In what he describes as “an imagined biography,” Allen Say humanizes the troubled and determined American artist James Castle.

Born premature in 1899 in Idaho, Castle was deaf, autistic and probably dyslexic. Undiagnosed for years, he and a sibling were eventually sent to a school for the deaf and blind, to which Castle never acclimated. Sent back home, where he lived in an empty shed or even, at times, a chicken house, Castle was isolated and spent his life creating drawings and handmade books with found materials and soot, using spit as a fixative. He also made cutout dolls, the only friends he had. “He drew from memory and in secrecy,” Say writes. His work is now revered as that of an original artist, one whose art was his vocabulary.

Say tells this fictionalized biography from the point of view of Castle’s nephew, using much creative license. He also varies his style and artistic mediums throughout the book, often drawing with his nondominant hand when recreating Castle’s “unschooled” works. And there’s nary a reproduction to be found; Say faithfully reimagines many of Castle’s pieces using the same materials Castle did—sharp sticks, soot, spit and shoe polish.

This is a haunting story, filled with the stark, striking images of Castle’s memory: faceless teachers with whom he was unable to communicate; children who taunted him; the view from the open door of the attic, where he was often forced to stay as a child; and much more. There was an orderliness to Castle’s art, and Say’s beguiling compositions, which include small vignettes, reflect this. This is an utterly fascinating work.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Allen Say for Silent Days, Silent Dreams.

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

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

Children may be familiar with the name Harriet Tubman, and they may even know some of the story of the Underground Railroad. But they probably don’t know Harriet the person—from her days before she led slaves to freedom.

In a clever and poetic take on the life of this famed figure, the dynamic team of Lesa Cline-Ransome and her husband, James E. Ransome, goes backward in time. The book opens with a powerful portrait of a wizened Tubman, tired and worn from her decades of fighting for freedom. With every page turn, short verse takes readers further back, to when Tubman was a suffragist, a nurse, a Union spy, an aunt, a slave known as Minty . . . and a little girl known as Araminta.

It’s important to remember Tubman’s contributions, but it’s even more important to realize that she once was a young girl, full of strength, courage and the will to do something. This is a powerful and poetic biographical sketch ideal for elementary school readers.

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

Winter Dance, from Newbery Honor winner Marion Dane Bauer and British illustrator Richard Jones, is a gentle tale of the coming of winter in the forest. The lilting language, soothing colors and finely textured artwork engage young readers in a fox’s wonder as snow covers the ground, softening the world around him.

When the fine red fox feels the tingle of the first snowflake settling on his nose, he ponders how to pass the cold winter days ahead. Plenty of creatures are happy to advise him. A caterpillar suggests a cozy chrysalis, but the fox knows a cocoon is not for him. A turtle suggests a dive beneath the cool, snug mud as he disappears into the pond, but the fox isn’t big on ooze. The bats whirring above his head tell him to dip into a cave and hang upside down by his toes, but that won’t work either. The fox decides he should stay put, even as the geese overhead leave for warmer climes.

A snowshoe hare suggests he try the magic trick of turning white to match the “whitening world,” but the fox likes his red fur. Even the great black bear curls up for a long nap, leaving the fox quite alone.

Awake in a sleeping world, the fox feels energized, but the wind soon calms him with a hush. When a low whistle calls, he’s delighted to meet another fine red fox who finally shares what foxes do in winter. They dance!

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

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

“Everywhere you look, there are living things.” So we learn in this latest offering from a talented author-illustrator team from Great Britain. It’s not easy to translate complex biological principles and concepts into a picture book, but Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton manage to do just that. Their previous collaboration, Tiny Creatures: The World of Microbes, explored unseen organisms. Here, Sutton’s jubilant watercolors bring a classic, almost retro look to Davies’ simple, yet informative text about biological diversity.

One unnamed young girl appears in many of the illustrators. There’s a fanciful aspect to design, as our young guide appears in diverse settings and landscapes, sometimes as an observer, other times as a teacher, collector or investigator, complete with safari hat, notebook and pen. (The scene with the girl before a table of mushrooms of all colors and shapes is marvelous!)

The presence of a human in many of the landscapes also underscores an important message of this book. While new species may be found each year, extinction is a reality. In one scene, we find our human girl before a museum case full of extinct specimens. “We have learned that ever kind of living thing is part of a big, beautiful, complication pattern,” Davies writes. “The trouble is, all over the world, human beings are destroying pieces of the pattern.”

