The COW SAID BOO! Laughs Guaranteed!

PAJAMA PRESS, 2021

My sincere wish for us all is that none shall suffer a summer cold. But in case you do, here's a picture book with a fun spin on sneezing. THE COW SAID BOO!  is written by Lara Button and illustrated by Alice Carter. 

There are plenty of visual cues to make this a great title to add to your fall/Halloween collection, and it's a terrific variant on the typical ghost story. Even so, I love it as a summer read. Farm trips, day camps, pick-your-own berry outings, and even car trips with counting cows (people still do that, right?) invite books about cows. 

In this case, when COW has a cold and tires to say MOO!  it comes out BOO!  As someone who is overcome by sneezes (even when not caused by a cold) I loved that COW's sneezing sends her stumbling and bumbling into a sheet on a clothesline, and ... you can guess from there, can't you?

In this case the brightly colorful and cartoonish characters and settings invite little ones to cock-a-doodle along, and recognize that something unknown can be scary. Sometimes even friends  we know can seem not quite themselves. The humor in images invites repeated readings and reading-along, eventually showing  a highly satisfying benefit to this poor cow's condition. This is a picture book without guise or glamour, without intentional or implied messages, but one whose fun and frolic involve lively language, loyalty, and laughter.

For a paired reading, be sure to read  BOB, NOT BOB! by Liz Garton Scanlon.

LITTLE, BROWN BYR, 2017

 A boy with a cold is mispronouncing loads of words, starting with MOM! The fun and clever writing is no surprise (it's by Liz Scanlon!) so it's a highly recommended choice for word play and evoking some serious laughter (is that an oxymoron?). If you or kiddos you know are dealing with stuffed noses, both books are MUST HAVES. 

Or even if you're not! 

Both are read-aloud delights, especially for those who like to ham it up!

THIS IS HOW WE TALK Is a Joy to Read and Explore

My teaching career offered relationships with people of many ages and varied needs. That  provided opportunities to attempt (and sometimes learn) ways to "talk" with others beyond the generality of shared-language conversations. I've used augmented speaker boards, regular keyboards, finger spelling and sign language with and without an ASL interpreter, written forms, and computer translators. Picture/icon cards and other concept tools are also useful when two or more folks are unable to default to an assumed shared model of communication. Having written all that, it is easy to see why such a talk-gap might be viewed as a hardship or obstacle, a barrier to be overcome. 

DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS, 2025

In fact, I viewed these circumstances as delightful encounters in which communication has already occurred, presenting a joint puzzle to solve together. That is exactly what this new picture book portrays, implying a lively invitation to get on board the communication train and open ourselves to the wider world around us. THIS IS THE WAY WE TALK: A CELEBRATION OF DISABILITY AND CONNECTION is co-written by Jessica Slice  and Caroline Cupp, with illustrations by Kayla Harren. The subtitle itself uses the word CONNECTION, and that is the central thought I had while reading this new picture books, and afterwards. It is CONNECTION that invites communication, and it is what we lose when we step back instead of reaching out. 

This lively and important new picture book is loads of fun with its fast-paced, rollicking rhymed text and colorful, dynamic illustrations. End papers present cartoon-like images of young people using a range of communication tools to talk, characters who are clearly enthusiastic and eager to share themselves and their ideas with others. That includes a wagging dog, a signing duo, and tech-support tools. This approach is really smart, because young readers notice every detail of picture books, beginning with those endpapers. (Not all adults bother, and they are missing important, purposeful content!). Kids also connect with emotional tone spontaneously, so these images  allow them to begin this book feeling like there's fun ahead. They will be correct!

The page turn takes readers to illustrations that are rendered in more realistic style, with more natural colors, and with more obvious individual differences. From body sizes to ages to abilities to attitudes to mobilities to partnerships and even attitudes, the scenes throughout this book are very community-based and recognizable as real life. It's true that not every reader may live in such a diverse and integrated neighborhood, but the circumstances and activities will resonate and allow anyone to identify with the people in this concept-centered offering. 

That concept is presented in opening lines:

"We sign, write, clap! We tap, stim, scream!

So many ways to talk and joke, play and learn and dream.

With hands and tools and faces, we make our feelings clear,

in school, with friends, and family, too-- with people far and near."

That, you can see, sets the stage for a series of scenes with four-line text that each reveal family members "talking" to each other, to doctors, or caregivers, or educators, or shopkeepers and more. In the midst of these scenes not only will readers see differences and creative solutions to connecting, but they'll see the universality of the need and longing to communicate. From expressing needs to sharing play to learning, teaching, or simply "getting it out" when we need to do it most. Back matter provides brief descriptions of various ways to communicate that are pictured, with separate guides for kids and adults. A number of "disability" examples depicted are also described in further back matter pages. 

