The House Next Door by Claudine Crangle (author and illustrator)
Groundwood Books
For many years, a sturdy little house has stood in an open field, withstanding the harsh weather of the changing season. One day, the little house notices a change… several new buildings in the distance. Then a road cuts through his field. Soon, the land around him begins to fill with new houses until they surround him. Worried, he closes and bolts the shutters to block out the changes.
Years pass. Even in the shuttered darkness, change continues. One day, the little house notices that he no longer feels pushed by snowdrifts or battered by storms. He begins to think that such changes might be for the better. Emboldened by this realization, the little house risks a peek through his shutters, only to spy a house with a golden light glowing in its window and a friendly curtain waving at him.
This friendly gesture awakens in the little house a desire to open himself to the new world around him. When he does, he sees that he is no longer alone but part of a diverse neighbourhood: “big and small, beautiful, strange, solid, cobbled, high, low, narrow, wide, elegant, and fascinating.” Together, the houses await the changes that the wind might bring next. When they come, the little house learns to view them as possibilities, not risks.
Crangle’s text is full of charming wordplay. The gentle pace of the story provides the little house and little readers time to adjust to each change as it occurs while making the ultimate shift from resistance to acceptance feel natural yet momentous. The personification of the little house is rendered in pictures and words, and results in a character that readers will relate to and like. Characterizing the little house as a set-in-its-way personality who fears change could imply the prejudicial attitude of NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) that certain neighbourhoods often wield to block change. This implication might be inadvertent, but it is thought-provoking nonetheless. Here, the story explores the themes of change, acceptance, and celebrating difference with a subtle but clear touch. The underlying message invites readers to consider the value of letting go of things beyond their control and instead, being receptive to the possibilities inherent in change.
Crangle is a Toronto-based multimedia artist who created the book’s lively illustrations using recycled materials like cardboard, paint, and fabric. These illustrations strike a perfect balance of presenting images to explore while also conveying the little house’s emotional journey. Throughout the story, Crangle’s clever use of light and shadow mirrors the little house’s growth from lonely and closed to accepting and open. The House Next Door is a delightful book that will resonate with readers while leaving them with lots to think about.
Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem by Amanda Gorman (author) and Loren Long (illustrator)
Viking Books for Young Readers
Amanda Gorman and Loren Long’s Change Sings is the ideal book for this uncertain time. As a new year dawns, “change” is a much-needed watchword to usher in a renewed spirit and optimism. In clear, concise and vivid language, she affirms the power of the positive effect that we all possess within ourselves: “I hear change humming in its loudest, proudest song. I don’t fear change coming. And so I sing along.”
The words will inspire young readers that they, too, can be “just what the world needs.” As the subtitle attests, the message is anthemic, inspiring us all to unite, not break apart: “I also walk our differences, to show we are the same.”
The combination of Gorman’s text and Long’s illustrations is invigorating. Gorman’s words are rousing, and Long’s vivacious and expressive illustrations complement them with a nuanced subtext of inclusion, diversity and belonging. As the poem progresses, the narrator, a young Black girl, is gradually joined by a growing group of children, starting with a boy in a kippah. Long illustrates the line “I don’t make a taller fence, but fight to build a better bridge” not with a bridge, as one might expect but with an image of a ramp being built so that a girl in a wheelchair can access her home more easily. Readers will delight in seeing themselves reflected in the cast of diverse characters that grows with each turn of the page.
As the book nears its end, the narrative “I” that began the poem shifts to “we,” conjuring the possibility of a future where everyone is united yet unique. One person can make a small but significant change, the poem suggests. However, when everyone bands together, a changed world can be imminent: “We’re what the world is becoming, and we know it won’t be long.”
Change Sings is daring and dazzling… a persuasive and potent anthem of what the world can be when we each commit to change. Readers of all ages will embrace the book as a rallying cry for change that they will want to sing loudly and often.
For Laika: The Dog Who Learned the Names of the Stars by Kai Cheng Thom (author) and Kai Yun Ching (illustrator)
Arsenal Pulp Press
Laika the dog was picked up as a stray on the streets of Moscow in the former Soviet Union to be part of the earliest space-travel experiments that used dogs as experimental passengers in the 1950s. She is part of an affectionate pack of strays. Told by an older dog that the stars are the spirits of orphaned canines who have “gone to heaven,” Laika hopes that she might one day find her unknown parents.
