Nonfiction Monday - Some Writer!

Sweet, Melissa. Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White.  New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

Available now.

If you haven't heard about this book yet, I will be surprised.  This is a long-awaited biography of the author of Charlotte's Web and other books.

Although we expect Melissa Sweet to have done a picture book biography, this is not one of those.

It could be more accurately described as a biography with lots of pictures, photographs, illustrations, and samples of his magazine articles and essays. 162 pages.

From the very first page. . . no . . . beginning with the endpapers the reader is drawn into the world of E.B. White -- from his adventures driving a Model T Roadster across the United States to his life on a farm in Maine. And all that time writing, writing, writing.

Almost everyone knows the book Elements of Style by Shrunk and White, but did you know that the "White" was E.B. White?  It was a required textbook for every English class I took in college. (I can't find my old copy, darn it. Maybe I haven't looked in the right bookcase.)

I have a feeling that this will be a strong candidate for the ALA Sibert Award to match the one she won this year for The Right Word.  Check Melissa Sweet's website for more info about that.

Just Google this title to discover hundreds of other reviews of this new biography.

Nonfiction Monday - Locomotive

Floca, Brian. Locomotive. New York, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2013.

            2014 Caldecott Medal / Sibert Honor Book

                        A lyrical description of a train trip by two children (boy and girl) and their mother across the Great Plains to San Francisco (to meet their father who is pictured, but not mentioned in the text) during the summer of 1869, soon after the Union Pacific joined with the Central Pacific which connected eastern trains to the Pacific ocean.
 Extensive notes at the end of the book explain the background of train travel at this time period.  Floca, who illustrated as well as wrote this book, takes advantage of his complete control by playing with the typeface to give even more emphasis to certain parts of the tale – especially the sound effects.

                        CLANK CLANK CLANK!

                        Men came from far away

                        to build from the East,

                        to build from the West,

                        to meet in the middle.

                  It’s not poetry, but it is rhythm. “…the passengers, have packed and shipped and sold their things, all their things, everything.” (I love this repetition, this interior rhyme pattern.) Unfortunately, there is no information about the people’s responses to this mode of travel, even though the illustrations feature this family. The text focuses on facts about the train and the illustrations show this trip across America. (I would love to know what created the land formation called the Devil’s Slide.) Even the endpapers will fascinate the train aficionado illustrating the route and showing how fire and steam propel the engine. A good example of illustrations being part of the story and extending it.

Nonfiction Monday -- ALA Youth Media Awards

Today is Monday. Besides being Nonfiction Monday, it is also the day the American Library Association announces their Youth Media Awards.
Newbery
Caldecott
Sibert  (nonfiction)
Printz
and much more (see the home page for ALA for the press release of today's winners)

For those of you NOT involved in the library world, this is like the Oscars of the Children's Book World.  Some of the winners were notified last night and had to keep their notification secret until this morning.  Others are being notified this morning, as I type.

I've had close contact with several winners and even had a book in consideration myself one year.  What year was that?  In 2003, my book To Fly, the Story of the Wright Brothers gathered many awards including ALA Notable Book.  But did I get "THE CALL" that January?  Actually -- I got FOUR phone calls that morning, but none of them were from the ALA award committees, darn it. (Just imagine my excitement each time I answered the phone in my hotel room.)

The closest contact I had with a major winner was sitting next to Rita Williams-Garcia at Vermont College of Fine Arts several years ago as the whole class and faculty watched the presentation instead of attending whatever lecture was scheduled that morning.

It so happened that there were several empty seats next to me and as the presentation began on the large screen at the front of the room, Rita and several other faculty members slid into them. I could tell she was trying to keep a straight face, while inwardly bouncing with news, so I crossed my fingers for her and was one of the loudest screamers when her name was announced for her book, One Crazy Summer.  By the end of the day, that book had gathered FOUR awards:

2011 Coretta Scott King Award Winner

2011 Newbery Honor Book

2011 Scott O’Dell Prize for Historical Fiction

2010 National Book Award Finalist   

Hurrah for BOMB, the Race to Build -- and Steal -- the World's Most Dangerous Weapon.  This nonfiction book is sweeping the 2013 Youth Media Awards!

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is at Laura Salas' blog, Writing the world for kids. The Roundup is hiding about halfway down the page. Click on the words, Mister Linkey, and you'll find it.

Sibert Medal winner -- We Are the Ship

This morning the American Library Association announced their awards for best children's books of last year. You can find the press release about them by following links on their home page.

It seemed appropriate for me to feature the winner of the Sibert Medal (best nonfiction book for children)on this Nonfiction Monday. Which just happened to also win two Coretta Scott King medals as well -- one for illustration and one for the writing. Since Kadir Nelson is both, he will be awarded both (plus one for the Sibert) in July at the Summer ALA convention.
WOW!

We Are the Ship, the Story of Negro League Baseball, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book Group, 2008.
More information about this book can be found on the Publisher's website, here.

This history of the Negro Baseball League reads as if someone were sitting across from you, telling you the story. From the first words, "Seems like we've been playing baseball for a mighty long time." you're enthralled by a storyteller and there's no way you're going to move until the story reaches its conclusion. The illustrations are photographically (is that a word) perfect. The only way you know it's a painting is because the bleachers aren't filled with people -- just dabs of paint representing people. You can tell they are based on actual photographs of the people and places.

“Kadir Nelson's eight years of research score a grand slam in his rookie writing effort,” said Sibert Chair Carol K. Phillips.
The book also indicates his deep research by including an author's note, an index, chapter notes, bibliography, filmography, acknowledgments, and a foreword by Hank Aaron.

For a look at the Horn Book review of this book, check here.
Links to other blogs participating in Nonfiction Monday can be found here.
-wendieO