Daddy Mojo used to teach. Being an ex educator he’s interested in many things about education, such as teaching policies, best practices and bureaucracy.
What is an IV? As an adult, I know what an IV does, and I have a vague idea of what goes into putting it in your arm. However, as a child, the concept of having an IV inserted into my arm would’ve scared me silly. This is where illustrated books such as What’s An IV? is an illustrated book intended for elementary school-aged children who need to have an IV put into their arm. It’s approachable and has the potential to put kids at ease about the process, at least as much as they can be.
There’s a two-page spread in My Dear Sea that perfectly encapsulates the imagination of a child and how they see things. It’s just halfway through the book and shows a young girl running on the shore parallel to the sea. There are outcrops of sand dunes that poke out from the sea, towering above her, set against an impossibly ocean that’s a black as a thousand midnights at the bottom; but becomes that gorgeous light azul you only see in the Caribbean or near Lake Ohrid. The disparate chasm between shallow and deep probably doesn’t occur quickly, but kids imagine it to be that deep. My Dear Sea is an illustrated book about a young girl’s conversation with the sea, how she imagines it appear in its depths and the creatures that live there in her mind’s eye.
Why should students care about the life story about a woman who lived more than a century ago and studied birds? Gene Stratton-Porter is well-known in ornithology, but outside of that arena you probably haven’t heard of her. This is one of the things about well-made illustrated books that make the genre so much more than it appears to be. Bird Girl: Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World doesn’t break any new ground in regards to the story, even though it’s one young audiences don’t know. At it’s core, the book is about finding your way and exploring what you love. Instead, this is a great book because of the unknown variable (Gene Stratton-Porter) and the illustrations by Rebecca Gibbon that are used to tell her life story.
The subtitle to this puzzle book by Alex Bellos is so true. I’m a relatively clever person so I approached each of the set ups in Puzzle Me Twice with, what I thought was, a calm head and a clear mind….and I got most of them incorrect. I rationalized it by saying that they were incorrect because once I read the correct answer I realized my response was too quick. Had I really taken my time the book would have confirmed to me the genius that I think I am. However, in my self-imposed course of humble pie, I jumped in the rabbit hole of Alex Bellos’ other puzzles and have lowered my genius peg down to humble puzzle novice.
For a children’s concept that’s seemingly so simple, it took me years to understand it. In theory I should love Rube Goldberg. I love books and the idea of engineering, tinkering with things, plus what’s not to love about Rube Goldberg? It’s like steam punk. You’ve rig up everyday objects and arrange them so that their energy will make an impact on something, like opening a door or squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. It’s a simple act made needlessly, but entertainingly, complex. Rube Goldberg’s Big Book of Building solves the issue that I had with the process on the very first page.
Ask an upper-elementary student to do a report on something and they’ll pick the strangest, creepiest, most uncommon one in the book. They might determine who they’ll research by how gross their name is, how ugly they are or how remote their habitat is, thus Brazilian Spitting Death Spider Monkeys of the word unite. Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-Of-A-Kind Creatures is an illustrated book for middle-elementary ages through lower-middle school that’s mostly creepy and not too much common.
Prior to Nothing I had not heard of it. The concept of doing nothing, like laying on the sofa watching sub-par movies of listlessly waiting for something to do has long passed us by, having coincidentally happened when we had our first child 15 years ago. In this case, Nothing: John Cage and 4’33” is an illustrated book about a composer and one of his most unique pieces. It was a composition that lasted for four minutes and thirty-three seconds and was completely silent.
Are hyper-realistic graphic novels a genre? I don’t think they are, but The Other Side of Tomorrow is a graphic novel that wields a mighty hammer in knocking at the doors of book classification. It’s realistic fiction, but is so realistic, both in the manner in which the illustrations are done, and the taut nature of the story that you’ll pinch yourself in gratitude that it’s not happening to you. This is a graphic novel that entertains via drama, age-appropriate political intrigue, familial love and armchair travel. Moreover, The Other Side of Tomorrow manages to tell its story alongside one of the greatest geographic areas and humanitarian crises that middle school kids never learn about, North Korea.
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