Five picture books for #fivewomenartists

Can you name five women artists? It's surprisingly difficult for most people, even more so if you leave out the big three: Mary Cassatt, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe. This March, for Women's History Month, the National Museum for Women in the Arts (NMWA) is leading a social media campaign to share stories of women artists using the hashtag #fivewomenartists. I'm doing my part by sharing this list of five great picture books about women artists. Not including Cassatt, Kahlo, or O'Keeffe, although there are some gorgeous picture books about them, too!

Louise Bourgeois, M is for Mother, 1998, pen and ink with colored pencil and graphite, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Louise Bourgeois, M is for Mother, 1998, pen and ink with colored pencil and graphite, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Cloth Lullaby: The Woven Life of Louise Bourgeois by Amy Novesky; illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault (Abrams, 2016). As a child,  20th-century artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois learned to weave and repair tapestries alongside her mother in the family's tapestry restoration workshop. This experience inspired some of her most powerful works, including a series of steel spider sculptures--the largest of which is called Maman.

Four Pictures by Emily Carr by Nicolas Debon (Groundwood, 2003). Emily Carr (1871-1945) is one of Canada's most renowned artists; her work is now exhibited with and compared to Kahlo's and O'Keeffe's. In this graphic novel, Debon traces Carr's life story through four of her best paintings (also reproduced here).

Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian by Margarita Engle; illustrated by Julie Paschkis (Henry Holt, 2010). I interviewed Margarita about this book when it first came out six years ago, and I still love it. Told in the voice of the young Maria Merian, 17th-century Dutch artist and naturalist.

Beatrix Potter and the Unfortunate Tale of a Borrowed Guinea Pig by Deborah Hopkinson; illustrated by Charlotte Voake (Shwartz and Wade, 2016). Spoiler alert: the guinea pig DIES. But if you can get past that, this is a charming book, and the picture-letter format is similar to how Beatrix Potter's own early stories were written. There's even a P.S. (the author's note). 

Stand There! She Shouted: The Invincible Photographer Julia Margaret Cameron by Susan Goldman Rubin; illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline (Candlewick, 2014) AND Imogen: The Mother of Modernism and Three Boys by Amy Novesky; illustrated by Lisa Congdon (Cameron + Company, 2012). Not one but two picture book biographies of photographers, Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-79) and Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976). 

There. Now if anyone should ask you to name five women artists, you're all set (and then some--don't forget the illustrators of these books). Of course, you probably already were. Who's on your list?

Winnie and Honors

Casual Caldecott turned into quite a party! We had 22 people--kids and parents--gather to read, visit, and vote on a dozen of the year's best, most buzzed-about picture books. We weren't able to have a book-by-book discussion prior to voting, but the results sorted themselves out nicely nonetheless. We named five honor books (listed in alphabetical order by title): 

And we had a clear winner:

Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick; illustrated by Sophie Blackall.

Finding Winnie is my favorite, too (sometimes my favorite doesn't even get an Honor at our house Caldecott: this was a first!). Congratulations to Sophie Blackall from all of us!

Your Batchelder Reading List

I'm back as promised with a sampling of children's books in translation published in 2015. Today I'm looking at American publishers, because those are the ones eligible for the Batchelder award, but I should note (again) that Canadian publishers Groundwood Books and Kids Can Press also publish a fair amount of translated books, as do Pushkin Children's Books in the UK and Gecko Press in New Zealand (and lots of others)--I'll get to those next time!

Let's start with a title or two from each of the smaller publishing houses. I've included original publication information where I have it.

I Am a Bear by Jean-Francois Dumont, translated by Leslie Mathews (Eerdman's Books for Young Readers, 2015). Originally published in France in 2010 under the title Je Suis Un Ours.

The Story of Snowflake and Inkdrop by Pierdomenico Baccalario, illustrated by Simona Mulazzari and translated by Alessandro Gatti (Enchanted Lion Books, 2015). Originally published in Italy in 2013 as Storia di Goccia e Fiocco.

The World in a Second by Isabel Minhós Martins, illustrated by Bernardo Carvalho and translated by Lyn Miller-Lachmann. Originally published in Portugal in 2008 as O mundo num segundo.

Farewell Floppy by Benjamin Chaud (Chronicle Books, 2015). No translator credited. Originally published in France in 2009 as Adieu Chaussette.

Now on to graphic novels!

Omaha Beach on D-Day: June 6, 1944 with One of the World's Iconic Photographers. Photographs by Robert Capa. Story by Jean-David Morvan and Séverine Tréfouël. Design by Dominique Bertail. English translation by Edward Gauvin. First Second, 2015. Originally published in France, 2014.

First Man: Reimagining Matthew Henson by Simon Schwartz; translated by Laura Watkinson (Graphic Universe, 2015). Originally published in 2012 as Packeis.

