Mini Mock Caldecott

I'm thinking about holding a Mini Mock Caldecott for some of my daughter's third-grade friends at my house later this month. I know Milly would be interested (for my sake, if nothing else), but I'm not sure about anyone else. Maybe it will have to be a Micro-Mini Mock Caldecott?

If I do follow through on this (and writing about it here should help), I'll have to limit the number of books we look at together to about five. I'd like to have time for reading, discussion (of the Caldecott criteria and voting process as well as of the books themselves), and hands-on exploration of some artistic media. And, of course, voting! Here are the books I'm considering:

Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger (Roaring Brook).

Homer by Elisha Cooper (Greenwillow).

Oh No! by Candace Fleming; illustrated by Eric Rohmann (Shwartz and Wade).

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost and Rick Lieder (Candlewick).

Unspoken by Henry Cole (Scholastic).

I chose these based in part on the variety of media: acrylic and oil pastel, watercolor, relief printing, photography, and pencil, respectively. But looking at my list, I wonder if it doesn't need a funny book, too--maybe Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs as retold by Mo Willems (Balzer + Bray)?

It would be lovely if at least one of the books we look at were to be recognized by the actual Caldecott committee: being shut out entirely is one of the risks of limiting the list to only 5, although it could happen with a list of 20. Maybe we should meet again after the winner is announced on January 28--assuming we meet in the first place!

Princess Academy of Art

Anticipating the August release of Princess Academy: Palace of Stone by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2012), I recently read the first Princess Academy, a 2006 Newbery Honor book. I wonder why I hadn't read it before, because it's just the sort of book I like, and probably would have loved as a ten-year-old girl: it has a classic feel and an ordinary-girl heroine in Miri Larendaughter, it's set in a village on a snowy mountaintop--beautifully evoked throughout the book as well as on the original cover, shown here--and there's a boarding school. Where you have to study to be a princess. After learning to read (no one in Mount Eskel knew how before the princess academy), the girls study Danlander History, Commerce, Geography, and Kings and Queens. And then there are the "princess-forming" subjects: Diplomacy (which proves useful on more than occasion), Conversation, and Poise. I want to go to princess academy!

I also want to add Princess Academy to the Middle Grade Gallery (where I think about how paintings work in fiction), even though Art isn't one of the subjects the girls have to study. But one winter morning, their tutor Olana shows the girls a painting; like the silver princess dress they've already seen, it's meant to make them work harder at their studies, to remind them of their goal:

Olana removed the cloth and held up a colorful painting much more detailed than the chapel's carved doors. It illustrated a house with a carved wooden door, six glass windows facing front, and a garden of tall trees and bushes bursting with red and yellow flowers.
"This house stands in Asland, the capital, not a long carriage ride from the palace...It will be given to the family of the girl chosen as princess." [87]

And the painting does its job: Miri, for one, spends hours imagining her family inside the house and garden, so different from their mountain home.

At the end of the book, Olana reveals the truth about the painting, and gives it to Miri. Spoiler alert (after seven years, I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but just in case): the house never existed. And Miri doesn't marry the prince (although she is academy princess). It's not until Palace of Stone that she goes to the capital at all. I wonder if she will remember the painting when she gets there?

The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau

Henri Rousseau was a toll collector for the city of Paris when, at the age of 40, he decided to become an artist--a famous artist. Michelle Markel's picture book biography The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau (illustrated by Amanda Hall; Eerdmans, 2012) begins with that surprising decision. Her precise and poignant text balances Rousseau's love of nature and growing confidence in his own work (he was self-taught) with his lifelong desire for critical recognition.

Poor Henri! No sooner does he paint something we might consider a masterpiece(The Sleeping Gypsy, The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on the Antelope, and The Dream are referenced in the text or in Hall's illustrations) than the experts say mean things about it: "They say it looks like he closed his eyes and painted with his feet."

But Rousseau keeps painting. Eventually, near the end of his life, younger, more well-known artists befriend him. One of them, Pablo Picasso, even throws a banquet in his honor (that's Picasso with Fernande Olivier on the right; a key at the back of the book identifies the other historical figures in the illustration below).

At last, and over one hundred years later, Rousseau's paintings hang in museums around the world. [There are three on view at the National Gallery; I'm excited to see them after having read the book.]

Amanda Hall's illustrations, rendered in watercolor and acrylics, really capture the feel of Rousseau's work, from the lush foliage and flowers to the faces of people and animals. In an illustrator's note (there's also an author's note, but sadly no sources), Hall writes that she "decided to break the rules of scale and perspective to reflect [Rousseau's] unusual way of seeing the world. For some of the illustrations, I drew directly on his actual paintings, altering them playfully to help tell the story." My favorite example is this image of a tiger literally crawling out of the canvas as Henri paints:

The understated text reads, "Sometimes Henri is so startled by what he paints that he has to open the window to let in some air."

Aside: Kids might be interested to know that the jungle in the computer-animated movie Madagascar was inspired by Rousseau's work. My own kids were also interested to know that I had a cheap print of Sleeping Gypsy in my college dorm room.

It's still my favorite Rousseau.

Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon's children's books

Peggy Bacon was an American artist and printmaker who also wrote and illustrated a lot of charming children's books--one of which, The Ghost of Opalina (Little, Brown, 1967), is reviewed today at Charlotte's Library. I was curious about Bacon and delighted to discover that she's the subject of an exhibition, Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon, now showing at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art (I haven't seen it yet; the photograph is by Michael Barnes, from a Virtual tour of the exhibition on Peggy's Facebook page).

The exhibition focuses on Bacon's connections to people in the art world, but I wonder if we could do the same thing for children's books? Bacon herself illustrated books by everyone from Lloyd Alexander (My Five Tigers: The cats in my life; Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956) to Betsy Byars (Rama the Gypsy Cat; Viking, 1966--I still have my childhood copy of this one, fortunately). She seems to have been the go-to illustrator for cats in the 1950s and 60s, and a fascinating person besides. More Peggy Bacon, please!