who use the word with pride. It happens, sure, but more often than not it’s paired with a complaint. Same goes for tomboys in children’s books. They exist but they tend to appear in works of historical fiction more often than not. The contemporary tomboy is, oddly enough, relatively rare these days. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I loved Kate Messner’s Marty McGuire as much as I did. Not only do you have a genuine one-of-a-kind 21st century tomboy on your hands, she’s rejecting the princess culture too! Finding great early chapter books can be an enormous chore. Now Marty makes my job as a children’s librarian that much easier.

Second grade was fine. Marty had no beef with second grade. But for all that her second grade teacher made third grade sound like a bed of roses, Marty is having a rough time of it. Her best friend Annie has been stolen by princess-loving girly girl Veronica Grace and now she won’t go frog hunting or do any of the other fun things she used to with Marty. So when the school play is announced (The Frog Prince) guess who’s shocked and appalled when she ends up with the role of the princess? That’s right. Marty has to be seriously convinced that this is a good plan and even then she’s reluctant. Fortunately, actors always have little tricks to make their roles their own. And Marty has a trick up her sleeve that’s a doozy.

The rise of the princess culture is a relatively recent phenomenon. I’m referring to the abject shameless marketing to little girls of anything and everything princessy. It didn’t really exist when I was a kid, only hitting its stride in the last decade or so. The result in the literary world has been a veritable cornucopia of pink and sparkly princess books for girls of every age. If a girl isn’t into princesses and their omnipresent pinkness they may sometimes find the literary pickings (at least in some bookstores) few. Marty McGuire’s brave rejection of all of that comes as a breath of fresh air. Here we’ve got a girl on the cover reaching for a frog in jeans and sneakers. Pink sneakers, sure, but you go with what you’ve got. The tiara falling to the side seems like more of an afterthought than anything else. I mean clearly this is a different kind of book.

Which makes the story all the more difficult to pull off. In a way, you’re rooting for Marty and her anti-princess stance. The idea of her forced princessing is tricky territory. But Messner somehow manages to walk a fine line, never making this a book about “embracing your inner princess” or similar dreck. Instead, this is very clearly a story about trying something new and making it your own, even if it pulls you out of your comfort zone. That’s actually a very useful, if rare, lesson tha

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School’s out! Summer’s in full swing. Time to look back for a moment and reflect on our INK Blog accomplishments. INK bloggers spent the last year sharing favorite new books for young readers, introducing our own new books, and suggesting ways teachers and librarians can use them in the classroom. We shared opinions about e books, kindles, and research. Our subjects ranged from books on women astronauts, Darwin, and baseball to artists, animals, science and more. We have garnered awards and rousing reviews. We welcomed INK THINK TANK, an INK website and INK Think Tank video conferencing. I notice that most of us (present company excluded) are very good at livening up our posts with photos, drawings, book covers and illustrations. All in all a very exciting and productive year. A fringe benefit is that we are starting to meet each other in person. At the PEN Children’s Book writer’s dinner in NY at Elizabeth Levy’s last week, I met Vicki Cobb and Susannah Reich. It was nice to be able to have a face to face conversation!!

I just completed a mystery for adults and sent it off to a friend to review. Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring (with Sandra Jordan, illustrations by Brian Floca) will be out in August. So I am taking a break. For the next month I will catch up on my reading.
As usual I have a stack of books next to my bed ranging from The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and Louis Sachar’s The Card Turner to a biography of the art dealer Leo Castelli and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s memoir Nomad. Somewhere in the mix is a novel in the voice of a dog that my friend Barbara says is a must.

I’m excited to introduce Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring, which tells the story of the collaboration between Martha Graham, Isamu Noguchi and Aaron Copland to create Martha’s most celebrated dance. Copland won a Pulitzer prize for the music. Most people don’t realize that Noguchi designed many sets for Martha’s dances over the years. Sandra and I were thinking of writing a biography of the artist. When we visited the Noguchi museum in Long island City, New York a few years ago, there was a fascinating exhibit of Noguchi’s set designs for Martha. We wondered if it would be possible to do a picture book that would capture the spirit of his work with Martha. During the years she danced, choreographed, and taught in New York, everyone referred to her as Martha. She became an icon in her own lifetime. We watched early videos of the company’s performances. It became clear that Appalachian Spring was not only the most accessible story for young readers, but it was also the most American. It takes place in the hills of Pennsylvania, where a farmer and his bride celebrate their wedding day and the completion of their new house.

The ballet debuted at the Library of Congress in 1944, when the United States was at war with Germany and Japan. Although there were intimations in the music and the dance of troubled times, the ballet ended on a hopeful note. Critics called it her valentine to Eric Hawkins, the dancer who played the husband, the man Martha eventually married. She took the role of the bride. Interestingly Merce Cunningham was the Preacher. Whenever we went to watch rehearsals of the Martha Graham Dance Company, Brian Floca was there taking photographs. Sandra and I, as I’ve written before, do an enormous amount of research for our books. I was astonished to discover that an illustrator does the same thing. More about the book in the fall. Meanwhile a happy and productive Summer to all of you.

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The Children's Book Council hosts the Children's Choice Book Awards. The favorite book finalists for this year were determined by close to 15,000 children and teens. I highly recommend checking out these books!

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I've been continuously finding some great books about space travel lately and had three sitting on my TBR shelf this week, making the perfect Non-Fiction Monday post. The first two are non-fiction, the third is a picture book about the Apollo 11 flight. All of these are highly recommended!

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream is written by Tanya Lee Stone, with a foreword by Margaret A. Weitekamp, the curator of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Already sounding pretty fancy eh?

In the book, the reader gets to learn about 13 women that truly wanted to achieve the goal of becoming an astronaut. The media mocked them constantly, male astronauts wanted nothing to do with their presence in space programs, and NASA denied them access. Occurring about 20 years before women were finally allowed into the NASA space program, these 13 women fought for the right to attend and the right to go into space.

The text is accompanied by amazing photographs from the time period, as well as extensive coverage on women's rights in general and the fight for them that took place in the 50's and 60's.

Almost Astronauts is a great addition to a school unit on space exploration, as well as a nice title for women's history reports or library displays on the solar system.

Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream
Tanya Lee Stone
144 pages
Non-fiction
Candlewick
9780763636111
February 2009

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 was wonderfully written by Brian Floca. Told in a story format, readers are able to learn about the famous flight to the moon and its effect on the world. A note at the end of the story explains more about the mission, in greater detail and with more scientific information. Definitely geared towards a younger set than Almost Astronauts, but still with great, usable information.

Very nicely illustrated, simple and clean, just like the text. I really enjoyed this one! Another excellent library title.

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11
Brian Floca
48 pages
Non-Fiction
Atheneum
9781416950462
April 2009

Finally, my picture book addition to this non-fiction post, Footprints on the Moon, is written by Mark Haddon (wonderful author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and illustrated beautifully by Christian Birmingham.

A simple tale about a boy that dreams about traveling to the moon and having astronauts finally be able to land on the surface, reading books from the library on the subject, creating a scrapbook about it, spending hours looking at the sky with his dad's binoculars. His dreams are realized when he watches Apollo 11 land on the moon and the astronauts walk to the surface.

A very simple and sweet book, this would be a nice introduction to space travel for little ones. The illustrations are beautiful and soft and the text flows nicely. I really enjoyed this one as well.

Footprints on the Moon
Mark Haddon
32 pages
Picture book
Candlewick
9780763644406
March 2009

To learn more about any of these books or to purchase, click on the book covers above to link to Amazon.

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