Just a Dream by Chris Van Allsberg

Summary: Two-time Caldecott Medalist Van Allsburg reaches a new pinnacle of excellence in both illustration and storytelling in his latest work. Since his first book, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, appeared just over a decade ago, he has spun many strange and fantastic modern fairy tales, all of which spill over the edge of reality into magnificent dreamscapes. Here Van Allsburg introduces Walter, a boy who imagines the future as a marvelous time, with tiny airplanes that can be parked on the roof of your house and robots that take care of all your work for you. In the present, however, Walter is a litterbug who can't be bothered to sort the trash for recycling and laughs at Rose, the girl next door, because she receives a sapling for her birthday. One night, when Walter goes to sleep, his bed travels to the future. But he finds neither tiny airplanes nor robots, only piles of trash covering the street where he used to live, acres and acres of stumps where forests used to stand, rows and rows of great smokestacks belching out acrid smoke, and many other environmental nightmares. Van Allsburg renders each of these chilling scenarios in elaborate, superbly executed two-page spreads that echo the best work of M. C. Escher and Winsor McKay (creator of the Little Nemo comic strips). Walter and his bed land right in the middle of the action in each of these hallucinatory paintings, heightening the visual impact and forcing a hard look at the devastation surrounding Van Allsburg's protagonist. An awakened Walter, jolted by his dream, changes his ways: he begins to sort the trash and, like Rose, plants a tree for his birthday. Then his bed takes him to a different future, one where people tend their lawns with powerless mowers and where the trees he and Rose have planted stand tall and strong beneath a blue sky. Not only are Just a Dream 's illustrations some of the most striking Van Allsburg has ever created, but the text is his best yet. Van Allsburg has sacrificed none of the powerful, otherworldly spirit that suffuses his earlier works, and he has taken a step forward by bringing this spirit to bear on a vitally important issue. His fable builds to an urgent plea for action as it sends a rousing message of hope. All ages. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cross Curricular Connections: This is really a book with an environmental twist. This fantasy picture book would make a nice pair with Home or Window by Jeannie Baker.

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The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsberg

Summary: Grade 3 Up-Another quietly bizarre and stunning picture book from Van Allsburg. In this modern fairy tale, a Parisian dentist (a prissy and sadistic man who even hates his own dog) is given two magic figs by an old woman who tells him, "'They can make your dreams come true.'" Bibot scoffs. However, after the first fig proves to do exactly that (in a scene in which the dentist walks down the street in his underwear, and then the Eiffel Tower droops over), he realizes how precious they are. Night after night, he hypnotizes himself into dreaming that he is the richest man on earth. Finally, he prepares to eat the second fig. But his dog, Marcel, beats him to it, and the following morning, the dentist wakes up as the helpless pup under a bed, with his own face calling to him, "'Time for your walk. Come to Marcel.'" The Sweetest Fig is a superb blend of theme, language, and illustration, with a very grabbing plot as well. The writing is formal yet direct, using simple, deliberate vocabulary to match the elegant setting and mood. The shades of gray, cream, and brown and the calm, stable design enhance this mood. The angle at which readers view scenes is always intriguing and heightens their involvement. Most children old enough to read this complex book on their own will be fascinated and will return to it again and again. Van Allsburg at his best.
Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Classroom Implications: This text is great to teach point of view and perspective due to the sudden shift at the end of the book. It also lends itself well to characterization and cause and effect concepts.

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The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsberg

Summary: This book is a collection of illustrations that resemble old photographs of surreal events and images. Each illustration has an accompanying title and quote that entice the reader to image a plot for the picture. The premise of the book is that a man named Harris Burdick dropped off a sample of his work to a publisher to consider publishing. The sample only includes illustrations with these enticing titles and quotes. The publisher discloses that the artist never returned again. The publisher finds this so compelling, he ends up making a book out of this mystery.

