In this picture book debut from author Michelle Cuevas, illustrated by Caldecott Medalist Erin E. Stead, we meet the Uncorker of Ocean Bottles, who lives in a tall house on the shore with only his cat for company. We see he’s a bashful man—Stead paints his body language with beguiling precision—possessing slightly slumped shoulders, a thoughtful brow, a quiet demeanor and a kind face. His job is to keep his eye on the waves and gather bottles at sea, the ones containing messages. He then journeys as near or far as he must to deliver the letters. He longs for his own message in a bottle, addressed just to him, his own note from a friend. But “he had no name. He had no friends.”

Cuevas writes with a gentle pace and vivid, evocative language: The man, she tells us, sometimes “felt loneliness as sharp as fish scales,” and he longs to see his own name “winking” from a page, because a letter can “hold the treasure of a clam-hugged pearl.”

Using woodblock prints, oil pastels and pencils on a particularly warm palette, Stead fills this quaint, seaside town with townsfolk (each so distinctive they could each have their own story) who are seemingly oblivious to the anonymous sender of a party invitation the man finds in a bottle. He asks them, one by one, if they know to whom it belongs, but he finds no answers. When he shows up to the party to apologize to whomever it was intended, there they all stand to greet him, ready to celebrate. Clearly, the Uncorker is already a friend to many, whether he realizes it or not. He decides to stay at this party that astute readers will realize was thrown just for him.

This sweet-tempered story of kindness (if the entire world operated as these townsfolk do, it’d be a much better place) is as quiet and unassuming as its protagonist. Don’t let it slip by you. It’s utterly enchanting. 

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

In this playful picture book, Brendan Wenzel explores the world through the eyes of many, thereby reminding readers how our perspective shapes what we see, how we feel about it and how we react.

A long, brown, fluffy cat strolls through the world. We, as human readers, see it one way on the page. It looks like . . . well, a cat. It has whiskers, ears, paws and a collar with a bell. Yep, no doubt about it. It’s a feline.

But in succeeding spreads, we see a very different cat as Wenzel plays freely with shape, color, scale and perspective. A fox sees a significantly plumper (and moderately terrified) creature. A mouse sees a cat that looks not unlike a demon. A flea sees a massive field of fur and fluff. The fish spread takes the cake, as the tiny creature looks with a frown through the glass side of a tank to see large yellow eyes and mammoth white whiskers. The cat is all face and all fear.

Wenzel structures the story in a way that recalls, in particular, Eric Carle’s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The phrase “Yes, they all saw a cat” appears intermittently, giving the book a pleasing rhythm, and at the book’s close, we see a vision of the cat as if all the creatures are looking at once—right before a list of each creature whose eyes fell upon the cat. It’s a mish-mash of color, spots and stripes, smiling happily at the reader. Cue the happy squeals of delighted children.

This may be a primer in the power of perception with young children being its sweet spot, but it’s also a treat for all ages. Thought provoking, entertaining and smart, it’s one of the best picture books you’ll see this year. 

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

From about 1838 to 1857, Stephen Bishop was an underground guide in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. With carefully chosen wording, rich historical detail and luminous images, author Heather Henson and Caldecott Honor recipient Bryan Collier bring Stephen’s story to light.

Stephen guides the reader through tunnels and quagmires of the cave and his own life. He tells us he can neither read nor write—it’s against the law to teach him these skills because he’s a slave: “Because I am bought and sold, same as an ox or a mule.” But Stephen has a yearning to learn, and he does, in a law-abiding manner. By the light of a candle, deep below the ground, when the visitors write their names on the cave’s ceiling, Stephen is watching and learning. In time, he writes his own name, too, along with the names of his wife and son.

Stephen hints at other secrets of Mammoth Cave. He tells of the men who discovered the cave and tracked bear beneath the earth. He makes his own discoveries of eyeless fish and albino crayfish. He finds a deerskin moccasin in the passageways below and wonders about his own legacy. Today, though Stephen no longer walks the cave, his name remains there for visitors to see, if only they look carefully.

This sensitive portrayal hints that every man and woman who walked this earth, free or slave, has a story worth telling.

Billie B. Little is the Founding Director of Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, a hands-on museum in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

This deceptively simple picture book about stories and storytelling packs a museum’s worth of culture and history into the scenery. I Am a Story shows us all the different ways words have moved us, and it’s an exhilarating trip.

