Pocketful of Posies

Maybe the skill and artistry of Salley Mavor's hand-stitched, sewn, and collaged illustrations for Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes (Houghton Mifflin, 2010) are best appreciated by other needleworkers, but their appeal is so much greater than that--after all, Pocketful of Posies is a Horn Book Fanfare Best Book of 2010 and an ALA Notable for Younger Readers.  I hope it received serious consideration for the Caldecott, too.  At our house, every page has been pored over and marveled at multiple times, and it's inspired lots of reading and singing, collecting and making.

My favorite are the double-page spreads, which often illustrate several nursery rhymes in a single scene.  The one below includes Humpty Dumpty (an actual egg!), Peter Piper, and Two Little Blackbirds.  It's dfficult to appreciate the richness of the color, the depth and detail of the original in this image; nothing I've found on the internet comes close to the photographic quality of the printed book.

Or, of course, the real thing: the original illustrations from Pocketful of Posies, with new embroidered felt borders and shadowbox frames made by Salley's husband, are being exhibited in a traveling show.  At this point, most of the locations are in New England.  [Charlotte, please go on my behalf.]

Fortunately, there is plenty of information about Mavor's process available online: this interview with Salley at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast is a good place to start.  And if you'd like to make little dolls like these, Mavor's Felt Wee Folk: Enchanting Projects (C&T, 2003) is a great resource.  There's even a section of Projects for Children to Make.  Also for those of us who still struggle with the French knot.

April and Esme, Tooth Fairies

My kids had already lost a lot of teeth (Leo, almost all of them) before April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick, 2010) came out last fall, but til then I hadn't found a tooth fairy book I really liked.  The search is over. This one arrived just in time for Milly, thankfully, and we both love it.  Graham's fairies (you might remember them from Jethro Byrd, Fairy Child; Candlewick, 2002) aren't the sparkly sort; more like ordinary kids with wings, they live with their fairy parents in a little house by a tree stump, just off of the M42.  This is the story of their first "tooth visit," and I especially like the way it connects, for readers, the experience of losing a tooth with other childhood rites of passage; the sense of accomplishment that kids feel, as well as their parents' mixture of pride and concern for them.

You can see more of Bob Graham's ink and watercolor illustrations, full page and panels, for April and Esme in "Two Unforgettable Picture Book Heroines from 2010" at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast (I like it when they follow the trail of toys up to the little boy's bedroom).  Unfortunately, there aren't any of the interior of the fairies' house, the bathroom of which features a tub made out of a creamer.  Graham's work is whimsical but not overly sweet; look closely at the cover image here and you'll see that the fairies are wearing mismatched clothes, the wildflowers are common weeds, and the grass is littered with popsicle sticks and pull tabs.  Yet there's even a little sparkle, too.

[And now for something completely different!  Well, there's a Tooth Fairy in it.  Silverlicious (HarperCollins, 2010) is the latest in Victoria Kann's popular picture book series.  Pinkalicious is increasingly sour about the loss of her sweet tooth until Toothetina delivers an Important Message along with three silver coins.  Could they be sweet silverlicious chocolate?  Digital collage illustrations.  Compare and contrast!]

Rubia and the Three Osos

Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a family favorite; I think I own more retellings of it than any other story (with the possible exception of Little Red Riding Hood).  This one, Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya; illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Hyperion, 2010), is a lot of fun, as you can tell by the cover image of the bears and Rubia (Spanish for blonde, or in this case, Goldilocks) having a singalong.  They've even hung some papel picado!

Susan Middleton Elya's rhyming text is sprinkled with Spanish words for the essential elements of the story--bears, bowls, chairs, beds and their identifying adjectives.  No one does this better than Elya; previous favorites of hers include Oh No, Gotta Go! illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Putnam, 2003) and Bebe Goes Shopping illustrated by Stephen Salerno (Harcourt, 2006).  I'm not sure how effective this approach is at actually teaching Spanish--I generally prefer bilingual editions that tell the story in English and Spanish separately rather than mixing them up--but it's undeniably fun to read aloud.  Here's a sample:

[The bears] headed away, but the door wasn't locked.
Then who should come over, so daintily frocked?

Little Miss Rubia, curls made of oro.
"¿A tiny casita, for me? ¡La adoro!"

She opened la puerta and saw the fine food.
"¡Sopa!" she said. "I am so in the mood!"

Fans of Melissa Sweet will want Rubia and the Three Osos, too.  The colors and landscapes in her playful watercolor and mixed-media illustrations for this book were inspired by a trip she took to the American Southwest (from the flap copy); the details, too, are distinctly southwestern--from the cactus to the cowboy boots.  The bears themselves could be the Hispanic cousins of the ones in her illustrations for Jane Yolen's Baby Bear books.  That Papi Bear has a temper, though!

Aside: I remember reading Sweet's short essay in the Horn Book about her palette, which she said is "basically the same as Winslow Homer's, with the exception of one [color] called Opera" (January/February 2010).  Mama Bear's coat?  Opera.

[Check out Abuelo y los Tres Osos by Jerry Tello; illustrated by Ana Lopez Escriva (Scholastic, 1997) for a bilingual retelling of the Goldilocks story with a similar southwestern flavor.  In this one, the bears are having frijoles.]

notable Notables

Thanks goodness for the ALA Notables list--it's a great consolation when favorite titles find a home there.  I do wish the Notables didn't have to include all of the other ALA award winners and honor books; it seems redundant.  Fortunately, they also include books by international authors and illustrators (which are not eligible for the Newbery or Caldecott), so April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham (Candlewick) is on the list, as well as The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood (illustrated by Renata Liwska; Houghton Mifflin), and, in the Older Readers category, Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve (Scholastic).

Other notable Notables I haven't mentioned elsewhere (there were lots in my Caldecott Hopefuls post!): Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya, illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Hyperion); and Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer, illustrated by Josee Masse (Dutton).

Which of these should I review first?  (Yes, I'm still reviewing 2010 titles.  It's a copyright date, not an expiration date!)