Classroom Implications: The book is set up with a long author's note to the reader, thereby creating a very "real" feeling for this fictitious book. I've used this book over and over when teaching short stories and have ALWAYS led on that the story is "real" with my middle schoolers. They instantly become intrigued with the mystery and look forward to writing stories that accompany the illustration and the quotes. This text is a fantastic wordless fantasy book that serves as inspiration for writing projects in the classroom!

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Zoom by Istvan Banyai

Summary: From Booklist:Grades 3-8. Beginning with a close-up of a rooster's comb, each picture zooms out to give a more distant perspective; for example, the "camera" zooms out to show increasingly distant figures of children watching the rooster. Then, a large hand appears, showing that the scene was not depicting a real farm, but a toy farm set. But zoom out a few more times, and the scene reveals that the picture of the girl playing with the farm set is really on the magazine held by a boy, who's sleeping in a chair, which is by a pool, which is on an ocean liner, which is out at sea--no, wait--that picture is on a cruise-line poster on the side of a city bus, but that picture is on a television screen in the Arizona desert . . . and so on until the earth is shown from above, growing smaller with each turn of the page. The final scene is one white dot on a black page. Clear-cut paintings outlined in ink appear on each right-hand page; the left-hand pages are black. Not a story, but an "idea" book, it makes the viewer ask, "What am I really seeing here?" This clever picture book could be intriguing..., depending on the viewer's frame of mind, but children will find it worth a look. Once, anyway. Carolyn Phelan

Sequel Information: Re-Zoom
Summary: From Publishers Weekly:Re-Zoom resumes, or more accurately, reprises, the layout and nothing-is-as-it-seems perspective of last season's Zoom. Featuring detailed drawings backpainted on animation cels, this text-free volume opens with a red-on-blue cave painting that, with the turn of a page, becomes a detail on a wristwatch. The next spread reveals that the watch belongs to a young man doing a rubbing of carved hieroglyphs... and so on. To surprise his audience, which may already expect the sequence of pictures to expand to infinity, as in Zoom, Banyai toys not only with spatial relations but with time and with cultural referents: people in 19th-century garb, admiring an image of Napoleon, turn out to be on a movie set; a woman in traditional Japanese dress sports a yellow Walkman. There are nods to the arts as well. A black-and-white Alfred Hitchcock and a blue bodhisattva sit astride a thundering elephant, and a dejected-looking Picasso rides the New York City subway. The finale-which leaves readers in a subway tunnel as the train's red taillights recede-may not be as mindbending as Zoom's outer-space flight, but is nonetheless a clever solution. All ages. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The Other Side by Istvan Banyai

Summary: Grade 6 and Up–There's nothing mundane or predictable about Banyai's wordless picture book. As in Zoom and Re-Zoom (both Viking, 1995), the illustrator takes his audience on a visual journey that begins with a nearly blank page that, when turned, reveals instructions for folding a paper airplane. On the next page, a girl in her high-rise apartment practices her cello and a paper airplane can be seen outside her window. Readers flip the page to see the girl's building from the outside looking in. Paper airplanes are everywhere, thanks to a young neighbor one floor up who has been practicing his folding skills. Each pair of pages, front and back, presents inside and outside views, and although the scenes are not obviously linked to a larger plotline, they are connected through reoccurring images, colors, and themes. This is a challenging book, one that allows for creative speculation. The graphite-rendered artwork is quirky as well as infinitely interesting. Not everyone will get the sly humor, or be prepared to indulge in a book that demands such work. However, those who give it a try will be drawn into a thought-provoking, whimsical world. It's a book that begs to be talked about, and teachers will find it a useful tool for discussions about point-of-view and perspective.–Carol L. MacKay, Camrose Public Library, Alberta, Canada Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Notable Information: This text would be most efficiently used in an upper grade classroom. The way the story builds off of the perspective shifts is highly complex. It is a highly usable text to teach perspective, point of view and symbolism. The Other Side would also pair nicely with a writing activity based around the perspectives of the text. Students could also develop complex conceptual ideas that could become literary essays.

