Celebrate #NF10for10

Welcome to my post for the annual #NF10for10 2020. Add your link here with Cathy Mere, at her blog Reflect and Refine. Mandy Robek also hosts with Cathy at Enjoy and Embrace Learning.  Julie Balen at Connecting to Learn is also part of this fabulous book-sharing! Thank you, Mandy, Cathy and Julie! This is year number eight for this special gathering. 
              Go HERE to add your link or to read all the other posts!

In the past:

2013    2014    2015    2016    2017    2018    2019

               Like last year, I'm linking each to my Goodreads review, so if you want to know details, you can take a look. You may know most, but I hope you'll find at least one or two that becomes a "must read"! I have a varied list this year, about people and places, seasons, animals and words. Some are prose, some are poetry, but we learn from each one! It seems this non-fiction picture book world we live in has exploded in recent years. I am grateful, but also sad to limit the books to only a few. I also read books I loved about the first dinosaur, secret soldiers and women's suffrage. Perhaps I'll find them on your lists!

           A Place to Land - Wittenstein and Pinkney     - If you want to visit Dr. King again, this time the night before his "I Have A Dream" speech, and the magic that happened during the speech, this is the book. It makes me wish I had had the joy of being there, too.

        The Women Who Caught The Babies - Greenfield and Minter     - I am grateful for those authors and illustrators who bring stories from the past we never knew. This is a beautiful tribute to those women "who caught the babies".

        Snow Leopard - Anderson and Benson   Here the mysterious snow leopard is brought to us in its elusive beauty, a creature we need to protect.

It's Monday - Blog Tour & Giveaway!

         I'm excited to join a blog tour in partnership with The Children’s Book Review and HarperCollins!

             From Sara Pennypacker, writer of the beloved Pax, comes a story of introverted, only-child Ware, whose parents want only for him to have friends, lots of them! They're working double shifts to gain enough money to buy their home so Ware, again, is expected to give up his dreams of a summer on his own and go daily to the 'rec center' where mobs of kids only show Ware how alone he is. Despite his parents' expectations, he likes being alone! But then he spies an abandoned church early one day, and sees a girl doing What??? -- making a garden of papayas. This adventure sometimes seems a bit farfetched, but dreams, even outlandish ones, can become real, and Ware, with new, maybe friend Jolene? and a welcome intruder, bird-lover Ashley, might help Ware be re-born? Ware follows the knight's creed about fighting unfairness and with help from the girls and a few adults that come into his life, too, plus his own self-awareness begins to like who he is, at last! I imagine there will be kids who say, maybe secretly, that's me!

            Thanks to HarperCollins Children's Books for the advanced copy!

Enter for a chance to win a Sara Pennypacker book prize pack!

Five (5) winners receive:

• A hardcover copy of Here in the Real World
• A paperback copy of Pax

Giveaway begins January 21, 2019, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends February 21, 2019, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, who are eighteen years of age or older in their state or territory of residence at the time of entry. Void where prohibited by law.

HarperCollins is responsible for prize fulfillment.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Poetry Friday - Windows

        It's Poetry Friday, first week of February, here with Laura Purdie Salas at Writing the World for Kids. She has written a love poem I'm sure will be loved! Thanks, Laura!

          I'm hosting next week on Valentine's Day, sweetest day of the year! Be sure you prepare some sugary love!

          I've been reading a book by Billy Collins that came into the bookstore, one I didn't know titled The Trouble with Poetry and other poems. In one poem, "Monday" he begins with 
                 "The birds are in their trees,
                   the toast is in the toaster,
                   and the poets are at their windows."

          Continuing, Billy Collins speaks of others at their work, like "The clerks are at their desks,/the miners are down in their mines,/and the poets are looking out their windows." You can imagine some of the rest, and you can listen to Billy reading it here! 

           Instead of writing anew, I started reading through some of the poems I've written and realize, in some, though not all, I was looking out my window. Here's a new one, followed by some previously written, "out my window"!

my pine
carries winter's burden-
glad to be limber -
 

Non-Fiction Picture Books Tell New Stories

     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! 

