But For Them . . .

There was immense uncertainty.  There was little knowledge.  There was too much knowledge.  This was not at the local level, the state level, or at the national level.  This was worldwide.  It consumed every aspect of our lives.

It has been 110 days since receipt of the second dose of the vaccine to combat COVID-19.  Prior to that time, 395 days were spent sheltering in place with my constant canine companion.  Without the dedication of essential workers, it would have been far more difficult.  Mail, packages (usually with books), and food were delivered.  Conversations with those marvelous people were conducted through the window glass.  Deep appreciation compelled the leaving of notes and gift cards for these wonderful human beings.  Keeping The City Going (A Caitlyn Dlouhy Book, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, April 27, 2021) written and illustrated by Brian Floca is a melodic, visual expression of gratitude.  It echoes eloquently what many feel and believe.

  

We are here at home now,

watching the world through our windows,

and wondering what will happen next.

The world beyond those windows is not as it has been.  It is nearly silent, businesses are closed, and neighbors are inside.  There are still some people outside moving in all directions.  They are the ones serving the city and its inhabitants.  They are the ones needed to survive this unfamiliar happening.

They bring food from restaurants to our doorsteps.  They bring food to our markets, making sure the shelves are rarely empty.  There are people operating the vehicles providing transportation to those who work in those restaurants and markets.  Taxis still race from place to place.

Sanitation workers tirelessly strive to keep the city clean.  Postal workers deliver mail.  Other services leave packages we can hardly wait to open.  

Utilities we rely on 24/7, internet, electricity, gas, and water, continue because these essential workers are on the job.  Firefighters, police officers, and EMTs work above and beyond committed in honoring their obligations.  All members of hospital staffs push themselves to limits they are unaware they have.  Though we are seeing this city through a window, we witness the steady continuation of vital activities.  Each evening we honor them, at seven o'clock. Listen.

With that first sentence, author Brian Floca portrays a moment felt by many people in cities (in all communities) around the world. With each subsequent thought he builds on the actions of all those not at home looking out at the world.  He heralds their daily accomplishments needed by us.  He does this by speaking plainly, but also poetically with veracity.  Here is a passage.

They're delivering letters and packages---

boxes full of things people need

but can't go out to buy.

And maybe . . . 

just maybe, they're brining

that one thing we ordered

that we don't really need . . . 

If someone were to look at the open and matching dust jacket and book case for this title, their first thought might be about the masks people are wearing.  This gives this book a timely quality for readers now, but also a timeless trait for readers in the future.  Why are people wearing masks?  Each of those vehicles and the people on and in them have a particular purpose necessary to this narrative.  The fine lines, the attention to detail, the realistic but soft colors, are identifying qualities of Brian Floca's artwork throughout this book, throughout many of his books.

To the left, on the back, amid a white canvas is a single, loosely framed circular image.  It is a close-up of a window placed in a block building.  A tree branch hangs over the left corner.  Taped to the window, on the inside, is a piece of paper.  On the paper a rainbow has been drawn.  This symbolizes hope.  This action spread around the world.

A rich, earthy dark tan covers the opening and closing endpapers.  Opposite the verso and dedication (In memory of Richard Jackson, editor and friend) page, a panoramic view of New York City is featured.  These illustrations rendered in

watercolor, ink, acrylic, and gouache  

are placed surrounded by white space, grouped together on a single page to emphasize a point, span a single page, edge to edge, or across two pages, edge to edge.

The images are replete with action in contrast to those sheltering inside, peering out their windows.  All the elements in each picture, large or small, ask us to pause.  They encourage us to remember the people who, whether we are in a lockdown or free to go about our daily lives, keep our communities working properly.  

One of my many, many favorite images is toward the end of the book.  It highlights an overview of two street corners, one street running along the bottom of the page and the other going away from us in the central area.  Buildings line this street on both sides.  It is the same scene shown earlier in the day.  Now a golden hue covers the buildings as the sun moves lower in the sky.  The street is still nearly quiet except for the portion of an ambulance driving off the left side.  There is comfort in this picture, knowing there are those caring for us.

This book, Keeping The City Going written and illustrated by Brian Floca, is a gift.  It is a gift to all those who worked day in and day out to maintain services for everyone.  It is a gift to all readers, reminding us to never forget those who forged paths for creating easier lives for us amid one of the most challenging times in the last one hundred years.  I highly recommend this title for both your personal and professional collections.  

