Julie Danielson

“Tap TAP, dark clouds. Tap TAP, damp air.” Better run for cover. There’s a storm coming, and author Elizabeth Bluemle brings it to us with style. Using short, rhyming sentences, we readers are right there in the burgeoning storm with a cast of characters about to get drenched.

It’s an otherwise beautiful spring day when the raindrops and thunder-booms arrive. People are out and about or relaxing on park benches. We first follow a young girl in a bright yellow dress, who looks with alarm at the coming rain. She and the other people in her community are driven to shelter. (“You’d better go down underground, where the water can’t getcha. You betcha.”)

A big group of friendly folk ends up in a subway shelter, sharing a delivery boy’s pizza, listening to musicians play and generally meeting and greeting. A tall lady with a poodle gives her umbrella to a boy; two friends huddle together to stay dry; and a burly construction worker holds a tiny umbrella. Up above the platform, a girl, dressed to the nines, is “late for dancing” and runs through the rain.

Illustrator G. Brian Karas places readers right in the center of the action. Combined with Bluemle’s immediate, first-person sentences, it’s as if we’re in danger of getting soaked ourselves. The collaged photos of city scenes—along with Karas’ gouache and pencil additions—make for intriguing textures and add concreteness to this warm-hearted story of community.

In the end, everyone heads out for a “surprise in the sky.” It’s a rainbow, and folks pause in the hustle and bustle of their day to look up and savor it. The sky-blue endpapers are further hints that the storm has passed, though this is one storm readers will be pleased to participate in.

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

Tracey Fern is no stranger to well-crafted picture book biographies, having released a handful of well-reviewed ones in recent years. In her newest, Dare the Wind, she tells the true story of Eleanor “Ellen” Prentiss, born in Marblehead, Massachusetts, in 1814. Ellen, “born with saltwater in her veins,” spent her days at the shore and learned at a young age from her father how to navigate a ship and operate a sextant. Because of Ellen’s desire for adventure and her competitive nature (“there is no glory in second place”), her father would often caution her—a recurring theme in this story—that “a true navigator must have the caution to read the sea, as well as the courage to dare the wind.”

After marrying Perkins Creesy, a man who also adored sailing, they set out on a ship named the Flying Cloud on a 15,000-mile trip from New York City to Cape Horn and then up to San Francisco, all in the name of reaching the Gold Rush. If Ellen and Perkins traveled the fastest, they’d receive a bonus as well. It was the dream of a lifetime for her, and she and Perkins set out with fearlessness.

With a lively and dramatic voice, Fern lays out the perils of the voyage—the ship’s mainmast breaks, and Ellen and her crew sail the ship around dangerous waters near the coast of Brazil—and captures the ups and downs of the journey with an almost breathtaking pace. Illustrator Emily Arnold McCully’s watercolors move with ease from placid, peaceful waters to angry, churning seas, and her playful lines give readers a solid sense of the thrill of the journey. In one illustration, we’re below deck with Ellen, shown with an off-kilter perspective, as if we readers are rocking on the waves with her.

Ellen’s voyage beat previous records and lasted for three years, according to the informative Author’s Note and tips for further reading that close the book. It was a remarkable achievement, especially during a time when a woman navigating a ship was altogether taboo.

This is an excellent biography of a record-breaking American sailor.

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

Brimsby is a hat maker. He lives in a tiny cottage in the country, and his best friend, a badger, visits daily to chat over delicious hot tea. When his bestie leaves to become a sea captain, Brimsby is lonely and sets out to make some new friends. Birds high up in a tree are too busy keeping warm to pay him any mind. When Brimsby returns with hats for each, large enough to cover their nests and keep out the wind and snow, he makes more than enough new friends in one fell swoop. 

One of many things debut author-illustrator Andrew Prahin does so well here is regulate the careful and generous pacing of this story. Never rushing, he gives readers just enough time to believe in the friendship of Brimsby and his friend, and he devotes two spreads to Brimsby’s subsequent loneliness. We feel Brimsby’s loss. In one spread, we see four seasons go by in 12 small vignettes, as Brimsby sews by the window where his friend once sat with him. Prahin also uses white space to great effect. In several illustrations, we see copious white for the abundant snow, as heavy-hearted Brimsby trudges forward to make someone’s acquaintance. It’s moving and possesses a poignant restraint.

The color palette of Prahin’s digitally created art is also smart, as he replaces the warmer colors of his best friend with the cooler, more muted colors of sadness and heavy winter. When Brimsby strikes up a friendship with the birds, glowing pinks are introduced. And when they all head out to visit the sea captain at the book’s close—new friendships never cancel out the old ones, after all—we see vivid greens, as everyone sits by the shore in summer, having tea as a group. 

Brimsby’s Hats is a very promising debut and a touching story of friendship from a storyteller I hope we hear from again. 

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Good things happen when author Amy Gibson kisses and tells. “Everyday, everywhere, kisses are flying,” she writes in Catching Kisses, an endearing tribute to the transfer of love that occurs with one simple act: the blowing of kisses through the air from one person to another.

With gently flowing text, Gibson puts all five senses to work to describe what a kiss can do. We can hear some kisses “SMACK!” like bubble gum. They can smell of ginger and cinnamon, as well as fresh bread and hot chocolate. We can see them zig and zag “through taxis and buses and streams of bicycles.” When they touch us, they can tickle, especially those as “velvet as peach fuzz.” And Gibson knows how to put captivating figurative language to work, such as when she writes that kisses are as “soft as lamb’s wool, but strong as steel.”

Maria van Lieshout’s digital illustrations, rendered on a cool, blue-themed palette with attractive splashes of reds and yellows, take readers on a trip around the country—from seaside towns to deep forests to Main Street. Popular landmarks lend specificity to many spreads, such as Times Square, the Washington Monument, the Golden Gate Bridge and more.

