Picture Book Autobiographies

It's been a long while since we've posted with any regularity! But here's the first post of what I hope will be weekly installments for a while.

Over the years we've come across a few picture books which stand out for being autobiographical. It's really fun to get a window on the lives of some of our favorite authors.

The Junkyard Wonders tells the story of the year the author spent as a young girl in a special education class. Her unorthodox teacher fed the confidence and imagination of an entire class of students who went on to become a fashion designer, an astronaut and one of our favorite author/illustrators.

The Year I Didn't Go to School was a fun window into the childhood of another of our favorite illustrators. Giselle Potter's quirky style can't be mistaken for anyone else's. In this book we learn that she grew up in a family of puppeteers and spent a year touring Italy as a part of their puppet show.

Anyone else have any favorites?

Cherries and cherry pits by Vera B. Williams

I love Vera Williams' stories and this is another great one! Definitely worth reading. The drawings are wonderful and the story - structured around a girl's own storytelling - is really sweet.

To look at any thing by John Moffitt

To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long:
To look at this green and say,
“I have seen spring in these
Woods,” will not do – you must
Be the thing you see:
You must be the dark snakes of
Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,
You must enter in
To the small silences between
The leaves,
You must take your time
And touch the very peace
They issue from.

Picture Books About Moving

As we prepare for our upcoming move to Durham, NC we're digging out some of the books we got when we moved to CA two years ago. Thought I'd post a few of them here and will follow up with some new ones that address more "grown-up" issues like missing people.

Big Ernie's New Home is my favorite so far. It tells the story of a move through the eyes of a cat. Big Ernie doesn't feel so "big" in his new home and it takes him a while to give his new home a chance and find things to like about it. This book is pretty different than most books about moving because it isn't so literal (see below).

Moving House is an extremely literal young reader style book about moving that introduces many of the concepts of moving that might otherwise throw your young child off: going to visit your new house, people coming to see your old house, packing, movers, having your own room, etc.. Not a literary masterpiece but was reassuring for our daughter.

We're Moving covers many of the same themes but has the added storyline of exploring your new home (looking for a lost toy) and making it your own (planting flowers like at the last house).

Two old potatoes and me by John Coy

A children's book about a father and daughter growing potatoes together with the helpful advice of grandfather. The story is great and the artwork is really wonderful. We checked this one out of the library months ago and then rediscovered it yesterday!

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Steinbeck has been a favorite author of mine since I read Of Mice and Men in high school. Since moving to California it has been a treat to read more of his books and to connect the landscapes he writes about with an area that we are gradually becoming familiar with. I have been reading East of Eden off and on over the last two months and finished it earlier today. In East of Eden, Steinbeck delves deeply into the concepts of good and evil. Good and evil appear to be relatively clearly defined initially in the book but as the story develops it becomes more and more clear that those boundaries are fuzzy; characters conceived of in one way early on change markedly over the course of the novel. Throughout I really enjoyed the writing but was put off initially by some of the characters who felt a bit two dimensional. Steinbeck's approach is very deliberate throughout though and the apparent clarity early on sets the stage for what follows. I realize I sound a bit like a literary critic here but am simply trying to give the gist without giving anything away. Definitely recommended.

Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran

This story is very reminiscent of our daughter Lena's school. The kids invent a special place called Roxaboxen, complete with ice cream shops and traffic cops, where they spend their days at play. Lena says she likes how they make so many houses.