To discover more about Brian Floca and his other work, please follow the link attached to his name to access his website.  Brian Floca has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  The cover reveal is hosted at Publishers Weekly.  This title is showcased at author, reviewer, and blogger Julie Danielson's Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  You will enjoy the conversation between her and Brian along with a lot of artwork.  At the publisher's website you can view the entire jacket and case as well as interior pictures.

Seeking The Bright Side

As an educator, one of the things you learn and remember about working with children is their constant ability to think outside the box.  Their cleverness and fresh points of view, given freedom and support, are astonishing.  Their compassion inspires. 

Never have they, never have we, been more tested than now, on a global level, for more than a year.  The losses have been unprecedented in this new normal.  Two recent titles, addressing unexpected change, provide us with deep insight and a way to seek and find hope.  Ten Beautiful Things (Charlesbridge, January 12, 2021) written by Molly Beth Griffin with illustrations by Maribel Lechuga follows the road trip of a girl to her new home with her grandmother.  She is not happy about this move.

Lily ran her finger across the Iowa map.

An X marked Gram's house

on an empty patch of land.

Lily's new home.

With a long drive ahead of them, Gram suggests they search for ten beautiful things.  She knows these things will help to fill the empty space in her granddaughter's heart.  Lily, looking out the window, is certain there is nothing worth noting.

Suddenly, the sun breaks over the horizon.  This is the first beautiful thing.  Gram offers further encouragement, but the initial warmth of discovering beauty wans.  Then, Gram yells.  The second beautiful thing stretches before them.

Sometimes the loveliness they find is seen, other times it is heard or smelled, and sometimes it extends the meaning of beautiful.  As they travel closer to Gram's house, a wild storm with wind, thunder, and lightning races across a darkened sky.  They count it as number nine.

Gram keeps driving. The words

almost there

seem like almost never.  And then, they arrive.  Lily is dismayed they did not find number ten.  Gram assures her.  They have number ten.  It's the most beautiful thing of all.

In carefully chosen words, author Molly Beth Griffin pens a gentle story of loss and gathering even the smallest thing to help fill the hollow feeling.  Using a blend of narrative and conversation, we connect with the duo as they travel across the vast landscapes found in the American Midwest.  We, along with Lily and Gram, learn to use our senses to find beauty.  Here is a passage.

A wind farm had sprouted

in the field beside the freeway.

Spinning windmill blades

gleamed in the morning sun.

The scene we see on the front, right, of the matching and open dust jacket and book case extends over the spine to the left edge of the back on the left.  This full color image by Maribel Lechuga captures the true spirit of driving through the countryside.  The red-winged blackbird against the rays of the rising sun as Lily and Gram head home depicts several of the beautiful things.  On the left as the sunlight paints pinks and purples on clouds over the farmland, barn, and silos, another of the beautiful things is displayed.  (Truthfully, this image is a beautiful thing, making the number eleven.)  The title text is varnished.

On the opening and closing endpapers, the hue is the same rich teal seen in the title text.  The illustration on the title page shows Gram packing the car, as Lily sits on a box.  The pictures in this title are rendered

in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint, with added watercolor textures made in traditional mediums.

They are full-page pictures, double-page images, smaller visuals grouped on a single page or single loosely framed images on one page with liberal white space around them.  

There are multiple vistas shown as the granddaughter and her grandmother travel to begin their new life together.  Sometimes, it is a bird's eye view.  This enables us to make the trip with them.  At the right moment to enhance the pacing and text, we move in close to the characters or one of the beautiful things.  We may be inside the car with them or looking at the outside through a car window.  This makes the experience more intimate. 

One of my many, many favorite illustrations is a double-page picture.  Five high-flying mallard ducks glide among clouds over a meandering stream.  The perspective for readers is as if we are with the birds.  Beginning in the upper, right-hand corner to the left of the gutter, this small, two-lane road cuts across the right side and over the water.  The land on either side of the stream is represented in shades of green, with grasses, shrubs, and willowy trees.  This is a glorious point of view.

Change in our lives is inevitable, but how we work through it can supply us with an accepted new normal.  Ten Beautiful Things written by Molly Beth Griffin with illustrations by Maribel Lechuga is a book to cherish for the simple but profound actions it requires of us.  It is a marvelous guide.  You'll want a copy of this on your professional and personal bookshelves.

To learn more about Molly Beth Griffin and Maribel Lechuga and their other work, please visit their respective websites by following the link attached to their names.  Molly Beth Griffin has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Maribel Lechuga has accounts on Facebook and Instagram.  She also has a blog here.  At the publisher's website you can view an interior image and download an activity kit.  At Penguin Random House you can view other interior visuals.

