Picture book biographies

Here's a list of very fine, new picture book biographies as chosen by librarian extraordinar  - Elizabeth Bird.  On her blog, Fuse #8 production.

Two biographies of a man and a bear

Today I'm looking at two picture book biographies about a man and a bear.
No, there's not one about a man and one about a bear - both man and bear are in each book.
Both books came out in 2015.
But each book is presented very differently.

Book number One (Winnie, the True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M. Walker. Illustrated by Jonathan D. Voss. NY: Henry Holt & Company) is a straight biography - of man and bear.
Harry Colebourn was a veterinarian who loved animals. As such, he enlisted in his country's armed forces during World War I.  As his troop train paused at the White River train station on August 24, 1914, he saw an old trapper trying to sell a young bear. Harry bought it, raised it in his army camp and sold it to the London Zoo when his troop joined the British forces there.  Since the bear had been raised around so many humans, he was very gentle and the Zoo allowed the local children to play with him. You can guess what happened next - Christopher Robin was one of those children. He visited Winnie so often that his father was inspired to write stories about him - Stories loved by children even today known as Winnie-the-Pooh.
Since  Harry Colebourn is Canadian, the editors made no attempt to change the Britishisms to Americanisms.  For example, when the author describes Winnie (the bear)'s life in Harry's military training camp, she says that the bear loved to pull hidden biscuits from Harry's pockets with his claws. I'm guessing that either the editor didn't know that cookies are called 'biscuits' in Great Britain and its Commonwealth nations, or else the editor simply decided to keep the foreign flavor of the book.  There is no footnote explaining this to children (and adults) in the U.S.A.
Although the story is illustrated with ink drawings colored with watercolor, the publisher also included copies of photographs of Winnie and Christopher Robin.  (unfortunately some are covered by the endpapers. The library copy I have has torn endpapers where readers have wished to peek at them.

The second book (Finding Winnie, the True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick, illustrated by Sophie Blackall) is presented as a story told to the author's child, Cole - who was named after Harry Colebourn, his great-great grandfather.  This is a more lyrical telling, but doesn't cover some of the points shown in the other book.  Making the tale more of a conversation (similar to the style of Winnie-the-Pooh where Christopher Robin interrupts the story), Mattick also includes what seems to be comments by Cole as a child. (They may or may not be actual quotes.)
Mattick has often told this story on radio and in speeches on this continent and in the United Kingdom, so it's no wonder that it flows so nicely.
The book is divided into three parts. 1) The story of the bear. 2) The story of Christopher Robin and the Winnie-the-Pooh books. And 3) a photograph album which includes the same pictures used in the book above, plus others.  This part is presented as if it were a photograph album with a beautifully decorated cover. and the typewritten captions are brown-edged, looking aged as if some of these captions were actually in a real photograph album.
These illustrations also seem to be ink and watercolor - but there seems to be something else going on here. Charcoal? Something.  If you know, please add the information in the comments below.  Whatever - they do seem to be heads and shoulders above the illustrations in the Walker book.

The first book does have a bibliography, but the second does not.
An excellent review of both books can be found at Elizabeth Bird's blog, Fuse #8 Production, here.

Nonfiction Monday - Remember the Ladies

Is this Women's History Month?
If not it should be.  In fact, every month should be women's history month because our history blends with all the men's history in the history books.

Harness, Cheryl. Remember the Ladies: 100 Great American Women. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

            (Collective Biography grades 3-5)  

My first reaction to this book was being blown away by all the illustrations, done by the author and carefully inserted into the text, which so accurately portray important women in the history of the United States.

           Written in an informal, storytelling style, Harness includes Native Americans (Sarah Winnemucca), African Americans (Ida Bell Wells-Barnett), and Hispanic (Antonia Novello) and intersperses her short biographies with paragraphs of historical events (bicycles in the 1890s/ the Great War ending in 1918).  (I happen to be related to number ten – Margaret Corbin.) 

Eight pages of back matter extend the information and adds more. 

A wonderful book to spend hours pouring over for information, and incidentally, the changes in fashions of dress.

Nonfiction Monday - Noah Webster and His Words

Ferris, Jeri Chase.  Noah Webster and his Words.  Illus. by Vincent X Kirsch. Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012.           

            (SCBWI Golden Kite Winner, 2013) 

This is a  picture book biography of the man whose American spelling book was instrumental in making American spelling different from British spelling. Ferris cleverly inserts definitions of words onto every page, which continually reminds the reader that he created the still-famous Webster’s Dictionary and she connects his American Speller with major events in American history. 

Although most picture book biographies concentrate on one event in a person’s life, Ferris includes almost Webster’s complete life and offers additional information with a timeline, more facts about Webster, plus a bibliography.  

A very good example of a picture book biography.

Jeri has been an online friend of mine for many years and I was thrilled to see this book of hers be honored with so many awards

More Nonfiction Monday selections can be found here. Click on over to check them out.

Nonfiction Monday -- Escaping Titanic

Titanic!

Are we ever going to get tired of reading books about the sinking of the Titanic? Probably not.

Among the latest offerings from Capstone Press is a picture book biography of a young girl, Ruth Elizabeth Becker, who survived the disaster: Escaping Titanic, a Young Girl’s True Story of Survival by Marybeth Lorbiecki.  (Naturally, it’s illustrated by an artist, since any photographs taken on the ship itself were lost when it went down.)

Although classified as nonfiction and according to the afterward, is based on Ruth's own story, there is no way to tell if the stilted conversations in this book are from something Ruth said or wrote, or were made up by the author. When a publisher puts the words "story by Marybeth Lorbiecki" on the cover of the book, it makes it look suspiciously as if the author made things up. This was often done with children's biographies of yore, but nowadays teachers and librarians expect everything in a biography, even a picture book biography, to be based on fact and the sources named in the back of the book.  It would have been more satisfactory if the author's note had been more specific about her source.  Was it an audio or video of Ruth telling her story in 1982 at the Titanic Historical Society convention? Or was it from something written by Ruth? 

Once the iceberg strikes the ship (which Ruth did NOT see), the writing improves greatly with descriptions so vivid you know this must be the tale of someone who saw it happen. 

Along with the usual Capstone directions to go to Facthound.com for more information, a timeline is included as well as an Afterword which continues Ruth's biography up until her ashes are scattered over the sunken Titanic.

For more links to Nonfiction Monday book reviews, check out the Nonfiction Roundup collection at the Gathering Books  blog.  Enjoy.

Students Respond to Picture Book Biographies

At the blog, Words Not Taken, Author and elementary school teacher, Bruce Frost, is using Picture Book Biographies in his 4th grade classroom.So far they have only examined one: Wilma Unlimited, by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by David Diaz, but do check back to see what they think of others.

(Dare I hope that he'll use my Wright Brothers' book?  Other classes have.)