Ching’s expressive illustrations render Laika in ethereal greens and blues, distinguishing her from the city’s other stray dogs. This story personifies Laika just enough to offer readers a window into her thoughts and feelings. When a scientist tells her that she “will help scientists like me find a way to travel to the stars,” she believes him in the hopes of finding her family. “Determined to prove that she was brave enough to meet the stars,” the dog cooperates with laboratory scientists as they train her for the fatal expedition.
This motivation implies that Laika has been imbued with a certain amount of agency. When the mission proves fatal, some readers might feel that, like Laika, they have been misled. Yet others might regard the scientist’s promise to Laika of food, love and a home as a deliberate lie to use her for selfish purposes, making the ending an absolute gut punch. The complexity of the story and the themes makes the book more suitable for older readers who will appreciate the historical source and multilayered themes.
Excellent back matter includes an author’s statement that addresses such concerns and a discussion guide that invites parents and teachers to talk to young readers about grief, the ethics of this particular experiment and of using animals in science. For Laila is a nuanced, emotionally devastating, and thought-provoking picture book that will linger in readers’ memories. It is excellent… and absolutely heartbreaking.
Time Is a Flower by Julie Morstad (author and illustrator)
Tundra Books
BC – based author-illustrator Julie Morstad explores the complex and abstract notion of time through the eyes of a child in Time Is a Flower. The picture book opens with a two-page spread that shows a curious child looking up at a cuckoo clock. The text offers a functional definition of time that is concise, clear and evocative: “Time is the tock tick tock / of the / clock / and / numbers and words / on a calendar.”
“But what else is time?” Answers to this question come in the form of a meditation on the measurable and ephemeral facets of time. Morstad covers the gamut of all that time is and grounds profound concepts in the observable world of a child. Flowers and butterflies serve as biological clocks: time is a seed that becomes a flower which eventually begins to wither and fade…its petals falling off “one by one, or all at once!” Time is as a growing tree, a delicate web constructed by an “elegant spider” and a butterfly that began as a caterpillar. Time is also a spinning planet that brings night for one child and day for another. There is an affecting observation of a timeout as experienced by a child on a stool, dwarfed against a solid black background: “Time is / staying in there / to think about what you did. / Maybe you didn’t / mean to?”
Time Is a Flower explores a range of temporal phases, like changes of physical features, time limits, memories and photographs, the tempi of music and dance, and moments spent with others before bringing readers into a universally anticipated moment in the day: dinnertime.
Morstad’s gorgeous fine-lined illustrations are uncluttered, her use of colour, line and space all working in rhythm to enhance her theme. Her grayscale pencil drawings of children and colors are arrestingly vivid. The artwork conveys a meditative tone of whimsy and wonder that invites poring over at leisure. The book’s larger trim size and 56-page length mirror the notion of time as both finite and continuous.
The Adventures of Grandmasaurus at the Aquarium Rescue Centreby Caroline Fernandez (author) and Shannon O’Toole (illustrator)
Common Deer Press
As in the previous The Adventures of Grandmasaurus (2020), a sparkle of special dust sets Grandma to sneezing, and each sneeze transforms her into a different prehistoric creature. This time, she is the class chaperone on an excursion to the aquarium rescue centre, and, soon enough, she is up to her mischievous “funny business” once again. In keeping with the setting, the creatures Grandma transforms into are marine reptiles or fish, from “Sho-ni-saur-us” to “Meg-a-lo-don”.
O’Toole’s lively watercolour illustrations are accurate – mostly – with the winking incorporation of large glasses, twinkling eyes, and curls of blue hair. Her rendering of facial expressions enlivens the characters, especially Grandma in her dinosaur-like forms.
While chasing down the runaway Grandma, the class learns about aquatic animals, extinct and current. As the students observe sandy outdoor pens and large aquaria, they make notes about conservation efforts: the purpose of aquatic rescue centres, the danger of tampering with live coral and turtle eggs, and the ecological harm that littering causes. The closing page offers a gallery of the 11 Mesozoic creatures Grandma becomes before the final sneeze restores her to her human self. It provides both a recap and additional basic facts about each.