One of the most important truths to hold in our hearts is during difficult times we are never completely alone.  It may appear we are alone, but there are others who have been in a similar situation or are in the same situation with us at the same time.  This book, There Is a Rainbow (Chronicle Books, January 26, 2021) written by Theresa Trinder with pictures by Grant Snider empowers readers to see both sides of time.

A story has a beginning and an end.

When we begin at a particular position, there is another place for us to arrive.  The space, the points from the start to the finish, are real.  During the isolation we are feeling during a pandemic, it is good to understand each of these sentences.  

We know from our increased use of computers, there are colleagues, classrooms, and students on their computers with us.  When we look outside our windows, we see other people.  Some of these people are important to keeping the world functioning.  Others are important in keeping us connected to a smaller circle of family and friends.

In the continuing cadence of phrases, we learn how the journey takes us forward.  It moves us to a glimmer of brightness, a direction, and comfort.  Storms don't last; we do by holding to the belief each day is a new beginning.

The first sentence of this narrative is like the first string of notes in a piece of music.  Theresa Trinder uses this as a rhythmic line, an invitation to readers, for all the sentences that follow.  There is a declaration and a response in each thought. These responses sometimes are what readers might expect, but others are refreshingly original.  Each response is marvelously upbeat.  Here is another of her sentences.

On the other side of town 

(page turn)

there is a voice.

All the illustrations in this book

were rendered in colored pencil.

The soothing, uplifting quality of the narrative is heightened by the artwork of Grant Snider.  His medium fashions a soft texture and his color palette reaches out to the intended audience enveloping them in warmth. The neighborhood street shown on the front, right side, of the dust jacket continues on the other side of the spine.  The time of day is slightly different.  Here, on the back, it is still raining.  People are outside going about their business.  These two scenes are our introduction to the intricate details Grant Snider incorporates into his illustrations.

On the book case is a close-up of a sidewalk.  Colorful drawings of a rainbow between two clouds, our planet, a shooting star, the sun peeking from behind a cloud and a red balloon are spread across the two sides.  We read:

THANK YOU HEROES, WE GOT THIS, STAY SAFE, IN IT TOGETHER, and STAY STRONG.

The title is written in a rainbow of colors on the right side.  A rainbow pattern of triangles is along the bottom of the right side.  

The opening and closing endpapers are bright purple.  On the verso and title pages we are introduced to the neighborhood boy and girl, each with large pieces of chalk in their hands for making the pictures on the sidewalk.  They wave in greeting while keeping their distance.

Each visual spans two pages.  There is a rainbow in some form in many of the illustrations or the colors in a rainbow are used in each scene.  This supplies readers with a sense of harmony.

One of my many, many favorite pictures brings us close to the street in the neighborhood.  At the top of the page on the left side are portions of two buildings and a city bus on the street.  Across the street running into the crosswalk is the boy, a letter in his outstretched hand.  Three pigeons appear in the foreground.  The crosswalk fills a large section on the right side.  We see the curb and a street signpost in the upper, right-hand corner.  This illustration and the three subsequent visuals are part of another pictorial short story.

This book, There Is a Rainbow written by Theresa Trinder with pictures by Grant Snider, is a superb book for people now.  It speaks to the everyday events we have experienced and are experiencing.  It is an explanation.  It is hope we can hold in our hands.  I highly recommend this title for your personal and professional collections.

To discover more about Theresa Trinder and Grant Snider and their other work, please follow the link attached to their names to access their websites.  Grant Snider also has a website titled Incidental Comics.  Theresa Trinder has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Grant Snider has accounts on Facebook (Facebook), Instagram, and Twitter.  Theresa Trinder is showcased at KidLit411.  The cover reveal for this book was hosted by Travis Jonker, School Library Journal, 100 Scope Notes.  At the publisher's website you can view interior pictures.  You will enjoy the book trailer.  Grant Snider speaks about his artistic process for this book.

Strength As One

More than one year ago, the world was overrun with a deadly virus.  This invasion was and is unprecedented in most living people's lifetimes.  It is still happening and evolving.  It has forced entire countries to shut down and close their borders.  Regions, states, and communities required and still require people to stay in their homes unless it is essential for them to leave for work or to obtain items for their well-being.  When people depart from their residences, they are either mandated or asked to wear face masks, stay no closer than six feet from others, and to wash their hands frequently.  Life on our planet has drastically changed and is continuing to change.

Adults and children find themselves in situations; they never could have imagined.  Priorities have shifted.  What is valued most, those people, places, and things we hold in our hearts, are in sharper focus.  Outside, Inside (Roaring Brook Press, January 5, 2021) written and illustrated by LeUyen Pham using spare, eloquent text with realistic, poignant images portrays the very difficult adjustments and surprising accomplishments and results.

