November is Picture Book Month

Picture Book Month at the Horn Book

On Thursday the Horn Book will launch its contribution to Picture Book Month — which you may or may not be aware of. Last year Dianne de Las Casas came up with the idea of celebrating PBs with their own month, in part as a response to a 2010 article in the New York Times that said [...]

Mom, It’s My First Day of Kindergarten!

mom, it's my first day of kindergarten!

Here’s another book that Robin reviewed for the Magazine but I jumped in and claimed it for the blog. Trust Hyewon Yum (The Twins’ Blanket) to come up with a new approach the tried-and-true First Day of School Book. All the usual elements are there: worries about being too little, getting lost, not making friends. [...]

Ocean Sunlight

ocean sunlight

Since Robin posted about an ocean book, I thought I’d step in next with another. Ocean Sunlight is the second offering from co-authors Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm and it’s Bang’s third book about light. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve spent some time with Molly Bang recently, gaining a little inside knowledge about [...]

This Is Not My Hat

This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

Robin just reviewed this book for the Magazine (here it is, complete with Jon Klassen’s take on his favorite chapeau), but I forgot it was already hers and rushed to claim it when we were divvying up titles. I couldn’t let her have both Extra Yarn AND this one. As you can see, we love [...]

Little Dog Lost

little dog lost: the true story of a brave dog namd baltic

With a text so simple it could be an easy reader, Monica Carnesi tells the true story of a dog who got stuck on an ice flow in Poland’s Vistula River, swept out to the open sea, and rescued two days later. I am hoping this outwardly simple book will catch the committee’s attention. The [...]

Green

green

Can a concept book win the Caldecott? I’m pretty sure none have yet. No alphabet books, counting books or color books. What about this one — a color book about just one color? Putting it that way makes Green sound too simple. Trust Seeger to add layers of complexity and meaning, but with a light [...]

Lunch with Lee Kingman

Lee Kingman Natti

It had been nearly five years since my last lunch with Lee Kingman Natti, but it felt like just last month. Her home in Gloucester is an oasis reflecting Lee’s lifelong involvement with artists and writers, as well as her own art. We sat looking out at the granite quarry that holds their water supply [...]

Five questions for Molly Bang and Penny Chisholm

bang_oceansunlight_250x300

Molly Bang has won many awards for her picture book illustration over the past forty years. She is also the author of Picture This, a book for adults about how pictures work. In 2009 Molly teamed with MIT ecologist Penny Chisholm on Living Sunlight, a picture book explaining how light interacts with the world around [...]

Books mentioned in the May 2012 issue of Notes from the Horn Book

Five questions for Paul O. Zelinsky

Paul Zelinsky

Having illustrated more than thirty books, Paul O. Zelinsky is a master of just about every artistic medium. He won the Caldecott Medal in 1998 for Rapunzel, a dark story illustrated with lush, realistic oil paintings. But most recently, he collaborated with Kelly Bingham on the side-splittingly funny Z Is for Moose, in which the [...]