The human Grandma and her granddaughter, who narrates the story present as White, while the rest of the students and their efficient and encouraging teacher, Ms. Priya are diversely depicted in terms of hair, skin, body type, and mobility.
Fernandez’s incorporation of science, ecology and conservation into the story makes this picture book both informative and compelling. As young readers can attest, education is more likely to stick when woven into a narrative, especially when it includes a rambunctious and magical grandma! This book will spark curiosity about marine life, dinosaurs, ecofriendliness and environmental impact, and invite repeated readings.
Hello, Star by Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic (author) and Vashti Harrison (illustrator)
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
In this well-paced, STEM-themed picture book, a young Black girl sights a supernova in early childhood. Her mother explains that the star is dying, which sparks in the child a compassion for the burning star and develops into an enduring fascination with stars and space. She makes a promise to a supernova that it will not die alone and spends her life fulfilling this promise. She speaks to it every night throughout primary school then high school eventually university. Her wonder and worry develops into a career path, eventually leading her to achieve her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut.
Lucianovic’s prose favours the lyrical over informational, which Harrison’s engrossing, photorealistic spreads of skies and space complement beautifully: “It could become a neutron star, made of material so heavy that a teaspoon of its shimmering, blazing star stuff would weigh as much as a mountain.” The back matter recounts the author’s real-life inspiration for the story.
Hello, Star is a departure from most picture books, which remain within the realm of childhood. Here, the main character’s growth from a young child to an adult professional who persists to attain her goal is unique and refreshing. Young female readers especially will be inspired and uplifted by the protagonist’s emotional and professional journey fueled by her purpose. Her progression from child to adult also serves as a poignant contrast to the brevity of human life compared to the life, and subsequent death, of stars. Hello, Star is a beautiful book with an empowering message that aspirations – no matter how monumental they might seem – are valuable, attainable and worth working towards.
We Are One: How the World Adds Up by Susan Hood (author) and Linda Yan (illustrator)
Candlewick Press
This delightful informational picture book follows a little girl as she explores the world around her and observes how the components of various concepts or objects add up to more than the sum of their parts. The world is made up of “ones”: a stick on its own is one, but a lot of sticks makes one pile. Two slices of bread make one sandwich, and when two people wed, they make one family. Seven colours make one rainbow. Linda Yan’s bright, winning illustrations depict the girl’s sense of wonder and joy at each discovery. A diverse cast of child and animal characters enliven every spread.
The story, told in rhyming couplets, suggests that natural and human-made things involve numbers universally. The text moves through the first ten integers to explore the book’s theme and show how everyone is connected.
Hood breaks down big concepts for little readers without condescension. For example, she explains how a Haiku is one poem of three lines, and each line a set number of syllables. Each Shakespearean play is organized into five acts. Braille is a language made up of a system of six dots in different formations to represent the alphabet, and the seasons come from the Earth’s rotations around the sun.
Although the main text would suffice on its own, the author includes additional notes on a cheery yellow banner across the bottom of every spread. Sources for the facts are noted in the backmatter. Also included are child-friendly sources for additional information as well as more examples for each of the first ten integers, including the names of geometric shapes. These facts will pique the interest of budding number enthusiasts while fascinating the older readers who would also appreciate this high-concept book.
My Book of Butterflies by Geraldo Valério (author and illustrator)
Groundwood Books
A companion to my book of birds, my book of butterflies — a stunning exploration of butterflies from around the world– is perfect for browsing.
As the title suggests, it presents a collection of butterflies that are the author-illustrator’s personal favourites. In the introduction, Valério shares his fascination with butterflies as a child in Brazil, which creates an immediate connection with readers. His wonder and delight are obvious with the turn of each page: “Amazingly, the black pattern on the underside of this butterfly’s wings looks like…It is wearing a team jersey!”
The text captures a tone of immediacy, and delight in these beautiful beings is infectious. The inclusion of humour in this nonfiction picture book makes it that much more enthralling: “Insects don’t read maps so some of the butterflies in this collection can be found on more than one continent.”
With its arresting paint and paper collage illustrations, this book is a stunner: a storehouse of information and a feast for the eyes!
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022