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Maus a Survivors Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman

Summary: Some historical events simply beggar any attempt at description--the Holocaust is one of these. Therefore, as it recedes and the people able to bear witness die, it becomes more and more essential that novel, vigorous methods are used to describe the indescribable. Examined in these terms, Art Spiegelman's Maus is a tremendous achievement, from a historical perspective as well as an artistic one.

Spiegelman, a stalwart of the underground comics scene of the 1960s and '70s, interviewed his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor living outside New York City, about his experiences. The artist then deftly translated that story into a graphic novel. By portraying a true story of the Holocaust in comic form--the Jews are mice, the Germans cats, the Poles pigs, the French frogs, and the Americans dogs--Spiegelman compels the reader to imagine the action, to fill in the blanks that are so often shied away from. Reading Maus, you are forced to examine the Holocaust anew.

This is neither easy nor pleasant. However, Vladek Spiegelman and his wife Anna are resourceful heroes, and enough acts of kindness and decency appear in the tale to spur the reader onward (we also know that the protagonists survive, else reading would be too painful). This first volume introduces Vladek as a happy young man on the make in pre-war Poland. With outside events growing ever more ominous, we watch his marriage to Anna, his enlistment in the Polish army after the outbreak of hostilities, his and Anna's life in the ghetto, and then their flight into hiding as the Final Solution is put into effect. The ending is stark and terrible, but the worst is yet to come--in the second volume of this Pulitzer Prize-winning set. --Michael Gerber

Don't Miss the Sequel: Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

Classroom Implications: This book adds a new dimension to a Holocaust study. The graphic novel provides a different angle, a new lens, for students to examine a subject that they may already know a lot about.

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Shh! The Whale is Smiling by Josephine Nobisso

Summary: From Amazon.com: C. Penn "WordWeaving" (Greenville, SC) - Author Josephine Nobisso and illustrator Maureen Hyde bring enchantment to the play of shadows and wind deep in the night in SHH! THE WHALE IS SMILING. As a fierce wind blows outside their home, a sister comforts her brother turning fear of the cold dark into a warm, safe place of imagination. Flying in their bed to the sea, they join a whale swimming among bubbles in a world of their marvelous creation.

The fear of the dark, wind and storms is gently confronted in this imaginative story for children. The dark becomes deep water, movement the swimming of a whale, and wind a part of the mystery of the sea, thereby replacing the fearful with the imaginative. A delightful tale, with fabulously realized illustrations, SHH! THE WHALE IS SMILING comes very highly recommended.

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Moonflute by Audrey Wood

Summary: Grades 3-6 In this long bedtime mood-piece, a little girl, Firen, accuses the moon of taking her sleep; she resolves to "go out in the night and find it.'' Outside, a moonbeam lands in her hands and becomes a magic flute with which she flies through the night. She encounters creatures of town, sea, and jungle in a dreamlike sequence illustrated in deep greens, blues, and violet. Firen herself has a pixie-ish, flower-fairy look, and is silvery-shiny with moonlight. Susan Patron, Los Angeles Public LibraryCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Notable Information: This is another dream-like fantasy text that can open the doors into the genre of fantasy. The text is long and more like a short story with illustrations. With this in mind, it makes a stronger text to use in the upper elementary grade classrooms.

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Alphabet City by Stephen T. Johnson

Summary: Grade 1 Up: Beginning with the A formed by a construction site's sawhorse and ending with the Z found in the angle of a fire escape, Johnson draws viewers' eyes to tiny details within everyday objects to find letters. In this wordless tour of sights from Times Square to the Brooklyn Bridge, he invites young and old alike to take a new look at familiar surroundings, discovering the alphabet without ever looking in a book or reading from a sign. Conceived in the tradition of Ann Jonas's work, especially The Thirteenth Clue (Greenwillow, 1992), Johnson's pastel, watercolor, gouache, and charcoal paintings are much more realistic than his illustrations for The Samurai's Daughter (Dial, 1992); in fact, they are almost photographic in appearance. Some of the images are both clever and incredibly clear, e.g., the E found in the sideways view of a traffic light. Others, such as the C in the rose window of a Gothic church, are more obscure. Nevertheless, all of the paintings are beautifully executed and exhibit a true sense of artistic vision. While parents or teachers might assume from the title that this is a traditional alphabet book, they should be encouraged to look at it as an art book. It's sure to inspire older children to venture out on their own walks to discover the alphabet in the familiar objects of their own hometowns. Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RICopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Notable Information: This is a fantastic mix of art, alphabet and wordless picture book! Best used with students already accustomed with the alphabet. Kids can play hide and go seek with the city of New York!