          In years past, I've read Karen Cushman's middle-grade Newbery-winning novel titled The Midwife's Apprentice and the wonderful The Midwife's Tale by Sam Thomas, among others. This picture/poetry book for middle grade/young adult readers by Eloise Greenfield brings readers a brief history of African-American midwives with praise and gratitude for their work. 
         There is an introduction sharing the details of a midwives' work, not just to "catch the babies", but ensure that germs do not get near, along with weighing the babies and recording names, birth date and weight. They also gave advice to the mothers whose baby has just been born. In slavery, these women were those who were too old for fieldwork, "called 'grannies' and addressed as Granny. Today most prefer to be addressed as 'Mrs. or Miss'." In the past they educated each other, passing down the knowledge from Granny to child to grandchild. It wasn't until 1941 that the first midwifery program was opened for black public health nurses, at Tuskegee Institute.
        That is a brief part of the introduction, yet the remainder of the book fills with Eloise Greenfield's poetry in praise of those women, illustrated in fabulous, colorful paintings by Daniel Minter. She writes of the "welcome into the world. . .for loving" while Minter draws babies in the womb swirling around one woman. She writes that even those women were caught and shackled, but brought their knowledge with them across the sea as the younger ones watched and learned: "And so, too, the next generation, and the next, and the next. . ." A favorite of mine is the poem/story of a baby born to freedom in 1863, "think about this new thing circling around them." The thought that this baby has been born in this new time of freedom is to be celebrated, and they do! There, Minter shows a woman surrounded by an ocean with circles widening and a slave ship far in the distance.
          Here's a glimpse of Minter's wonderfully intricate and symbolic art, with a midwife's thoughts written by Greenfield.

a midwife knowing she might be called soon;
"the sky was light enough
for her to see the trees
at the end of the road."

           Greenfield adds more stories, one in the 2000's, but the final story is a tribute to "Miss Rovenia Mayo. She lives over yonder."  That Miss Rovenia is the midwife who "caught" baby Eloise. At the end is a bit more to Eloise's story, with photos of her and her brother and her parents. 
           Credits for photographs and a bibliography are added.

Favorite books by Eloise Greenfield: The Great Migration: Journey to the North, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir and Honey, I Love and Other Love Poems.

And by Daniel Minter: Ellen's Broom and most recently: Going Down Home With Daddy.

Monday Reading - Everyone Has A Story

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites.  Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!
          Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR






           Somehow I thought this was a picture book, and it is, but it's also a chapter book, so full of wonderful information about the men and one woman who dedicated their lives to figuring out the earth's genesis. It took a while, but Ian Lendler's style is pure storytelling. When I read, I felt he was sitting right beside me, explaining, telling about the places and people who kept exploring, ignored their discomfort in learning what those "creatures" found in rocks were. How did they get there? 
          The early conflict with those who believed the Bible to be the definitive answer was explained, but it took a century and more! Much focused on the British Isles, often the area of Lyme Regis, England, though other countries contributed to the knowledge like France. I imagine there could be a history of paleontology efforts from all over the world, but Lendler focused on the very beginnings. These years were when the term "geology" was first used. These are the years when megalosaurus received a name, became "The First Dinosaur". Finally, these end with the years that Darwin put forth his theory of evolution. Aside from Darwin, the only scientist whose story I knew was Mary Anning, a young woman who was entranced by her discoveries, found the only "whole" fossil. In fact, she found three! She excavated, cleaned, and illustrated her plesiosaur, but was never recognized by any group. She was a woman. Some of the men also with great knowledge were her friends and helped her as she struggled with poverty, but the relatively new Geologic Society did not admit its first woman until 1904.
          You will want to read Mary's story as well as the fascinating other scientists who strove to find answers to earth's history. Some were poor, some aristocrats, all passionate. 
          Lendler fills his book fascinating stories of those scientists who, good people or bad, persisted to find answers. Within this story, C.M. Butzer adds many kinds of illustrations, some brought from that time long ago, some created, some comical. Added is an Epilogue, a bibliography, Acknowledgments, Credits, and an index at the back. I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

Winner of the 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
A 2020 American Indian Youth Literature Picture Book Honor Winner
             There's a long list of different awards you can read here! Finally, I had the pleasure of reading this book! I thought it was only a story celebrating a special food loved by Native Americans, but Kevin Noble Maillard shows it is so much more. And I connected this to other foods from other people, wondering what they might choose, what they might say about their special food, or would they be disappointed that they do not have one?
           Maillard's text feels like a poem defining this thing called "Fry Bread", writing the words with a bit of text added: "Fry Bread is History -- The long walk, the stolen land/Strangers in our world/With unknown food/We made new recipes/From what we had." It is also "flavor", "nation", "time", and other words, too. And in the backmatter, Maillard offers a recipe and a 'how-to', plus an extensive author's note explaining even more about those words, including a bit about Juana Martinez-Neal's illustrations within each part. There are also references and notes. 
           The illustrations by Juana Martinez-Neal (Alma and How She Got Her Name and La Princesa and the Pea) bring readers into the happiest family pictures, babies, toddlers, some older kids; moms and dads, grandparents, too. Each painting glows with happy people together, sometimes making fry bread, sometimes gathering to be together, cats and dogs included, too. The highlight continues to surround everyone -- with fry bread!