When I was on the Caldecott committee, we were strict about following the rule that said we couldn't discuss books published in other years, even if we were tempted to compare a book to its creator's previous titles. But we certainly DID compare similar nominated books. In our year there were several books with similar plots, similar themes, or similar characters, and we found it helpful to discuss them together. But we did not have two information books about the very same subject.

I'm guessing that this year's committee will be discussing two books about Winnie. In case you don't know the story, she was a black bear cub rescued by Harry Colebourn, a Canadian soldier on his way to the front during World War I. A few years later, he donated her to the London Zoo, and a certain Christopher Robin Milne saw her there. The rest is children's lit history.

Winnie: The True Story of the Bear Who Inspired Winnie-the-Pooh by Sally M. Walker and illustrated by Jonathan D. Voss was published back in January. Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear by Lindsay Mattick and illustrated by Sophie Blackall was published this October.

The first one is a straightforward picture book about an unusual subject. Voss's watercolors are especially good at capturing the humor in the scenes showing Winnie's time with the soldiers. He has an easy caricature-like style reminiscent of Robert McCloskey, drawing realistically adorable animals, while his people have slightly exaggerated features and postures. The text is necessarily fragmented because what is known about Winnie comes from a handful of intermittent sources (Colebourne's diary, zoo records). It's a good book, worthy of attention.

Then there is Finding Winnie. At the end of the book we learn that author Mattick is actually Harry Colebourn's great-granddaughter, which probably gave her a leg up on finding primary source material. She structures her story in a way that allows the gaps in our knowledge of Harry and Winnie to become organic. We see a mother telling a bedtime story to a small boy, Cole, who has requested a true story about a bear.

Cole and his mother are shown in simple pen-and-ink sidebars while the events in the story get full bleed watercolors dominating each spread. Whenever Cole interrupts, we lose the flow of the bear story for a moment, but it works to the book's advantage. The story of Harry and Winnie ends and the mother starts a second bear story, this time about Christopher Robin. This is a much easier way to deal with the missing time between Winnie's arrival at the zoo and Christopher's first visit to her. Finally, at the end, the family connection is revealed, including the news that little Cole was named after his great-great-grandfather.

What about Sophie Blackall's work on this book? I think the committee will be hooked from the start. As we all know, Caldecott committees love endpapers, so let's see what she does here. At the start, they show the lush Canadian woodland where Winnie's life began. Normally, when the front and back endpapers are not identical, they are connected to each other, showing scenes depicting the beginning and end of the story in a similar style. Instead, the final endpapers here are part of the final section of the book: what looks like an actual scrapbook with photos and clippings about Winnie. A more obvious choice might have been to show Christopher Robin at the zoo, or even Cole and his mother walking in the woods today. I would guess that they ran out of pages and made the decision to give the backmatter photo album those last two pages. After all, picture books have to conform to the economics of book publishing, which means that most books need to be a multiple of 16 or 8 pages. Or maybe this was a well-thought-out decision, beginning as a fictional bedtime story and ending as a tale from one family's history. Yeah, that works. I'll opt for that reason because I find this book so likable.

Blackall's art in this book feels cozy, despite the presence of war and soldiers. Most of the spreads use a palette of subdued browns, pinks, and greens. A few spreads break out of this limited palette, most notably a long view of the troop ship crossing the Atlantic under a bright red sunset with Winnie standing at the bow of the ship à la Leo and Kate in Titanic. When an illustrator makes a bold choice like this, I stop and wonder why. What effect was she going for? Does it help the story move forward? I can think of a few reasons, like foreshadowing war, but since we don't really see any fighting here, my best guess is that it helps the pacing. It certainly made me stop and look for longer than I would have if we'd seen a paler, less arresting sky. I'm not sure, but it works for me.

What I do know is that all the elements of this book collaborate perfectly. The elements — text, art, design — work together seamlessly, and no one element upstages another. It's a bedtime story and an information book: not a common combination. Blackall's contributions help to glue the individual threads together while still keeping them distinct. The bear in Canada story, the mother and boy at bedtime, and Christopher Robin at the zoo.

One of the comments about Blackall's A Fine Dessert wondered whether the committee would be comparing Winnie and Dessert. I say, Yes, absolutely. They will compare the two Winnies AND the two Blackalls. My own hunch is that, given all the concerns about A Fine Dessert, Blackall's best chance at a Caldecott this year will be Finding Winnie. And looking at the two Winnies side by side, I don't think there's much contest. Finding Winnie is the better book. But that's just my opinion. How do you think these books stack up?