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The Hidden Alphabet by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

Summary: PreSchool-Grade 2-From the black book jacket with cutout openings for each letter of the title to the vibrant, painterly strokes of yellow on the endpapers, Hidden Alphabet is a visual delight. A black mat frames an object on each page. When it is lifted, each of these objects becomes a significant part of the letter's negative space (e.g., two balloons form circles to make the openings in the letter "B"). This clever trick of changing viewers' perspective from foreground to background will keep readers turning the pages to see the other optical illusions this pictorial byplay produces. Because of the way they are formed, the letters are not always completely conventional in shape. This may challenge very young children to identify them, but readers of any age will enjoy seeing a mouse turn into an "M" made of cheese with a few tiny chunks nibbled out of it. Seeger's interesting word choices-arrowhead, inkblot, olive, partridge, quotation mark, yolk-and her sophisticated paintings make this a fascinating artistic experience as well as a learning opportunity.Laurie Edwards, West Shore School District, Camp Hill, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Notable Information: I suggest using this book with children that are already accustomed to their letters. This book provides a unique twist on captivating the letters artistically, as well as pairing them with words not normally paired to represent the sound of the letters. This book won the award of the Ala Notable Children's Books for Younger Readers.

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The Graphic Alphabet by David Pelletier

Summary: Amazon.com Most alphabet books for pre-readers and early readers set out to make the somewhat abstract idea of letters as clear and as clearly linked to words as possible. In The Graphic Alphabet, graphic designer David Pelletier has created an alphabet book that aims to explore letters for their beauty and complexity as design elements as well as help teach kids how to read. His "A," for example, stands for "avalanche," and with its normally pointed top tumbling down the right diagonal, the letter doesn't just stand for the avalanche, it becomes the word. Pelletier is equally ingenious throughout. And while this might not be the best book to make the concept of letters concrete for youngsters, it will certainly help instill in them a sense of wonder about letters and words.

Notable Information: This book is a tad too sophisticated for younger students just learning their abc's. The author, a graphic designer created this alphabet book in 1996 that"had to retain the natural shape of the letter as well as represent the meaning of the word", by using good design. Thus, this is an excellent text for older students interested in art or graphic design. This book won the Caldecott award for illustrations and art.

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Life Doesn't Frighten Me by Maya Angelou

Summary: Grade 3-6-A unique book that combines the words of a renowned African-American poet laureate and the primitive, modern paintings of a young Haitian-American artist. With lines of verse that shout exuberantly from each page, a young voice rails against any and all things that mean to do her harm. Whether they are "Shadows on the wall/ Noises down the hall" or even "Mean old Mother Goose/Lions on the loose"-to one and all she responds- "they don't frighten me at all." In the middle, the pace and intensity quicken as "I go boo/Make them shoo/I make fun/Way they run." Despite the scary things around her, the poet's determined courage remains. The art provides a jolting counterpoint to the optimistic words, reflecting a dark, intense vision. Violent splashes of color bleed and drip one into another, and white letters are scratched into black backgrounds. Stark figures with grotesque features face off against one another. Symbols such as arrows, birds, crowns, and letters emphasize the artist's anger and sense of irony. The choice of the paintings, taken as they were from an extant body of work, give levels of meanings to a poem already strong with images of its own. A powerful exploration of emotion and its expression through the careful blend of words and art. Jane Marino, White Plains Public Library, NY Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Classroom Implications: An idea for this book would be to pair it with other Maya Angelou's poems. Her poetry tends to be widely popular with middle school aged girls. This would be an excellent way to see her poetry different due to the picture book format.

