A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka
This is a wordless picture book about loss that has a very happy ending. The story begins with a dog, named Daisy, who is happily playing with her red ball. She takes her ball everywhere, even on a walk to the park, where she makes a new friend. However, her new friend accidentally pops her ball. This makes Daisy very sad. On her next visit to the park, Daisy is given a new, blue ball. She is very happy as she and her new friend play together with the new ball.
The story is told through the illustrations, created from ink, watercolor, and gouache. The artist makes use of thick lines, which give the illustrations a child-like quality. Daisy is drawn in thicker, curvy lines, which create an illusion of both fur and movement. Her ball is bright red and has a more defined shape than the rest of the illustrations, which draws the reader to its centrality in the story. In the two-page spread where Daisy lays on the couch, the artist draws even more striking attention to the ball by painting the couch in complementary shades of green. The artist’s use of line and color portrays the emotional aspects of the story. The pale blues, greens, and yellows in the background give the story a feeling of serenity—Daisy’s happiness with her favorite toy. The line of Daisy’s tail perks up when she is happy, and droops downward when she is not. The harsh, vertical lines of the fence echo Daisy’s anxiety when she becomes separated from her ball. In the two-page spread where Daisy processes the loss of her ball, the lines are extra curved and squiggled to show the dizzying effects of grief. After Daisy has lost her ball, the background colors go from green, blue, and yellow to darker shades of brown, like storm clouds.
This book has nine spreads, which are used for parts of the story that have a lot of movement. The first spread guides the reader’s eyes across the pages as Daisy plays with her ball. Another spread is comprised of thin, horizontal panels that highlight the movement of walking to the park. The artist uses repetition of colors and patterns to give the story unity.
A Ball for Daisy is of important intellectual quality. It introduces the concept of loss in a way that relates to childhood experience—most, if not all children understand what it is like to lose a cherished toy. Having an animal protagonist offers them a safe space to explore the complex feelings of losing something dear. This is a great story time book for young children. The absence of words allows for interaction between the adult and child and an opportunity to practice narrating in the absence of words. This book would appeal to young children who enjoy animals looking at simple pictures.
The Lion & The Mouse by Jerry Pinkney
This is a wordless retelling of Aesop’s Fable. A mouse is trying to outrun an owl and finds he has ended up, quite by accident, atop a lion. The lion considers the mouse and decides to spare him. Later, the lion has become ensnared in a hunter’s net. The little mouse rescues him by chewing through the ropes.
In this book, the illustrations tell the story and are occasionally enhanced by animal sounds, which are displayed in text. The watercolor medium echoes the chaos of the animal world—the busy-ness, movement, and sounds. The organic lines and shapes create a realistic world, while the hand-drawn words bring in minimal text in a way that doesn’t detract from that realism. The artist uses color to portray feeling—warm colors for the warmth of friendship, cool colors for a cool evening. In one picture, the lines made by the ropes over the lion’s face seem to be pointing towards the mouse. So even though the lion’s face takes up the entire page, the lines bring the eyes toward the mouse and put both animals on equal footing, despite their disparate sizes. There are eleven spreads, which are fitting for the story because they reflect both the largeness of the lion and the vastness of the African Serengeti.
In A Family of Readers, Martha Parravano (2010) explains, “And in the image-ascendant age, visual literacy is arguably becoming at least as important as verbal literacy. The skill of navigating through picture books will translate directly to navigating through, say, graphic novels” (p. 5). This book’s quality lies in its purely visual form and, along with Raschka’s A Ball for Daisy, can be part of a collection of books used to teach visual literacy skills. This book is excellent for story time and provides a teachable moment for children because of the story’s moral lessons. This book would appeal to pre-readers and early readers because of its very limited text and vivid illustrations. It could also appeal to parents looking for a way to teach their children morality in a manner befitting their stage of development.
