8.8 Art - Picture Books

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined themed chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the eighth day of the month is "Art."

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I had an acquaintance in grad school who was married to a very successful children's book illustrator. If you've ever read a Little Blue Truck book to a child, they've seen her work. I would only see her occasionally at events, but I would always corner her and talk to her about the publishing industry because I found it absolutely fascinating and so different from anything I had ever done in my life.  

Recently, I've been thinking about some of the conversations I had with Jill, especially about one book she illustrated where there was a dog that was hiding on every page and she thought that the people in the book looking for the dog, particularly the adults, were really stupid and careless. People in my life have been recommending children's books to me and I've been so impressed with the quality of these picture books. It's crazy how far we've come from a dog hiding in plain sight. Picture books are such a great mixed media enterprise with the combination of visual art and the written word.

Lisa recommended Gato Guapo to me and I have to say it's a delightful read. This book, written by Anikia Adlamuy Denise and illustrated by Zara González Hoang (2023), is the story of a very handsome cat and nine little cats who follow him down the street. Told in a mixture of English and Spanish, I highly recommend this book, especially if you're raising bilingual kids. I suspect it would be a great hit as a read aloud once kids realized the pattern.  

On my most recent post about hats, Bibliomama recommended This Is Not My Hat (Hat Trilogy #2) by Jon Klassen (2012) which is the tale of a small fish who steals a hat from a big fish and the big fish's attempt to get his hat back while the little fish hides. I honestly spent like ten minutes trying to find the little fish in a two-page spread of plants and laughed like a crazy person at the expressions on the big fish's face. 

One of my friends from high school is married to a lady who works at a library with the kids/teens. (This makes it sounds like she's not my friend. She and my high school friend have been together since before I even met my own husband, so she's my friend, too. Not just the wife of a friend. I don't know why I feel like I need to make this explicit, but in light of my recent posts on friendship, I want her to get credit!) She recommended TWO picture books to me, which made me sort of laugh because who is recommending picture books to forty-somethings? Well, it's my friends who know me a little too well.

First up from her recommendations is Big by Vashti Harrison (2023). A baby girl is told she is a big girl as she's growing up and that's a good thing. But all of a sudden being big is not a good thing. I wish I could describe the illustrations in this book for you in great detail. It's just so powerful. The girl hears all these negative words and it makes her feel bigger and bigger until she's taking up all the space on the page of the book. But she also feels smaller and smaller. And then she cries and she's crying out the words that hurt her. 

I was in tears by the end of this book as the little girl arrives at a good place in her journey of self-acceptance and self-empowerment. I will definitely be buying this as a gift for young girls in the future.

The final book in my picture book extravaganza is Mommy's Khimar by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow and illustrated by Ebony Glenn (2018). A young Muslim girl spends the day in her mommy's closet, admiring her khimars and playing with one in her favorite color. The book also shows some women in her community not wearing a khimar and that's okay, too.

What a delightful time I had reading these books!

Do you have any recommendations for picture books for me? If we have them at the library, I promise I'll check out all the recs you give me!