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There Is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me by Alice Walker

Summary: From Publishers Weekly
Walker (The Color Purple; Finding the Green Stone) praises the surroundings that fortify the human experience. In her vision, people do not work their will on the things around them, but rather the people and the universe influence each other: "There is a flower/ At the tip/ Of my nose/ Smelling/ Me./ There is a sky/ At the end/ Of my/ Eye/ Seeing/ Me." Vitale (When the Wind Stops) paints great swaths of sunset sky that glow from the horizon, illuminating the serene face of a dreaming girl who looks as if she would be at home anywhere. "There is a dance/ That lives/ In my bones/ Dancing/ Me," reads the text, as the heroine, charged from within by streams of incandescent energy, leaps and sways in swirls of sunlight that stream out from her fingertips. "There is a story/ At the end/ Of my arms," Walker concludes, "Telling/ Me!" Now a rainbow falls over the girl's face, and creation holds out marvelous possibilities. Smaller versions of herself surround the girl in a frieze: in these miniature images she flies, dives into the waves with a fish and climbs the leaves of an enormous white flower to kiss its face. It's less a story than an illuminated prayer"an expression of gratitude for one girl, all humans and the whole of the cosmos. All ages. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Classroom Implications: In the author's note in the back of the book, Alice Walker writes that this book began as a thank-you note. Students would really latch onto this concept. This text extends the idea of gratitude and shifts to a more universal way of looking at things. Middle school students may use this as a mentor text to inspire a new kind of writing that originates from a different, more universal perspective.

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Runaway Girl: The Artist Louise Bourgeois by Jan Greensberg

Summary: Gr. 7 and Up As in Frank O. Gehry, Outside In (2000), the authors once again make challenging art accessible and exciting to teen readers. This time they focus on Louise Bourgeois, one of the best-known living sculptors, whose work deals with primal themes of jealousy, betrayal, and shifting sexual identities, which, according to Bourgeois are inspired by her painful childhood and her adulterous father. In clear, elegant prose, bolstered with numerous quotes from the artist, the authors seamlessly juxtapose stories of Bourgeois' life with relevant artworks, which are often explained in the artist's own words. Beautifully reproduced photographs, printed on well-designed pages, offer an excellent mix of the artist's personal life and her art, though the authors remind readers that "we don't have to know her story to have our own strong reaction," to her work. By showing the relationship among shapes, colors, materials, and emotions, the authors invite readers to approach even the most bewildering art with confidence and think about it in their own words. The book concludes with a glossary, a bibliography, and notes. Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Classroom Implications: Another book by Greensberg to spruce up middle school biography collection. Text interweaves some personal struggles students can relate to and the art she manifested as in artist. This text does an excellent job connecting the personal life with what she produces in her professional world.

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Andy Warhol, Prince of Pop by Jan Greenberg

Summary: Grade 6-9–Warhol's career spanned advertising, painting, filmmaking, and magazine publishing. This competent, well-documented biography covers his childhood and art school years in Pittsburgh, his successful career in commercial art, and his rise in the Pop Art movement. Chapters also cover his dependence on his mother; his pursuit of celebrity; the lively social, drug, and art scene at his studio (christened the "Factory"); a near-fatal shooting; and his death at age 59. The authors provide a good balance of personal and art history, showing how Warhol's signature silkscreen soup cans and portraits were rooted in his commercial beginnings and 1960s commentary on consumerism. Throughout, they provide insight into specific works of art and their relationship to one another. Their liberal use of quotes by Warhol and his contemporaries paints a picture of a man who was often flip or evasive, who wore a very public persona but was extremely guarded about his personal life. The excellent glossary will aid students new to art terms. From the cover design to the quality of the paper and well-selected reproductions and photos, this is attractive bookmaking. While this eccentric, enigmatic subject is not likely to engender affection among readers, they will finish the book with an understanding of his legacy to the art world.–Daryl Grabarek, School Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Classroom Implications: This book is sure to update and liven a book study of biographies in a middle school classroom! Winner of the Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award, Greenberg works to humanize a controversial subject of history and a past art scene.

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