The Snowy Day, the Caldecott Medal winning picture book by Ezra Jack Keats, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The story depicts the explorations of a young boy named Peter, who wanders about his neighborhood after a fresh snowfall. The book broke new ground by featuring an African-American boy as the main character, charmingly drawn in an iconic red snow suit. The child’s race is never referenced in the text. “It wasn’t important. It wasn’t the point,” explained Deborah Pope, the executive director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, on NPR’s All Things Considered program. “The point is that this is a beautiful book about a child’s encounter with snow, and the wonder of it.” Read more…

Happy Pig Day!, the latest in the hugely popular Elephant and Piggie picture book series by author and illustrator Mo Willems was released last month. The cartoonist recently spoke with Jeff Labrecque at Entertainment Weekly and discussed the genesis of his two quirky main characters. “Elephant and Piggie are the first characters that I created that I intended for multiple books. I really developed them almost in the way that you would develop television. I knew that they were going to have to carry a lot of weight…I knew there were things that I hadn’t imagined that they were still going to have to handle,” Willems explained. Read more…

Comedian and musician “Weird Al” Yankovic has been entertaining audiences for almost 30 years with his musical parodies, amassing dozens of gold and platinum albums and winning three Grammy awards. Earlier this month, the performer explored a new creative outlet with the release of his first children’s book When I Grow Up, which debuted at #4 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Written by Yankovic, who dropped the “Weird” moniker for the book cover, and illustrated by Wes Hargis, the picture book follows the musings of 8-year-old Billy after his teacher asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. Billy considers some very unique careers, such as a lathe operator for X-14 rocket parts, a world famous Twinkie cooking French chef, and a gorilla masseuse. The story is told with Yankovic’s trademark offbeat humor, but it does have a heartfelt message at it’s core. “You don’t need to be defined by your job,” Yankovic explains in a interview with NPR. “You can really kind of follow your muse.” Read more…

Picture books, such as 2011 Caldecott Medal winner "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" can help children understand important values.

As mentioned in a previous post here at In the Stax, many parents are pushing their children to read chapter books at very early ages, in order to achieve an academic edge. So, if your first grader still enjoys reading picture books, does that mean she is falling behind? “Kids are in nursery school, and their parents are already worried about getting them into college,” says philosophy professor Thomas Wartenberg in an interview with The Seattle Times. “I understand the problem.” But, if your child’s teacher confirms she is reading at grade level, Wartenberg doesn’t think her preference for picture books is cause for concern. The professor, who teaches at Mount Holyoke College and has written Big Ideas for Little Kids: Teaching Philosophy Through Children’s Literature (Rowman and Littlefield Education, 164pgs) believes picture books can be great educational tools. Read more…

The recently released picture book Pretty Penny Sets Up Shop (Random House Books for Young Readers, 40pgs) helps teach young children the basics of money management with a straight forward, and entertaining, approach. The book’s author and illustrator, Devon Kinch, struggled to put her financial house in order before beginning graduate work in graphic design at the School of Visual Arts. The experience of rehabilitating her finances and eliminating debt inspired the idea for the Pretty Penny series, which became the subject of her graduate thesis. Six-year-old Penny is a little girl with very big ideas. “My childhood heroines were Punky Brewster, Pippi Longstocking and Annie. All three were smart, edgy, and fearlessly independent young girls,” writes Kinch in an article for The Children’s Book Review. “I wanted Penny to embody the spirit of my childhood idols, but be very much a modern girl of today…She is a true mini-entrepreneur: passionate and resourceful.” Read more…

Award-winning author and illustrator David Shannon has released his latest rambunctious adventure in his David series just in time for the holidays. In the new picture book It’s Christmas, David! (The Blue Sky Press, 32pgs), the irresistibly naughty little boy faces new challenges and temptations as he struggles to keep himself on Santa’s “Nice” list in the days before Christmas. Shannon, who based the mischievous David on his younger self, has special empathy for kids at this time of year. “Christmas is when you get in the most trouble and you get told ‘no’ the most. There’s all this excitement that you have to be patient for,” he explains in a interview with the Los Angeles Times. But at the end of the book, Shannon also illustrates the upside to Christmas. “It’s the biggest ‘yes’ of the year when it finally comes. That’s the other side of being told no: The ‘yes’ that comes after it.” Read more…

"Dust Devil" is the follow up picture book to the Caldecott winner "Swamp Angel."

In a post for The Children’s Book Review, Lori Calabrese addresses the diminishing role that picture books play in the lives of young children and lists a number of reasons why picture books are still important. In the past year sales of picture books have dropped, and while part of the dip can be blamed on the economy, a shift in parental behavior is also part of the cause. Today, many parents are pushing their young children to forgo the picture books for the more text-heavy chapter books in order to excellerate their reading skills and become academically competitive. But by doing this, parents are ignoring the key role picture books play in their child’s development. Among the main reasons why these charming and colorful books still matter, is the quality of their content. Chapter books may seem deceptively advanced, but “their vocabulary and sentence structure can be considered simplistic when compared with older level picture books. Many picture books are written at a higher reading level, use amazingly complex vocabularies and offer interesting plots.” Read more…