This is a thick book. Why is this book so thick? It’s either loaded with fluff or has too many white pages. Alas, it is thick, but its physical pages are thicker than the average illustrated book, plus it’s loaded with fun, easy-to-understand, STEM facts about the evolution and process of rubber. To those first reactions I say, don’t be intimidated by its thickness. Instead, just enjoy the fact that Bounce! A Scientific History of Rubber is able to create a non-fiction, linear story with STEM nuggets woven in that young readers won’t be turned off by. It can be challenging to get young readers to accept illustrated books that don’t have unicorns or animals in it, thus the first hurdle towards getting them in the book is not getting in the way.
Author Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville have a niche in children’s publishing that speaks to the white spaces in illustration. The blank spaces in illustrations can bring about as much power as the colored parts. A page full of color might seem like more, but it can be overwhelming and is too much. The two authors have paired up two times prior to Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, and while each bok is different, they have strands that bind their quality and maintain their level of interest among elementary and lower-middle school readers. This is all the more surprising because the duo has written non-fiction books on women that typically have flown under the pop culture radar.
In How To Build A Hug they wrote about Autism expert, Dr. Temple Grandin. Pocketful of Colors: The Magical World of Mary Blair, Disney Artist Extraordinaire, told the story about a woman whose work people know, but few outside of the Disney-fandom could readily talk about or reference. With Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All, the two are partnered again with the Brigette Barrager, the illustrator that did the wonderful work on Pocketful. This trio work well together, or more accurately, Barrager’s style of art flows very well with the minimalist, yet detailed story they’ve created.
In both books, the subjects could’ve had a much more in-depth look at their lives or accomplishments. Lucy! is predomately about the very early years of Lucille Ball. When she was very young her father died and she lived with her relatives, who did not agree with her constant tomfoolery. This led her to play by herself most of the time. When her mother returned from working in a different city, it allowed Ball to see how much of her she could become.
She performed in local plays, school functions or any activity that let Lucille be the funny person she wanted to become. Her mother saw the passion Lucille put forth, as well as, the local success she had, so she scrounged up the money to send her to acting school in New York City. When Lucille got there she saw that she had the drive, but that because she wasn’t a singer, dancer or dramatic person her ability to make people laugh was going to be challenging. She jumped at any opportunity to get in front of audiences and continued slogging it away. Lucile kept at it, honed her slapstick skills with Buster Keaton and was there when movies started being filmed in Technicolor.
This led to her coloring her hair bright red, which yielded more bit parts in 60 movies over ten years. Unfortunately, this was the same serious stuff that paid bills, but wasn’t the funny money that she knew was in her blood. That fruit happened when she signed on to be a funny housewife in a radio comedy show, My Favorite Husband. It was taped in front of a live audience, which scratched the itch she had for making people laugh and became a very successful show. As television was a new medium it was logical that this be translated to the small screen and the rest of Lucille Ball, I Love Lucy, Desi Arnaz, and the legend that she wrought is history.
I remember watching I Love Lucy I as a kid. I’ve seen snippets of the show as I wrote this review, which is one reason it took me so long to do. One highlight begets another highlight and so on, the show still holds up today and its humor translates to modern audiences. The only thing that will preclude it from being enjoyed by elementary or middle school audiences to the same degree is the fact that it’s in black & white, and much of the humor is based around relationships. There are still some hilarious physical gags and mistaken identity bits that don’t require any age limit to watch and enjoy.
Lucy! sets up the events and time period that lead up to her iconic television show. The story of never giving up, working hard for what you want and having the patience to see it through are characteristics that anyone can benefit from. You could easily imagine anyone who has trained hard for something, but had to wait decades until it was their time to go on stage, perform the operation, walk in space or do whatever had led them to that point. It’s resilience 101, a trait that some kids need lots more of and Lucy! is just the entertaining kind of book that they’ll enjoy reading and just might learn something from.
Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All is by Amy Guglielmo and Jacqueline Tourville with illustrations by Brigette Barrager and is available on Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams Books.
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The below was not in the I Love Lucy show, it might not even be about Lucille Ball, but it’s a great song from a criminally underrated band.
This book will not interest me because the main character’s name is Belva. At one point that name was probably super popular, but then it became something that’s more associated with crackers. Ballots for Belva seems like that, but it is very fascinating, educational, and eventually, entertaining. It’s especially so for know-it-all people, elementary school kids or those who are otherwise looking for the exception to every rule. It’s a non-fiction, illustrated book highlighting the first woman to complete a presidential election cycle and receive votes. That’s a complex way to describe it and exposes the issues of being a book about ‘the first (insert blank here) to…..’, but Ballots for Belva addresses those weaknesses, and moves on from them to deliver a concrete story that we can all hopefully put behind us.
The extent to which children think about animals crossing the road stopped when they answered the question about the chicken. And even then that query, and its many derisions, are tiresome, repetitive, and work for the five-year-old audience one time only. Wildlife Crossings: Protecting Animal Pathways Around the World is an illustrated book that will fascinate elementary ages and get them to think, yes actually think about something that they’ve never thought about before.
Coal is something whose byproduct we know, yet the process of getting it from the ground is draped in mystery. We know the lights can be powered by coal, our rechargeable batteries too, but most Americans haven’t thought of the history of coal in the United States. Citizens of the United States might know that West Virginia is often synonymous with coal and is dangerous work. Yet the history of coal, involves low wages, brutal treatment of workers, a repressive means of payment, and unscrupulous owners. The Mine Wars: The Bloody Fight for Worker’s Rights in the West Virginia Coalfields tells this story that’s worthy of a mini-series.
Children’s books can be for the curious, or the mandated. Unfortunately, elementary and middle school ages often engage in books because of the former. However, it’s those curious kids, the ones who have a basic interest in a subject and want to learn more about it, that are laying the seeds for future success at a higher level. That’s a challenging lesson to impart to younger readers for sure. Fire Escape: How Animals and Plants Survive Wildfires is a chapter book aimed at middle school readers who are smart enough to realize that fire does not always equal total devastation and that life finds a way.
Adults who visit an elementary school library will experience various thoughts. Look at how skinny these books are. Look at how many books are in this library. How can all of these books get the attention that they deserve? As The Seas Rise is an illustrated book with noble intentions but is five eras too late. The rise of sea level and climate change is science, it’s happening, but I would argue that some books do more to damage the greater cause than the good that it intends. For example, if this book were more informational about sunny day flooding then it would have more of a punch and immediacy. As it stands, the book melds one strong issue, a soft character portrait, and an environmental issue that’s tough for kids to comprehend into a listless illustrated story adrift in a crowded library of better books.
What if Eric Carle illustrated one of Richard Scarry’s books with a more narrative vibe? First off, let’s remind you that Eric Carle is the illustrator behind Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Richard Scarry is the author and illustrator of over 300 books that show young children the myriad of things that happen or exist in their town. Big Book of Vehicles is a picture book that is all about the things that move. Some of them go in the air, on the water, underground, have people, cargo or move in the mountains, but they all go and kids will be able to turn to any page in this book and lose themselves in the best of all possible book ways.
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