The Treasures All Around Us

When you grow up in a family of collectors, you tend to become a collector.  When you grow up in a family embracing nature, you find yourself fairly at ease in the out-of-doors.  Combining these two attributes, your wanderings outside make use of all your senses especially when you are seeking a new item to cherish.  You find another heart-shaped rock, a large piece of sea glass, or a stone that fits perfectly in your palm.  You locate a new leaf to press or a hard-to-find protected flower to photograph or draw.  Perhaps you are gathering particular kinds of pine cones and acorns or small pieces of driftwood to fashion into a wreath. You hear the sound or song of a bird you are hoping to see for the first time. 

The possibilities are as varied as the people who collect and respect what our natural world has to offer.  What's in Your Pocket?: Collecting Nature's Treasures (Charlesbridge, September 14, 2021) written by Heather L. Montgomery with illustrations by Maribel Lechuga takes readers into ordinary moments leading to spectacular outcomes.  Through the lives of nine scientists as children, we understand and appreciate the value of seeking and needing to know.

When you explore the great outdoors

and find something strange and wonderful,

do you put it in your pocket? 

Following this introductory question to a young gatherer is a statement about scientists and why they collect.  Three major names in science are presented.  Who do you think put a seedpod in his pocket that exploded?  Who do you think put worms under her pillow for safekeeping?  One would find hundreds of uses for peanuts.  The other would have their name tied to chimpanzees forever,

Two more times the present-day explorer, the girl with her dog, is given questions to answer prior to reading about six additional naturalists in two groups of three.  Meg Lowman's multiple collections hidden under her bed provided a haven for a live critter unwelcome inside her home.  It's not every mother who would be fascinated by receiving a live lizard for a birthday present.  Adult Diego Cisneros-Heredia named a newly discovered frog after her.

There was a time when people did not understand the connection between caterpillars and butterflies.  This girl's collection eventually flew away, joining links in a chain. There was another girl who loved roaming along the shores of the Pacific Ocean.  How many teenagers do you know who collect sea slugs?  This young woman and these other eight people have made our planet better for their collecting, curiosity, and passionate love of our natural world.

Readers will enjoy the cadence created by author Heather L. Montgomery where questions are asked and responses about scientists are supplied prior to each trio of children who became extraordinary scientists.  Each time the questions are asked the first is repeated, as is the second for the third section.  These questions also suggest the type of collecting the children did.  After we are informed about the child's activities, an identical phrase shares the name of the scientist with readers before giving us a paragraph about them.  These narrative techniques are inviting and inventive.  Here is a passage.

Will found beautiful blue eggs high in a tree.

Needing his hands to climb back down,

he held the eggs in his mouth.

Oops! . . .

Looking at the open and matching dust jacket and book case readers are welcomed into nature.  On either side of the spine lush flora frames the text and our young explorer.  How many of those items spilling from her pockets have found a place in your pockets when you are outside walking and observing?  On the back, left, an emerald and blue hummingbird sips nectar from an open flower.  Beneath it, a caterpillar munches on a leaf.  A butterfly floats above the ISBN.  On the jacket, front, right, and back, left, the brightest elements are varnished.

A darker hue of the teal on the girl's overalls is used to cover the opening and closing endpapers.  On the title page, a cluster of found objects are placed between the text.  An initial two-page picture spans from the dedication and publication information page to the first page.  The girl on the front of the jacket and case is first shown in silhouette with her dog walking through the woods.  Just before the gutter, they are in full color and jumping over a log.  On the first page, the duo stop and crouch down to look at fossils.  The girl's left foot moves off the right side as her hand puts the fossil in her pocket.  Her dog, head raised, is smelling that fossil.  

These images, rendered digitally, by Maribel Lechuga flow beautifully, page turn by page turn.  We first see one of the children turned scientist enjoying one of their favorite pastimes.  Then two separate visuals are joined together by shared elements or by one element morphing into another element.  For the final three individuals, this style is reversed.

Readers will travel from the present to the past, from childhood to adulthood with ease and fascination.  Maribel Lechuga's vibrant pictures are full of details of flora and fauna.  Her historical accuracy of place and time through clothing, architecture, and technology is excellent.  Energized by her artwork, we want to be with these people and we are.

One of my many favorite illustrations is a double-page picture.  We are at the same level as Will who has climbed up an oak tree.  A nest filled with five blue-speckled eggs is nestled between two branches.  His left arm is wrapped around the tree trunk for support.  His right arm and hand are extended toward the nest.  His face is filled with happy anticipation.  On the grassy meadow with low shrubs beneath him, his bike is laying on its side.

Whether you are already a collector and lover of the outdoors or not, this book, What's in Your Pocket?: Collecting Nature's Treasures written by Heather L. Montgomery with illustrations by Maribel Lechuga, is guaranteed to inspire you to increase your respect and interest in our natural world.  At the close of the book are four plus pages titled More About These (Grown-Up) Kids.  There is a recommended additional book title for more facts about each person after these short biographical paragraphs.  There is A Note from the Illustrator, A Note from the Author: My Collections, a list of Field Guides and a Selected Bibliography.  Your personal and professional collections won't be complete without a copy of this book.

To discover more about Heather L. Montgomery and Maribel Lechuga and their other work, please follow the link attached to their names to access their respective websites.  Heather L. Montgomery has accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Maribel Lechuga has an account on Instagram.  At the publisher's website is an interior image and a fantastic nine-page activity kit.  At Penguin Random House are several of the initial interior illustrations.

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.