Locomotive by Brian Floca
This is a nonfiction book about the Transcontinental Railroad. The informational sequence begins with the construction of the railroad. The author then describes an imagined railroad trip across the United States and uses it to explain different aspects of the railroad, such as the trains and engines, roles and responsibilities of the workers, experiences of the travelers, and the places through which they journey en route to the West coast.
The illustrations in this book bring the words to life. The colors, lines, and shapes are realistic, which is fitting for nonfiction, and they show scenes that complement the text. Some illustrations are full spreads that highlight parts of the text such as the vastness of the land or the largeness of the train. In another illustration, the artist uses negative space to mirror the loneliness of the Great Basin.
This book uses multiple storytelling techniques. There is a rhythm to the text that matches the rhythms of the story—the hustle and bustle or life, of rolling along the train tracks. There is repetition of phrases such as, “Westward, westward, rolls the train.” Some techniques are enhanced by the use of various typefaces, sizes, and emphasis. The author uses onomatopoeia, using old-timey typefaces that call attention to them while keeping them period specific. For example, the word “rickety” is written in large, overlapping letters of multiple colors, which makes the words actually appear rickety. The placement of text and use of varying fonts and sizes make the train ride – the life and sounds – very palpable for the reader. There is also a sense of predictability, as the reader knows the train will eventually arrive at the other side of the country.
These books a valuable for its artistic, literary, and intellectual merit, which all converge on the pages to create a truly memorable learning experience. It is this sort of book that makes learning exciting. This would be an excellent resource for curriculum support for children learning about American expansionism. This book would appeal to older children, as the length of text may be beyond a small child’s attention span. However, younger children might enjoy the book just for the pictures. Older children would also appreciate the book’s crude sense of humor, such as when the author explains it is rude to use the bathroom at the station, or a worker is new if he still has all his fingers, or hinting that if the chicken tastes like prairie dog it probably is.
This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen
This picture book deals with the concepts of right and wrong in a humorous and age-appropriate way. The story opens with a little fish telling the reader that he has just stolen a hat from a bigger fish that was sleeping. The story follows the little fish as he tries to hide and the bigger fish that is one step behind the entire time. The story ends wordlessly, as the big fish swims away with his hat, leaving the reader to wonder what has transpired.
There is a humorous juxtaposition between text and illustrations. In the voice of the little fish, the text explains that the big fish probably will not notice the hat is gone, as the picture shows the big fish looking up to see that his hat is missing. The text explains that even if the big fish realizes the hat is gone and knows who took it, he won’t know where the little fish is going. Meanwhile, the big fish is shown to be moving away, presumably in pursuit of his hat. The artist uses a white area for text, a black background for the illustrations, and neutral colors for the fish and plant life. This pulls all of the illustrations together in a unifying way. The artist uses the fish’s eyes to show emotion. The big fish’s eye opens wide when he finds his hat is missing, and squints in anger as he realizes who took his hat. Motion through the pages in illustrated by horizontal lines of bubbles and by facing the fish toward the right-hand side of the page.
This dominant storytelling technique is anticipation. The little fish says, “He won’t know where I’m going.” However, the big fish is obviously on the move. Will he catch up? Having the narrator speak directly to the draws them in. But we, as the readers, know more than the little fish does because, unlike him, we can see what the big fish is doing. On the one hand, the reader knows that the little fish must get caught, because it would only be right. On the other hand, will he get caught? The tension in the story makes it satisfying to turn the pages. The story uses patterned language and has a nice rhythm—it is truly delightful to read aloud.
This is a very entertaining story and the artistry is beautifully simple. This is another great story time book, especially as it can be used to explain morals and consequences in a way that is developmentally appropriate. Kathleen Horning (2010) points to the importance of type size in children’s books and how the size dictates the age-level. The large type, simple sentences, and silly subject matter (i.e. fish with hats) make this perfect for very young children.