I hope you will make extra effort to get your hands on this new books and immerse yourself in the information, of course, but mostly in the joy and celebration of the innovative ways in which we can all build links and locks and love among us all, regardless of the bridges we need to build and cross to make it happen. This belongs in every library and classroom.

AFTERWARD, EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT

The post title above is the title of a remarkable new picture book. Powerful, right? Also, a pretty bold claim. What could happen, when and how, that would really change EVERYTHING? From the title alone, a few events in history come to mind...

For example, the first nuclear blast, or specifically the first time an atomic bomb was dropped on a human population. After that, everything really was different, in the scope of HUMAN HISTORY.

How about the first European landings in North America and the Caribbean islands. That would not have made such an instantaneous change as the destruction caused by an atomic bomb, but, over time, it certainly shifted the history of western civilization. Colonization and empire building did not begin or end with that event, but it certainly pulled back the curtain on a massive new arena for human and cultural destruction. 

There are other events, arguably, that might well have made EVERYTHING DIFFERENT, Afterward, but most that occurred to me were in a time and place for which documentation was possible. Granted, the documentation was not always fair or accurate or even complete, but research about such events could be (and has been) done to identify more of the whole truths.

Greystone Kids, 2024
Informational Fiction 

In the case of this remarkable new picture book, a fictionalized but documented event occurs within one nuclear Stone Age group. Since this prehistoric period does not offer ANY form of text accounting, recounting the event through wordless text is especially suitable. The facts about such history are directly determined by the artifacts/images still in existence. AFTERWARD, EVERYTHING WAS DIFFERENT is the product of an established creative team, Rafael Yockteng and Jairo Buttrago. Other noted reviewers have called this new book thought-provoking, intriguing, and important. I add my endorsement to all of those descriptors, as well as adding my reactions below after reading closely for several days. 

I say"reading closely" despite the fact that this is wordless book, until the final turn provides a single page of text to offer historic context and research validation from which this story emerged. That explanation is minimal, and "readers" of the visual narrative will find more or less in it depending on their own background information. That doesn't mean even the most naive readers won't be captivated by the dramatic events and images as well as the characters portrayed. 

In my case I noted the seemingly incongruent humanoid types within this "family". Recent research has revealed errors in the assumption that what were identified as varied "stages" of pre-homo-sapiens fossils must have lived at distinctly different time lines in distinctly different locations. Instead, current fossil and archeological findings show that the varied subspecies likely lived simultaneously, could have interbred, and likely did. That accounts for the ways in which this small working unit of folks do and don't resemble each other inn anatomy, body hair patterns, and more. Cooperation and hunting techniques also reflect scientific evidence of actual communities. Tools and techniques are even more examples of ways in which this wordless book allows audiences young and old to experience daily life, vicariously, within such a group.

The book design offers up a multi-page opening act prior to then title page. In those scenes we meet the group, expoerience hardships (even fatal ones) within a harsh terrain, including active volcanoes and threatening climate elements. The Megafauna (giant animals) are fur-covered and resemble supersized animals of today, vaguely. The roles of different members of the group suggest both planning and intense cooperation as well as details indicating that these are hunter/gatherers, Everyone has a role (except for the two small naked children, whose behaviors are worth noting) including the young person who seems to always be noticing the creatures and drama of their journey. The black, white, and greyscale double-page spreads flow beyond the edges of the pages, suggesting a sprawling imagined landscape of enormous proportions (with potential threats at every turn). This stark approach to the visual storytelling is effective in lending a sense of time long past and its sharp-edged reality, not unlike archival photos. 

I won't spoil the story by recounting individual challenges and hardships depicted, but I must report on the superb central story. This observant child finds herself compelled to record their environment and adventures (and survival) on cave walls. The resolve, once she does so, opens readers to the fullest sense of how that single creative act did, in fact, make everything different. Using the technique of wordless storytelling allows readers to imagine the unfamiliar communication among this prehistoric group. Did they rely on grunts and gestures, minimal naming words, or drawing in the dirt to indicate plans for a hunt, directions of their journey, even decisions to hunker down due to weather conditions or time of day?  Any of those approaches, or a combination of them, is likely. Evidence of such communications have been found even though written text . But the final spreads suggest that storytelling, with some more sophisticated language skills, likely developed in tandem with then visual preservation of their life stories. That scene also suggests that something beyond survival and cooperation might have evolved during the same stages of history.

This is heartwarming, mind-blowing, and question-generating. It is deeply rich with detail and nuance, as much so as any later masterpiece. I encourage everyone to make an effort to get this book and examine it closely- multiple times. I predict you will be different after you read it.