Something strange

happened on an

unremarkable day

just before the season

changed.

One day, as usual, everybody was out and about doing what they always did.  Then, as if a switch clicked, they were inside.  This happened all around the world.

Everyone inside wondered and paused and paused and wondered.  Some, though, were not always inside.  These people kept the outside world running for those now inside.  Medical personnel worked to exhaustion. Their duties multiplied.

Outside nature continued through the seasons, much quieter with the absence of most adults and children.  Inside families expanded their activities, baking, cooking, reading, playing games, inventing, and watching television.  A little bit at a time outside and inside were becoming different, adapting to the new normal.

Time did not stop outside or inside; growth did not stop.  Why did we all go inside?  The narrator's explanation leads us to a new manner of musing about the words outside and inside.  They become about us, all of us.  Remember, seasons offer hope for change.

With each reading the words written by LeUyen Pham speak to readers with increased relevancy.  Using the two title words, outside and inside, LeUyen Pham compares what happened to two parallel worlds as we existed in various forms of quarantine.  With impeccable pacing, specific observations are represented.  As the pages are turned, we move through subtle transformations as we remain under the cloud of the pandemic.  These transformations reveal in a conclusion the resilience of people who work together for the common good.  Here are several sentences from the outside and inside pages.

Outside

there were fences

both real

and pretend.

Swings sat still,

and slides

were lonely.

Inside

we waited

and we worried,

we laughed

and we cried,

and we tried to breathe.

The little girl and her cat featured on the front, right, of the open dust jacket are a constant, flowing in and out throughout the pictorial. (Readers will be looking for both on every page.) They anchor the narrative.  The girl, the cat, the title text, and the author illustrator's name are varnished on the front of the jacket.  To the left of the spine, on the back, the room transitions into the family's kitchen.

A herringbone, two-tone green wallpaper provides a place for family photographs, a calendar, notes, the girl's artwork, and hooks holding face masks.  On the counter is a flowerpot full of crayons and a bowl of rising bread covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth.  On the table a freshly baked loaf of bread cools on a rack.  Next to it is an open laptop and schoolwork.

On the book case we are outside the child's home in her neighborhood.  Only she, her father, masked and holding her jacket, and the cat are visible.  The girl and her cat are looking at each other eye to eye on a small hill. On the sidewalk, in chalk, someone has drawn a rainbow between two billowing clouds.  Above it is a cluster of hearts.  Below it are the words:

Together.

On the opening and closing endpapers on first a pale green canvas, we see the girl embracing her cat inside her house colored in white.  Secondly, on a white canvas, the girl, smiling with outstretched arms, is running from her home now in pale green.  Ahead of her the cat prances.  On the title page, a double-page picture brings us close to the girl and her cat cuddling in front of double windows inside their home.  

These illustrations by LeUyen Pham rendered digitally in full color span two pages or are grouped together in geometric shapes on two pages like collages.  Their grouping is intentional contributing to the atmospheric impact of the text.  A broad spectrum of facial expressions mirrors a range of moods and emotions during this pandemic.  Readers will see themselves and those they know in these images.  Particularly poignant is the double-page group of twelve smaller pictures inside hospitals and medical facilities.  Readers will smile at the four-page gatefold portraying hope near the end of the book.

One of my many favorite pictures is a double-page illustration.  Without giving too much away, it is a mirror image of the previous page except it is early evening.  The buildings are all uniformly dark against a purple sky.  All the window openings are golden with light.  The people, now like dark silhouettes, are all doing the same thing.  They all have a single element on their bodies.  Clusters of this element rise upward in great joy.

This book, Outside, Inside written and illustrated by LeUyen Pham, is a marvelous title to share often and widely with children (and adults).  It expertly captures in words and pictures what this confinement has meant and continues to mean to many.  The two-page author's note and dedication at the close of the book must be read.  I highly recommend this title for your personal and professional collections.

To learn more about LeUyen Pham and her other work, please follow the link attached to her name to access her website.  LeUyen Pham has accounts on Facebook and Instagram.  At the publisher's website you can view interior images.  Here is a link to an activity kit.  You will enjoy School Library Journal, A Fuse #8 Production, Outside, Inside: The LeUyen Pham Interview and Trailer Reveal hosted by Elizabeth Bird, the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system.  Author, reviewer, and blogger Julie Danielson showcases LeUyen Pham and this title on her blog, Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.  At Publishers Weekly you can read LeUyen Pham Celebrates Kindness in Covid-19 Picture Book.