Dr. Frederickson and the Planet of Slime by dommod
URL: https://storybird.com/books/dr-frederickson-and-the-planet-of-slime/
This is a digital picture book that could be classified as science fiction. Dr. Frederickson discovers a sentient blob of goo that wreaks havoc in his laboratory. Along with his band of assistants and strange creatures, he journeys to the plant Phnaar to destroy the source of the goo before it destroys humanity. The gang comes to learn that the goo comes from the nose of a strange Phnaar creature. They are attacked by the sentient slime and barely escape with their lives. The story ends with an assistant screaming that the goo has come back. The doctor responds that it’s not the same slime from Phnaar, but rather, he just has a cold (ew).
While Storybird is a great resource for storytellers and artists alike, it is not without pitfalls. One has access to only a finite amount of graphics, and so one must tailor their story to those graphics, rather than tailoring the graphics to the story. This results in the occasional awkwardness. In this picture book, the cartoon illustrations match the text pretty well. They are fun and silly, just like the story. There is, however, a lot of action and movement in the text that is not reflected in the pictures. The author could have made this a long-form book that foregrounds the text while using minimal visual pictures, or he could have designed the font to highlight activity, much the same as the use of various typefaces/sizes/colors in Locomotive. I also found that the mismatched cartoon styles did not harmonize well and detracted from the story in some places. The story is a straightforward narrative with dialogue and does not make use of the storytelling techniques aimed at younger children, like repetition and rhyme. I felt that the text segments could have been broken up on the pages to spread out the bulk and perhaps give it a better pace.
I did not feel that this was a high quality book. It was, however, a very fun (and kind of gross) story. I think a longer book, or chapter book, with more detail would have fit this story better than the picture book format. This book has potential for children looking to read for pleasure and would appeal to pre-teens with an interest in science fiction and wacky adventures. There is a lot of potential for the digital format. This book could have taken advantage of moving pictures and digital sounds to make the story more enveloping.
The Thinkies: My Constant Companion by allofthesun
URL: https://storybird.com/books/the-thinkies-my-constant-companion/
This is a digital picture book that deals with anxiety, or what the author calls the “thinkies.” The narrator uses the first person and explains what it is like to have the “thinkies” and describes her methods for coping with it such as reading or going outside. She also explains that while some people misunderstand her, the people she cares about accept her for who she is. She ends by explaining, “The thinkies aren’t ME. They are just the noise that follows me around.” Saying, essentially, one is not defined by their mental illness.
The illustrations are from different artists and make use of various media, but they are used in a way that isn’t distracting and relates well to the text. They are in watercolor, colored pencil, and mixed media. I think this highlights how anxiety doesn’t always manifest itself in the same way—it takes on different forms. Most of the illustrations show solitary girls, which mirrors the loneliness of anxiety. The pictures that have more than one person in them are the pages where the author discusses her anxiety in relation to other people. The author uses the repetition technique, using the word “sometimes” often. This is a reminder that anxiety isn’t forever.
While the author chose illustrations from multiple artists, there is artistic value in how she relates them to her text. There is intellectual value as well in how she creates a safe space to tackle a complex mental illness. This book could be used to educate children on anxiety, teaching them empathy and compassion. This story would appeal to young people who struggle with anxiety—they could find comfort in knowing they are not alone. I did not feel that the digital format enhanced this story in any way. Just the opposite, I think it would be more effective as a print book with rough page edges.
allofthesun (2017). The Thinkies: My Constant Companion. https://storybird.com/books/the-thinkies-my-constant-companion/
dommod (2010), Dr. Frederickson and the Planet of Slime, https://storybird.com/books/dr-frederickson-and-the-planet-of-slime/
Floca, B. (2013). Locomotive. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Horning, K.T. (2010). From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children’s Books (revised ed.). New York: HarperCollins.
Klassen, J. (2012). This Is Not My Hat. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Parravano, M.V., & Sutton, R. (Eds.). (2010). A Family of Readers: The Book Lover’s Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Pinkney, J. (2009). The Lion & The Mouse. New York: Hachette Book Group.
Raschka, C. (2011). A Ball for Daisy. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books.
