This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While we normally see, on an annual basis, a new crop of picture books about the legendary civil rights leader, there seem to be even more this year in an effort to mark this somber anniversary.

Andrea Davis Pinkney’s Martin Rising: Requiem for a King, illustrated by Brian Pinkney, is one of those offerings. It is a collection of free verse poems that clocks in at nearly 130 pages. It’s not a traditionally structured biography, either. Instead, it focuses primarily on the final months of Dr. King’s life, including the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis and his assassination. At the beginning of the book, we go from a poem depicting him as a boy to one where he is celebrating his thirty-ninth birthday with his family. He was 39 when he died. So the book wastes no time establishing that we’ll be taking a look at the dramatic final months of his life.

So, what about these illustrations? Well, I’m a big fan of Pinkney’s work. I love how his lines swoop and spin and curve. I love how he captures movement, in particular. He does all of that here, his signature style on display. His palette is filled with light; yellow dominates. It’s a book that, given the title and that luminescent cover, immediately establishes Dr. King as a sun, a guiding light. But the book is divided into three sections: Daylight, Darkness, and Dawn. So naturally we see the palette darken toward the middle. In the “Darkness” poems — which cover April 3 to April 9, 1968 (he was killed on April 4) — the vibrant yellows and reds darken. Deeper blues and greens creep in — until we reach a spread dominated by blackness. Dr. King has been shot. “His white shirt — splattered red!” Andrea Davis Pinkney writes. Subtle red brushstrokes circle the words. It’s a powerful, chilling moment.

As the illustrator, Brian Pinkney also brings to life the vivid metaphors of the poems, such as (as already mentioned) the notion of King as a sun. The poems also include the turbulent weather of Memphis in the spring of 1968 as a stand-in for the dashed hopes of those fighting for equality, so there are threatening clouds, storms, rain, and swirling winds. Henny Penny is the reader’s guide throughout the book, so Pinkney paints her on the very first spread in quick, thick brushstrokes (O! What Pinkney can capture with just a few lines, right?), and she appears repeatedly throughout the book. And there’s a lot of celestial flight here: for one, Pinkney depicts King’s casket as having brilliant yellow wings. In a poem called “Roar!” Pinkney paints a vicious lion (“In like a lion, / the month of changing seasons / charges ahead”) as well as protesters marching on land that morphs into a bear “trying to fight the grizzly bear of injustice.”

This is a lovingly crafted book (remove the dust jacket for surprises), and I like its breathing room: Pinkney is never one to clutter up a spread. In a closing note, Pinkney writes that he was inspired by abstract expressionists Marc Chagall and Norman Lewis, and those influences are evident here in this book for which, as Rumaan Alan wrote in the New York Times, Pinkney manages to find beauty in such a sad subject.

The question is: will the committee see these illustrations as ones that extend the text (in that unique way that picture book art can do), or will they see this as more of an illustrated book? Do the illustrations do enough of the heavy lifting for the book to be considered, as the criteria state, “a picture book for children”? Or are these merely a series of images that follow the story being told, yet don’t extend the story in any way?

In a comment in this 2013 Calling Caldecott post about picture books vs. illustrated books, Leda Schubert wrote:

"When teaching or running mock-Caldecotts or even just talking about the award or picture books, I’ve often turned to Uri Shulevitz’s concise definition in WRITING WITH PICTURES.  ‘A story book [read ‘illustrated book'] tells a story with words. Although the pictures amplify it, the story can be understood without them. The pictures have an auxiliary role, because the words themselves contain images. In contrast, a true picture book tells a story mainly or entirely with pictures. When words are used, they have an auxiliary role. A picture book says in words only what pictures cannot show… It could not, for example, be read over the radio and be understood fully.’

That last phrase says it all."

This issue (picture books vs. illustrated books) was also discussed here in 2011 (a short post worth reading).

What do you think? Have you seen Martin Rising? Would you define it as a picture book? Is it a book that "essentially provides the child with a visual experience”? If I shared Martin Rising with you now and did not show you the illustrations (Shulevitz's radio rule, if you will), you would be able to follow it, without a doubt. What do you think of this radio rule of thumb?