Julie Danielson

There are some picture books that hit you right in the funny bone. This is a mighty feat, because humor can be tricky. Authors do best to avoid being too treacly about the whole affair or looking like they’re trying too hard. The great James Marshall once said that when it comes to humor, authors can’t call attention to themselves. It must be as effortless as a balloon in the air, he said. “You can’t show how hard you work.”

This is precisely what Rowboat Watkins does to great effect in Pete with No Pants, illustrated in his singularly unconventional style. Watkins gets out of his own way and lets the story take the stage. And that story is all about Pete, a young, gleefully uninhibited elephant. If you regularly spend time with preschoolers, you will recognize that Watkins nails the whims and capricious natures of young children.

Pete, being an elephant, is big, gray and pants-less. So are boulders. He is gray, puffy and pants-less. So are clouds. He’s also gray, “nuts about acorns” and pants-less. So are squirrels! Pete spends a day of play deciding to be those things. Descartes would be proud of the philosophical inquiry going on here: Pete doesn’t pretend to be these things; he decides to take on various personae.

Pete gets frustrated as he looks for a friend: The boulders are mute, and the squirrels (who make a series of funny asides, such as “there goes that boulder with pants again”) decide he’s a boulder and run off. Is anyone ever going to answer Pete’s knock-knock jokes?

Cue Pete’s mother. Given that she has repeatedly brought him his pants, she knows he wants a partner in play. So, off they go, running, sharing knock-knock jokes. “It’s me!” Pete declares as the punchline to one of them, content to be himself for a moment, happy to be his mother’s son. This wise, savvy mom is the beating heart of this very funny story.

It’s warm, playful and bursting with personality. Good luck prying this book out of children’s hands.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

This tribute to summer, the third book from Tom Brenner about a particular time of year (following And Then Comes Halloween and And Then Comes Christmas), celebrates the school-free, hot and hazy days of one of the most memory-making seasons.

It’s a time when “the days stretch out like a slow yawn,” as the book opens, “and leaves and grasses sparkle with dew.” The author captures the sights and sounds of the season: It’s a time for flip-flops, bumblebees, the sound of lawn mowers, bicycles, lemonade stands, daylight that “pushes back bedtimes,” Fourth of July parades, fireworks, visits to the lake and more. There’s exuberance on the last day of school, as illustrator Jaime Kim shows a group of children cheering in a hallway, some giving friends hugs to send them off to summer.

Kim brings readers a diverse cast of playmates; this is truly a multicultural neighborhood. It’s idyllic and picturesque: No child forgets to put on their helmet when riding bikes, and starred-and-striped flags wave all around. In this world, the children aren’t overscheduled. They’re not shuffled off to summer camp of one sort or another; these kids get to fill their summer days with play at home. And they love it—even on the days of boredom when “it’s so hot you’re practically panting and not even the sprinklers provide relief.” Still, there’s joy radiated on every sun-sparkling spread.

Brenner paces the book well, leading up to a family’s jubilant visit to "Lake Sunnyside. Old friends gather to swim all afternoon in the “silver lake” and then congregate at night for marshmallows, chocolate and some guitar-playing at the campfire. It all winds down and wraps up with the family snuggled in sleeping bags, ready for tomorrow’s adventure.

It’s the utter joy of summer captured in 32 pages, bursting with energy and nostalgia. This is a recommended read for the final day of school as students anticipate freedom from homework and sunny, lazy days.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

In this reminder that the good teachers “see everything,” readers meet on the first page an unknown author, writing a letter to her former teacher, the special one who in her elementary-school years really understood her. “Dear Teacher,” she writes, “Whenever I had something to tell you, I tugged on your shirt and whispered in your ear. This time I’m writing a letter.”

The author of the letter recalls the first day of second grade, one that filled her with dread, since school involved two things at which she did not excel: “sitting still and listening.” But her teacher—patient, creative and dedicated—always knew precisely how to engage her students, including this antsy, curious girl. We see her, via the letter writer’s memories, gently guide the girl through her second grade year, encouraging her to learn to read (“the reading corner became our secret garden of stories”) and how to listen. Instead of forcing a student who doesn’t fit into the traditional educational mold to play by stringent rules, she calmly makes room for the girl’s way of learning, making her second grade year the most memorable of all.

Hopkinson laces this sweet, tender story with much humor. At one point, the girl has to look up “exasperating” in the dictionary. She’s unsure of its meaning but just knows she heard the teacher use it that one time she wandered off on a field trip. Carpenter puts color to clever use, accentuating the girl’s singular personality and stubbornness by giving her a bright yellow raincoat, a vivid pink dress and striking purple pants—with more muted colors for the other students.