Author-illustrator Dan Yaccarino opens with a scene of primitive people gathered around a fire while one of them points skyward; we can see that he’s describing the signs of the zodiac. The book ends with the same scene, only contemporized—a family on a camping trip, with the dad pointing out the constellations we know by those same signs. There are parallels like this throughout—stone tablets one era, iPads the next—and a red bird that appears in virtually every scene, now perched above the curtain at a Shakespeare play, then a tiny brooch on the lapel of a smiling librarian.

The bright colors and bold, modern style of the illustrations are cheering, and it’s amazing how many visual references Yaccarino pulls into this story: Japanese artist Hokusai’s iconic wave print; bookmobiles and Little Free Libraries, as well as libraries that travel by camel, donkey and elephant; the radio broadcast War of the Worlds; and Georges Méliès’ groundbreaking film A Trip to the Moon.

I Am a Story shows us in spare, elegant visual terms, that something as simple as a story is endlessly variable and everlasting. A powerful two-page spread simply reads, “I was censored, banned, and burned, but did not die.”

Read it, and then keep reading: Stories are all around you!

If you have ever observed pill bugs, regionally known as potato bugs or rollie pollies, you know what delightful creatives they are. Hank the pill bug stars in his adventure of a typical day, one that enchants with the ordinary rendered extraordinary. 

Hank’s Big Day, written by Evan Kuhlman and illustrated by Chuck Groenink, begins with a smiling bug with big dark eyes and a waving leg, who peers at readers from around the corner of his rock house. Throughout Hank’s day, he gleefully shimmies, nibbles, creeps, climbs and, of course, curls up. Hank’s best friend is an aviator hat-wearing human girl named Amelia, who idolizes Amelia Earhart. The world of imaginative play is explored with utmost delight as Amelia takes off on a flying adventure accompanied by her pill bug friend. On their pretend travels, they cross the Atlantic Ocean, wave to the queen in England and eat in a Paris café. They land safely back home and part ways, happy to have shared a wonderful day together.

Rendered in muted, natural colors, Groenink’s line drawings realistically display Hank’s bug’s-eye perspective. When Hank rides on Amelia’s hat, readers see an amazing, expansive view that encompasses Hank’s whole world. After Hank’s time with Amelia, he repeats his trek through the backyard, this time in reverse. The lighting in the pictures skillfully shows the passing of time.

This charming, positive book revels in unusual friendships and the value of imagination.

“A name. An age. A price. People like you. Like me. For sale!”

This is how Ashley Bryan opens the author’s note of his latest picture book. Years ago, Bryan acquired a collection of documents pertaining to slaves, dating from the 1820s to the 1860s. His inspiration for Freedom Over Me comes from an 1828 document in which 11 slaves were listed for sale by a woman named Mrs. Mary Fairchilds.

No ages are listed in Bryan’s source material, but for the profiles of the 11 slaves that constitute this book, he assigns ages to them, fleshing out their lives via free-verse poems. After opening the book from Mary’s point of view, Bryan brings readers a profile of each slave, followed by another poem about what he or she aspires to and dreams of. Peggy, for instance, is 48 years old, was sold on the block with her mother, was named “Peggy” by the men who took her from Africa and now cooks for the Fairchilds. In “Peggy Dreams,” we read that her parents named her Mariama and that the other slaves call her “Herb Doctor” for the healing root and herb poultices of which she is so knowledgeable. 

Bryan brings the slaves’ innermost pain to detailed life in these poems, and the effect is quite moving. The poems are accompanied by brightly colored pen, ink and watercolor portraits of the slaves, many of which look like stained glass. 

This is a compelling, powerful view of slavery from a virtuoso of the picture book form.

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

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The child of books sits on a raft, legs dangling in the water—an ocean composed of lines from classical literature and lullabies. Buoyed on this torrent of tales, the dauntless child leads a boy, her traveling companion, around the globe, through forests and mountains. A metaphor for reading, an entertaining adventure, an intriguing work of art—whatever your interpretation, A Child of Books was written for the child of books in all of us.

Boldly drawn, cleverly detailed and colorful, this is an engaging collaboration between two talented artists. Bestselling author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers is well known for his quirky and delightful picture books, and museum-featured artist Sam Winston makes a memorable literary debut with his typographical landscapes. 

A Child of Books is an “I spy” journey for book lovers, and readers could get lost in the captivating interchange of carefully chosen literary excerpts and original art. Winston and Jeffers insert humor in the details, choosing passages to echo each illustration. Forest-themed tales shape tree branches. Overlapping lines of adventures create a dark, forbidding cave. Lines about legendary monsters come to life as a threatening beast.

This delightful treasure hunt through children’s literature will have you digging through your bookshelves, hunting for forgotten phrases and making room among the tomes for this book.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.