The Caldecott Medal marks its seventy-fifth anniversary this year. In a year-long series of articles, librarian and children’s literature historian K. T. Horning looked at one seminal but unheralded Caldecott book of each decade — identifying trends, noting the changing nature of the picture book, wrestling with issues and definitions. We’ve collected original Horn Book […]
Review of If Snow Falls
If Snow Falls: A Story for December by Jon Agee; illus. by the author Primary Pantheon 36 pp. 1982 0-394-85520-5 $5.95 Library ed. ISBN 0-394-95520-X $6.99 Calling to mind the individual frames of a film, small richly colored paintings progress sequentially in concert with the lulling rhythm of a brief text. The first page shows […]
Review of Finger Rhymes
Finger Rhymes compiled by Marc Brown; illus. by the compiler Preschool, Primary Dutton/Unicorn 32 pp. 1980 0-525-29732-4 $8.95 Fourteen familiar finger rhymes, one to a page, are accompanied by black-and-white line drawings shaded with gray, old-fashioned in detail but contemporary in style. At the head of each appropriate line of text, directions for finger […]
Horn Book reviews of Caldecott Medal winners, 1980-1989
1980 DONALD HALL Ox-Cart Man (Viking) Illustrated by Barbara Cooney Like a pastoral symphony translated into picture book format, the stunning combination of text and illustrations re-creates the mood of nineteenth-century rural New England. Economical and straightforward, the narrative achieves a poetic tone through the use of alliteration and repetition, as in the description of […]
Horn Book reviews of Caldecott Medal winners, 1970-1979
1970 WILLIAM STEIG, Author-Illustrator Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (Windmill/Simon) Sylvester the young donkey was a pebble collector; one day he found a flaming red stone, shiny and round — and quite unaccountably able to grant wishes. Overjoyed, Sylvester was planning to share his magic with his family when “a mean, hungry lion” appeared. Startled […]