Many: The Diversity of Life on Earth is especially appropriate for young children and offers numerous possibilities for learning about colorful plants and animals. And while a bibliography and information on environmental activism would have added to its usefulness in a classroom setting, it is sure to be enjoyed by nature lovers of all ages.

With precise, poetic language and rich colors, author Barbara Herkert and illustrator Lauren Castillo bring to life the legendary author E.B. White.

Readers first meet young Elwyn White at home, sick in bed. It is here he makes a mouse for a friend, eventually carrying him to the family’s horse barn. Young Elwyn loves animals. Herkert plants the seeds in these childhood moments for the famous children’s books Elwyn, who later becomes “Andy,” grows up to write: We see him as a boy, sitting in the barn with his friend, the mouse, staring up a spider’s “masterpiece” of a web.

Herkert spends most of the first half of the book focused on White as a child. He dreaded school yet learned to love writing. With vivid imagery and pleasing alliteration, she captures his idyllic childhood and budding love for language: “As Elwyn grew, he surveyed the summer stars. . . . He jotted his reflections in a journal.” In college, he begins his writing career in earnest, and soon after that is inspired to write Stuart Little while dreaming on a train ride. The last part of the book gives a fine-tune focus to his life with his wife and family at their home in Maine. Here, he writes Charlotte’s Web. Just as in his childhood, he “basked in the seasons, the peace of the barn, the beauty of the world.”

Castillo’s thickly outlined, textured mixed-media illustrations communicate much warmth, with deep reds and oranges and intimate pastoral scenes, whether it’s young Elwyn with his animal friends or elderly Andy in his barn, mesmerized by a spider in her web. In this beautiful spread, we see the silhouette of a pig pointing right to Andy and the spider, with the land, water and a setting sun right behind him.

Inspiring.

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

Both a compelling story and an intimate look at ancient life, Nile Crossing shines with the ancient Egyptian canon—hieroglyphics, the Nile and scarab beetles—and will fill multiple roles in any library.

Against the backdrop of Egypt’s lush Nile River and the bustling city of Thebes, author Katy Beebe introduces readers to Khepri, a serious, curious and introspective child on his way to school for the first time. Using the Egyptian language of hieroglyphics to illuminate Khepri’s story, Sally Wern Comport’s illustrations feel like hieroglyphics come to life: vibrant and detailed, yet resonating with the style of ancient Egypt. As though painting on papyrus, Comport uses color and texture to create the dense night, the lush vibrancy of the Nile, the warmth of Khepri’s home, the hum of Thebes.

For those interested in ancient Egyptian culture and life, Nile Crossing provides an insider’s view. Imbued within the tale and the artwork are the Nile River’s vital role, the significance of the gods and the value of the land and family. While it seems Khepri’s story ends too soon, readers will be delighted to find passages about ancient schools, papyrus and ink, as well as the first hieroglyphic lesson he learns. A glossary of terms and titles for further reading round out this brilliant book.

Well-researched and passionately created, Nile Crossing might be one of the most fascinating, educational and unique books of the year. Beebe writes about her lifelong fascination with ancient Egypt; this book could very well launch a new generation of Egyptologists.

Transforming a well-known poem into a picture book is precarious work—even more so when you’re dealing with the words of an American icon. It seems an all but impossible task to ensure such a book would appeal to readers of all ages, but Miyares does just this with his reworking of Langston Hughes’ classic poem “Dream Variations,” first published in 1926.

With its eye-catching watercolors and picture book format, That Is My Dream! offers a new generation easy entrée to one of America’s seminal poets. But, as a work of recontextualization, That Is My Dream! speaks in a voice not wholly Hughes’ own. The words have not changed; the telltale rhythms and rhymes remain. But the tenor has shifted, if only subtly.

Though visually intriguing, Miyares’ deft brushwork presents a fairly conservative take on Hughes’ original. Rather than emphasizing resonances between Hughes’ dream of racial equality and acceptance and the dreams of modern-day minorities, Miyares draws the reader’s gaze backward toward historical oppressions—African-Americans forced to the back of a bus, relegated to “Colored Only” water fountains. Further, its presentation of a stereotypical family, headed by a man and woman, all but erases the original poem’s subtle nod toward living in the closet, a particularly interesting decision given the long-running debate around Hughes’ sexuality.

For all its political trepidation, That Is My Dream! is an engaging work, both verbally and visually. And, like Hughes’ best poems, it offers readers a glimpse into the heart of one whose dreams of equality and acceptance were deferred, time and time again.