The Other Side of the Wall by Simon Schwartz; translated by Laura Watkinson (Graphic Universe, 2015). Originally published in 2009 as drüben!

Finally, one of the few middle-grade novels I found in my belated search for Batchelder-eligible books: You Can't See the Elephants by Susan Kreller, translated by Elizabeth Gaffney (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2015). Originally published in German in 2012 under the title Elefanten sieht man nicht. Unusually, the translator is both credited on the cover and blurbed on the back ("Praise for Translator Elizabeth Gaffney"), although it turns out that the praise is for Gaffney's own novels; this is her first translation for children. You Can't See the Elephants is already an international award winner (this is also noted on the cover). I find it problematic that the American edition seems to have moved the setting of the story from Germany to the United States, and wonder why--the novel still feels very European, and the story doesn't work quite as well in an American setting. Still, a powerful book.

There's your reading list! Please do let me know if I've missed something you loved. Thanks!

Where to Look for Batchelder Books: Start here

I haven't been as diligent in keeping a record of the children's books in translation published in 2015, let alone those eligible for the Batchelder Award, as I would have liked to be (it's a reading and blogging resolution for 2016, though! Watch this space). Last year's winner was Mikis and the Donkey by Bibi Dumon Tak, illustrated by Philip Hopman and translated by Laura Watkinson; published by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers in 2014. It was also my favorite, and now I want a miniature Mediterranean donkey. 

Looking ahead, good places to find potential Batchelder books are smaller publishing houses like Eerdmans and Enchanted Lion Books, both of whom make consistently beautiful and important books. (The same is true of Canadian publishers Groundwood Books and Kids Can Press; they are, however, ineligible for the Batchelder, which is awarded to an American publisher).

Graphic novels seem to be translated relatively frequently, so First Second (an imprint of Roaring Brook Press), Graphic Universe (a division of Lerner Publishing Group), and TOON Graphics are also possibilities.

You might look the for the work of individual translators such as Laura Watkinson, who translates into English from Dutch, Italian, and German.

And of course, translated books can be published by larger (and smaller) publishing houses, or published as e-books, which are eligible for the Batchelder this year as part of a pilot program.

I'll be back tomorrow with a (sadly short!) list of children's books in translation published in 2015.

Eleanor's Magic Doorway

I spent most of New Year's Day ensconced on the couch, reading The Lake House by Kate Morton (Atria, 2015). Sometimes a member of the family joined me, most often the dog. It was a lovely way to start my reading year.

Now for the book: The Lake House is internationally-bestselling Australian author Kate Morton's most recent novel (it was published in the US in October; there was a long hold list). If you've read any of Morton's other books, The Lake House might feel familiar to you (in a good way): there are missing children, abandoned houses with lush, overgrown gardens; family secrets. The story is usually told in chapters that alternate past and present, gradually intertwining them. Children's books (invented ones) are often connected in some way to the events of the narrative. In The Lake House, the children's book is Eleanor's Magic Doorway.

Sadie Sparrow, the Detective Constable investigating the 70-year-old cold case of the real Eleanor's missing child, is not impressed--"From what she could gather, these kids' books were all alike" (113). Probably because she didn't read Eleanor's Magic Doorway as a child, although it had been a gift from her grandparents (a cautionary tale for those of us who like to give today's children fondly remembered books from our own childhoods). The book does merit a chapter in someone's doctoral dissertation, titled "Fictional Escap(e)ades: Mothers, Monsters and Metaphysics in Children's Fictions," which makes me wonder what the dissertation on Children's Books in the Novels of Kate Morton is going to be called.

If The Lake House sounds appealing, do seek out Morton's other books as well! The Forgotten Garden is my favorite.

Drawing with Charcoal and P.J. Lynch

Once of my goals for this year (not reading or blogging-related) is to draw more, maybe even every day. I thought the Guardian's brilliant How to draw... series might be a good source of assignments, for days when the vague "draw more" isn't enough. Today's entry in the series is How to draw...with charcoal from Irish illustrator P.J. Lynch, who walks us through the steps of making this evocative drawing of a lighthouse using vine and compressed charcoal, white chalk, and a plastic eraser. I'm familiar with charcoal--it's one of the materials we use when drawing in the galleries--and Lynch has some useful tips, but drawing with charcoal is not my favorite. I think a B pencil is too smudgy! So I'm giving this week's assignment a pass, although I'd love to read Once Upon a Place, an anthology of stories and poems by Irish childrens' writers, edited by Eoin Colfer and illustrated, in charcoal, by P.J. Lynch. Each story or poem is set in or inspired by a particular place in Ireland: I wonder if any of our favorite places (we visited Ireland last summer) are there?

[The cover art for Once Upon a Place, also by P.J. Lynch, seems to have been done in watercolor. It's beautiful, and a very  different effect from charcoal, don't you think?]