Trying to read all the picture books published in a given year is daunting. So, I confess to cheating—keeping up only with the current books in the genre I tend to write (biographies, social studies, history.) Ask me (as some teachers recently did) about great science picture books and you’ll …
Jonah Winter’s first picture book biography came out around 20 years ago. He has done another fine book in Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio illustrated by the great James E. Ransome. Winter breaks the “rule” of staying under 1000 words (I quickly counted between 1300-1500, plus an author’s note.) Why? To tell a …
Long before I wrote picture books, my sons literally had to beg me to take “true” picture books out of our library. I assumed picture book nonfiction was a shorter version of a social studies text. It didn’t take long before I found myself rereading these books after my boys …