Artistic freedom is at the intersection of Why Am I Creating This Street and Who Is This For Lane. Drawing Outdoors is an illustrated book about a fabulous teacher at a rural school and her very creative students. The pupils gather in the remote single-room house from a variety of trails that snake across the piedmont area. It’s a special day because the kids are told that their lessons will be outside. They’re going to explore, draw things in nature, imagine shapes and expand their horizons. Drawing Outdoors will appeal to lots of elementary-aged students, but there’s one elephant that’s presented early in the book that will water down most of the fun. You’re in for a time if you miss this because the kids won’t, and once they see it you’ll lose all control of the classroom, and the grand message of the book will be lost.
It’s a beautiful autumn day and I’m sitting outside reading Mutts and it’s awesome. One could change every word of that previous sentence, except for ‘Mutts and it’s awesome.’, to something different and it would still be true. It’s a stormy, winter’s day and I’m in bed, under the covers reading Mutts, and it’s awesome. See, it still works. Seasonal comparisons are needed in those sentences because Mutts: Coming Home features Early running on a trail with his human. The leaves on the trees are becoming bright orange to dark yellow and are just about to succumb to gravity. It’s there where they’ll be crunched by walkers, and dogs and will complete the food chain with worms using them to produce compost.
Kids love to have fun. Kids learn in different ways. Everyone knows the first statement, but not enough people acknowledge, pivot, or have the ability to pivot when the learning process might need a different mode of entry. The human body is a naturally curious topic for upper elementary and middle school students. However, there aren’t exactly internal organs that those ages have access to for ‘hands-on’ learning and books can only go so far in motivating them. Genius Games Junior has the Doctor Livingston Jr. line of puzzles that introduces the rabbit hole of our human body that fit like a glove for fifth grade and up.
Why so serious? was the phrase that crossed my mind the first time I saw What’s the Rush? They’re sibling queries to be sure, but the latter is far less malevolent than the one that folks might associate with the Caped Crusader. What’s the Rush? is a lovely illustrated book by Yiting Lee that proves that books for young audiences don’t need to have a solid, theme-trodden story arc.
A turtle and a rabbit meet in a bar…..
That might sound like a slam, but I don’t mean it to come across that way. Rather, it’s OK for illustrated books to meander, take their time and allow its characters to smell the roses. To an extent, it is in the vein of The Tao of Pooh, where sometimes a thing just is, or happy characters in a book just are.
What’s the Rush? sees two friends getting together for some tea and snacks. This book could’ve gone in a different, far less enjoyable, and more predictable manner. That’s because the two friends in question are a rabbit and a turtle. Turtles are slow, rabbits are fast, children got that message and easily know what slow and steady wins the race means.
That’s where What the Rush? goes in a different direction and opens up what could be the potential relationship between the two animals. Turtle is a very polite host who serves his friend snacks in an elegantly prepared spread. It’s on this picnic that the turtle innocently mentions that he would like to climb the beautiful mountain that’s in the distance. Rabbit has heard these wistful dreams before and suggests that the two do it tomorrow to which turtle says, “What’s the Rush?”.
The next morning the two embark on their quest to the mountain. However, the turtle is not quite ready to depart when the rabbit shows up on his doorstep. Turtle is busy folding clothes, trimming shrubbery, watering plants, cooking, painting, cleaning, and packing. Rabbit grows tired of the turtle’s tardiness, screams at him and out the door, the two of them go. Thanks to his hard shell, the turtle is able to carry all of his too many bags on his back.
As the two make their way to the mountain they encounter troubling obstacles one after the other. “Hang on just one minute”, is what the turtle says to the rabbit each time they get to one of them. Thankfully, due to the turtle’s packing, they’re able to overcome each one of them, all the while the bags on his shell get less numerous. When they finally get to the mountain top the two friends see the moon, turtle looks up and casually mentions that it would be nice to go there. Rabbit, being the more rabbit of the two suggests that they go tomorrow to which turtle asks his fleet-footed friend, “what’s the rush?”.
The art in What’s the Rush? has an old-school, classic vibe about it that resonates with younger elementary-aged audiences. Some of the illustrations take up full pages, some use white space to fill the void and others use panels. The panels are used very effectively to demonstrate the amount of time that the rabbit perceives as wasted, while his friend is getting ready for the hike.
I read the book to a group of pre-k kids and asked them what the book was about. The responses varied from friendship to working together to taking a vacation. That’s what I meant by the book establishing a folksy, patient way of telling a story that’s a snapshot of the dynamic between two friends. There’s no great conflict or Earth-bending issue they’re navigating. It’s just two friends who are very different and are out for a walk, done with illustrations that will make kids smile.
What’s the Rush? is by Yiting Lee and available on Princeton Architectural Press.
The potato chip and cat video complex is strong with this one. That’s the line of reasoning that states that it’s difficult, to near impossible to engage in just one of them. Land of Giants jumps into that fray with just as much glee as the sour cream and onion potato chips or the kittens being jerk video that was in your stream earlier. Everyone loves dinosaurs, while that may sound like a scrapped tv pilot from CBS circa the late 90s, it’s more akin to the fact that people love big lizards and the concept of how massive they actually were.
Fish aren’t inherently evil or bad. However, if you were to pose the question of what’s the evilest fish of them all then the Anglerfish would surely be in that mix. If nothing else, then that glowing light that’s on the end of the fishing rod on their head would qualify them by some people’s classification. If you didn’t know what an Anglerfish was before, then that description certainly painted exactly which fish we’re talking about. Anglerfish, The Seadevil of the Deep is an illustrated book by Elaine M. Alexander with illustrations by Fiona Fogg. This is on the STEM side of illustrated books and presents this mysterious fish in a way that will entertain, make kids curious, and drop little nuggets of knowledge that they’ll gleefully share with their friends.
The book was better. Anyone who has ever seen a movie that was based on a book has certainly heard, “the book was better” by some friend or critic that wanted to sound like they discovered it first. Superheroes are unique to this because they have so many stories that catch-all phrase is more difficult to attribute to one book. With comic books it’s more of a story arc and there are some amazing stories for superheroes out there. That’s the benefit of reading or collecting graphic novels, in that the collection process of being able to read the entire story arc has been done. The Amazing Spider-Man, Web-Slinger, Hero, Icon is by Rich Johnson and is a coffee table style book whose beauty and collected works demand to be seen by webhead fans.
A surprise in your illustrated books is OK. You comic book fans know what I’m talking about. The cover doesn’t exactly match the content inside or has text that infers something that might be direr. The Most Haunted House in America is an illustrated book that follows that comic book playbook to the letter. This is a beautifully illustrated book with art that drags you in with the skeleton hands that you’ll quickly see once you open it.
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