In the end—get out your tissues for this happy cry—we see that the letter-writer is now grown and is a teacher herself, about to start her first job. “I’ll think about everything you helped me explore,” she writes, “and try my best to be like you.” It’s a heartfelt tribute to the hard work of the best teachers—those who nudge and prompt, finding smart and loving ways to inspire fidgety students to learn.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

BookPage Children’s Top Pick, March 2017

Triangle lives in a world of triangles. His home is a triangle-shaped mound of rock. The door to his home is triangle-shaped. All of the rocks around him are triangle-shaped, too—small, medium and big triangles. Triangle’s friend, Square, lives in a square-shaped rock with a square-shaped door and small, medium and big square-shaped rocks all around. Triangle heads that way one day to play “a sneaky trick” on his friend. Knowing Square is afraid of snakes, Triangle stands by his door and hisses. When Square figures out it’s Triangle, he chases him to his home—and gets stuck in Triangle’s doorway. (Remember that triangle-shaped door? A square on two legs can’t quite navigate that, can he?) But as stuck Square blocks the door, Triangle becomes scared. Turns out he’s afraid of the dark. “Now I have played a sneaky trick on you,” Square says, saying with glee that this was his plan all along. 

“But do you really believe him?” asks the narrator, deliciously, on the final page. 

This is funny stuff and, as to be expected from Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, delightfully off-kilter. The bit where Square can’t get through Triangle’s door is slapstick physical comedy at its best, and the book’s entire premise taps into the sense of mischief, one-upping and questions of trust that occur on playgrounds daily. (On a more basic level, preschoolers learning shapes will be thrilled to have such a funny book on hand.)

As always with Klassen, so much is in the eyes, and the eyes of Triangle and Square go a long way in communicating abundant character. In a Q&A that accompanied the advance review copy, Klassen talks about how the very placement of Triangle’s eyes implies shiftiness, given that they are lower on his face. Square’s eye placement is right in the middle—more balanced, more dependable. But we readers have two more books ahead of us (this is the first in a planned trilogy), so luckily, we’ll learn a lot more about the characters’ shifty (or were they?) intentions.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

This article was originally published in the March 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s hard to create a bedtime picture book and have it stand out on bookshelves, but Nina Laden and Melissa Castrillon have done just that in If I Had a Little Dream, a soothing lullaby of a book.

A child with pony-tailed hair ponders the world and its wonders in rhyming verses. “If I had a little land,” she opens, “I would name it There. There would be my home, be it stormy be it fair.” She imagines a tiny house, which she would name Love. She’d name her garden Whole. She wonders about nature (ponds, dogs, cats), things (books, chairs, bicycles, boats) and family, including a brother and sister. All of her wishes involve camaraderie with others: If she had a table, she’d share her food. If she had a chair, she’d rest up for her next visit with friends. If she had a bicycle, she’d visit the forest and all its animals. Laden’s verses roll right off the tongue with their pleasing rhythms. The world the girl imagines is sweet and welcoming, but never cloying.

This is the picture book debut of British illustrator Castrillon. Her pencil illustrations are digitally colored in cool blues, reds and oranges. Some spreads include spot illustrations on one side, facing a larger illustration of the girl and her wish. Many round spot illustrations are surrounded by Castrillon’s elaborate borders, involving animals and leaves. Several full-bleed, double-page spreads wow with her spot-on composition and fluid lines. There’s a lot to pore over in the girl’s inviting, imaginative world.

Best of all is the final illustration, showing the girl on her bed being held by a woman—a mother, we can assume—in a loving embrace. “If I had a little dream,” Laden writes, “I would name it You. You would make life magical, where wishes do come true.” Is the girl without parents? Without a home? Maybe this is her real mother after all, and we’ve been privy to the girl’s dreams at night. Either way, it’s a beautiful moment of a parent-child bond.

This is a dreamy book, in more ways than one.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

In this tender story, author-illustrator Matthew Cordell doesn’t waste any time or space to spin the tale of two lost creatures and an act of kindness. Before we even get to the title page, we meet a girl and a wolf cub, as well as their families.

As the girl heads home at the end of the school day, the snow is falling hard. She’s well equipped in her big, red coat, but the windy weather weighs her down on her walk to her warm house where her parents wait. In a parallel story, we see a group of wolves head out, yet the youngest of the pack falls behind. On one spread, two large spot illustrations show the weary young girl and the lost and confused wolf cub, each slowed down by the snow.

Eventually, they meet, and both are frightened. But the girl immediately reaches out to help, hearing the wolf’s family howling in the distance. Bravely, she ventures toward them in order to return their cub, facing her fair share of dangers along the way. In another spread with two large circular spot illustrations, we see the girl, wolf cub in her arms and her eyes wide with fear, face off with a parent wolf. The girl releases the cub, and the parent takes the baby away. On her tired journey home, she collapses in the snow, and in a kindness returned, the wolves surround her, howling her location to the search party. Cordell wraps up the story by showing the girl safe and warm in her home.

The pacing here is spot-on, the tension building with each page turn. In these nearly wordless spreads (we are only privy to such things as howls, barks, huffs and whines), Cordell builds great sympathy for both creatures, and he conveys more about the girl’s courage with body language, tone and color than any lengthy text could. The illustration showing the happy reunited human family in the snow, as well as the howling wolf pack atop the hill above them, is heartwarming and emotionally rewarding.

This one’s a keeper. 

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.