How to use this Page

Title: The North Pole Penguin

Author: Christopher Payne

Illustrator: Lorena Soriano

Publisher/Year: CreateSpace/2014

Now that Halloween is over, my thoughts have turned to Christmas. It’s less than two months away after all. I’m already thinking about the decorating, shopping, and visiting that make up part of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. You may be too. But are you also thinking about Christmas books? If not, I have the perfect one to get you started: The North Pole Penguin. 

This book has the potential to be a Christmastime classic. With its clever rhyme and bright, put-you-in-the-spirit illustrations, The North Pole Penguin begs to be read over and over again. The story is about Parker Preston, a penguin from the South Pole, who loves Christmas and longs to thank Santa Claus in person for stopping at his igloo every year. So he sets off for the North Pole with a gift for Santa and meets new animal friends along the way who also want to give gifts to Santa. Some even accompany him on his journey. Here’s a sample from the book:

Upon some thinking long and hard, he knew his Christmas cause

To cross the globe and go and see the man called Santa Claus.

He’d bring him gifts and change the roles before the winter’s thaws

To give back to the special man whose kindness had no flaws.

If you’re searching for a sweet Christmas story with amazing illustrations and the strong possibility of becoming a holiday tradition, The North Pole Penguin is a perfect choice.

New York City, five boroughs boasting nine million people occupying an ever-expanding concrete  jungle. The industrial hand has touched almost every inch of the city, leaving even the parks over manicured and uncomfortably structured. There is, however, a lesser known corner  that has been uncharacteristically left to regress to its natural state. North Brother Island, a small sliver of land situated off the southern coast of the Bronx, once housed Riverside Hospital, veteran housing, and ultimately a drug rehabilitation center for recovering heroin addicts. In the 1960s the island, once full with New Yorkers, became deserted and nature has been slowly swallowing the remaining structures ever since. Christopher Payne, the photographer behind North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, was able to access the otherwise prohibited to the public island, and document the incredible phenomenon of the gradual destruction of man’s artificial structures.

• Tuberculosis Pavilion, Spring

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Tuberculosis-Pavilion.jpg

• St. John by-the-sea Church

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Church.jpg

• Classroom, Service Building

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Classroom.jpg

• Old Coal House

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Coal-House.jpg

• Library Books in a Male Dormitory

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Books.jpg

• View of Manhattan Dusk, High Tide

   

  http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Beach-at-Dusk.jpg

North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City: Photographs by Christopher Payne, A History by Randall Mason, and Essay by Robert Sullivan (A Fordham University Press Publication). Christopher Payne, a photographer based in New York City, specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. Trained as an architect, he has a natural interest in how things are purposefully designed and constructed, and how they work. Randall Mason is Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. He worked previously at the Getty Conservation Institute, University of Maryland, and Rhode Island School of Design. Robert Sullivan is the author of numerous books, including The Meadowlands: WildernessAdventures at the Edge of a City; Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants; The Thoreau You Don’t Know: The Father of Nature Writers on the Importance of Cities, Finance, and Fooling Around; A Whale Hunt, and, most recently, My American Revolution. His stories and essays have been published in magazines such asNew York, The New Yorker, and A Public Space. He is a contributing editor to Vogue.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only American history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Window into the last unknown place in New York City appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Illustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew
• Oxford University Press during World War I
• The Illyrian bid for legitimacy

 

This morning I'm celebrating two extraordinary picture books.

The first, featuring photographs by the exquisite Christopher Payne and an introduction by Oliver Sacks, is called Asylum. Presenting some of the most moving images I have ever seen, this book takes us on a tour of the institutions that have served as home to this country's mentally ill. There are no people in these photographs—just a wall of toothbrushes, say, or canisters of ashes, or beleaguered ward hallways lit up by sun. Taunton State Hospital, Matteawan State Hospital, Concord State Hospital, and Springfield State Hospital are here; so is the operating room of Norristown and the coffins of Fergus Falls. Every single photograph is breathtaking; I bought the book two months ago and I still don't have the words to express my deep respect for the artistry of Payne.

The second book I'm celebrating today is Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans/Expanded Edition. We had seen the Americans exhibition at San Francisco MOMA, and I'd fallen in love with Frank's depiction of America, mid-last century, with its spewing politicians and its through-the-screen-door barber shops, its movie stars and its road trips. This compendium is graced by in-depth Sarah Greenough essays, context-proving contact sheets, and truly interesting explications of Frank's approach to maquettes and juxtaposition. Looking In was my big Christmas present this year, and it is big—so heavy, so wide that I have yet to figure out how to perch it on my lap. But it should not be/cannot be relegated to coffee table status. It demands to be studied and read.