Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy -- hashtag #nfpb2020! Thanks to her hosting and sharing and those who add their posts, you can discover and celebrate terrific nonfiction picture books!
I'm looking forward to the Youth Media awards given next week at the ALA convention in Philadelphia! You can watch the presentation next Monday here!
Oge Mora's collaged illustrations celebrate this amazing story of Mary Walker written by Rita Lorraine Hubbard. Piece by piece, she chooses what to highlight in Mary's story of her long, long journey to learning to read. Here and there are words tucked into the pages of Mary's life. Mary was a slave and even at eight years, she worked in the fields, not allowed to pause for a minute lest she is punished by the overseer. She says: "When I'm free, I'll go where I want and rest when I want. And I'll learn to read, too." Sadly in her life first full of earning money for her Mama, then raising her own family through cleaning others' houses, cooking for them, too, and continuing to work to survive in her seventies. There was never time to learn to read. But, one late day, after she had outlived all her family, at age 116, she enrolled in a reading class. She was given a certificate and people, even presidents, all over the country, celebrated with her. Mary lived through twenty-six presidents, passed away at the age of 121.
Photographs of Mary show some of her celebrations, like her first plane ride, on the endpapers. In her author's note, Hubbard acknowledges that some of the story is imagined as only the main dates are really known about Mary.
There are two favorites from my own children's growing up that I have kept. I've read them to my grandchildren, though not as often because they're not with me every day, but sometimes I get them out just for me. They are both the early books by Gyo Fujikawa.I was excited when I first heard there was a picture book about Gyo Fujikawa and by Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad, two favorite picture book creators! I've waited a while to get this from my library. Evidently, others wanted it, too. Starting at Gyo's early life when she loved to draw, "loved the feel of a pencil in her hand." "Every day she started with an empty white page . . . and filled it with pictures." She was ignored at school, even the way she drew, but finally, they moved to San Pedro, California which had many residents who were Japanese American. Gyo was happy in her new life and a teacher helped her with the money to go to study at an art school in Los Angeles.
Through many kinds of jobs illustrating, Gyo was successful and ended up working for Walt Disney in New York City. In the story, Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad work together with a few words and swirls of art showing Gyo studying in various ways as she traveled, including to Japan. A few years later, the U.S. declared war on Japan and her parents and family were sent to an internment camp. Gyo was exempt, evidently because she lived in New York City. It was a sad time for them and for Gyo, helpless to do anything.
Eventually, she began to draw again and noticed the same old thing in books at the library: "mothers in aprons and fathers with pipes and a world of only white children." She imagined, "A book can be anything that anyone imagines it to be." she wanted to show many kinds of children, all babies or toddlers. Her publisher said, "NO!" It wouldn't sell. It was the early 1960s America. A double-page spread shows Gyo thinking. "It shouldn't be that way." And Maclear and Morstad showing those darling babies just about to turn the page, saying "But babies can't wait." They did not. And neither did Gyo!
There is a timeline with photos, a note from author and illustrator, and a source list in the back. It's a beautiful book about this special, spectacular, artist.