Blowing kisses isn’t only for starry-eyed couples. There are mothers with newborns, children with their caretakers, mama cats licking their kittens and lots more. It all adds up to a comforting story, one that would make an excellent bedtime read for the youngest of children. After all, kisses might be invisible, but they’re real. And “once a kiss is given . . . it can never be taken away.”

Soothing and solacing words, perfect for sharing just before tucking in at night. And sealing with a kiss.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

Ever seen a bedtime book for children get them all worked up instead? Often a story can excite a child, the opposite intended effect for a nighttime routine. This isn’t likely to happen with Emily Winfield Martin’s Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey, the gently paced, rhyming tale of imaginary nocturnal creatures taking sleeping children on nighttime adventures.

“There are animals from long ago / And twice as far away. / Their maps are made of starlight / And can’t be seen by day,” the story opens. These creatures are in charge of delivering children to Dreamland, and it’s their quirky destinations that keep this sweet story from being altogether too cloying. A bear carries a bespectacled boy to “meet peculiar friends” at a “misfit table,” which seats Humpty Dumpty, a robot and more. There’s also a circus with a monkey on a unicycle and small, green, elvish creatures atop a crescent moon.

As if a direct descendant of Mary Chalmers, Martin’s very painterly illustrations feature a moderately romanticized view of childhood, replete with well-behaved, doe-eyed children. It’s a throwback, as if she’s paying homage to the picture books of the mid-1950s. She pulls it off without being derivative. There’s even a refreshing and subtle sense of darkness to some of the spreads; one girl stands in an elfin hollow, and readers can only wonder what magic lurks in the dark beyond her visit with the fairies. Bunnies and bears, your typical picture book fare, are tempered by the inclusion of more unusual animals, such as narwhals and a large moth, with the fantastical, ethereal spreads conveying a kind of gravity in spots.

Many pages feature children sleeping with the stuffed animal versions of the creatures who appear in their dreams (also featured on the elegant endpapers). These are simple drawings on pages the color of a blue, twilight sky, but they’re followed by full-color fantasy visions, made all the more striking by this color contrast.

It’s dreamy, a beautiful send-off to sleep.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

In this clever retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Little Red, one of many students in pencil school, is learning the basics of creative writing and storytelling from her teacher, Ms. 2. Having learned what a story path is, all laid out on Ms. 2’s blackboard in the book’s first spread, Red decides she wants to write a story about bravery: “Red is the color of courage,” so she’s up for the challenge.  

With a basket from her teacher of 15 red words to use during times of trouble, she heads out, only to get bogged down by adjectives in the “deep, dark, descriptive forest.” After that, she meets Conjunction Glue and a truck full of adverbs (“We deliver speedily”) and gets carried away with run-on sentences that hardly carry her story. Following a growly sound, she eventually meets her wolf-like nemesis, a sharp-toothed pencil sharpener, who threatens to end her and who has already swallowed Principal Granny. Never fear. This intrepid little red pencil gallantly fights evil. Elements #2 and #3 of the story path, after all, are “Trouble” and “Even bigger trouble.” But in the end, one fixes the trouble. And Red heroically does so. 

In Joan Holub’s Little Red Writing, young readers will learn a lot about story structure and storytelling tools—and likely without even realizing it. Melissa Sweet has much fun—the punny kind, too—with her playful illustrations, literally animating words (the initial letters of “suddenly, abruptly, & surprisingly” on the adverb spread have teeth and astonished looks in their eyes) and bringing pencil school to vibrant life with her observant details and smart design sense. (One poster on the wall notes the sewing club, which makes “pencil skirts.”) Sweet even puts the front and final endpapers to work to help tell the story.

This is an A-plus venture all the way, one that celebrates words and stories and is sure to entertain wannabe writers.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.

To say the characters in Peter Brown’s new picture book are anthropomorphized is putting it mildly. They’re in clothing, walking upright and living in houses, but they take it even further: They are creatures who have altogether forgotten that they’re animals who can exercise their savageness. These refined, Victorian-esque creatures have abandoned their wild natures. Wanting to have some fun, Mr. Tiger gets to the ground, discovers his additional two legs, sheds his clothes and heads to the wild. Though he enjoys it, he misses his friends and eventually returns, only to discover things are different back home.

Brown reduces scenes to their essentials in these compositions, the digitally-colored artwork initially rendered via India ink, watercolor, gouache and pencil. He effectively establishes mood with his color choices, heightening the book’s story arc and emotional impact. On the opening spread, drab light browns and grays dominate, as we see the dignified creatures (even the monkey) walking stiff and upright down the road, yet Mr. Tiger stands out with his bright orange fur. The spreads get progressively brighter—more greens, more blues, and more light—as he heads to the wilderness.

Brown and his design team have made all kinds of smart choices in Mr. Tiger Goes Wild, a book that celebrates mischief and has a real timelessness to it. For one, he even lets the typeface go wild: When Mr. Tiger is fully free in the wilderness, having discovered his inner beast, we see hand-lettered display type in a huge speech bubble: “ROAR!” Brown also knows where to vary size and use white space to make us care about his main character. The moment Mr. Tiger decides to walk on all four legs, as well as the one where he sheds all his tight clothing and heads to the wilderness, are exuberant occasions when an up-close Mr. Tiger is given the entire spread. The endpapers are also worth discovering: The opening pages display a brick wall, and the final ones show readers a field of grasses.  

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild is an exceptional tribute to the wild and rambunctious energy in all children.

Wild thing, I think I love you.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children's literature blog primarily focused on illustration and picture books.