What's in YOUR Parking Lot?

I'm excited to share the news that I will again serve as a CYBILS AWARDS Round One Panelist. In the past seven years I've been involved with several different categories, including fiction picture books, board books, elementary and middle grade nonfiction, and poetry. For 2021, I'll be taking a very close look at elementary and middle grade nonfiction titles with these other amazing panelists. To learn more about the CYBILS AWARDS, including how to nominate your favorite titles in any/all categories, click HERE. Public nominations open from OCTOBER 1 to OCTOBER 15, so I'm going to squeak this nonfiction picture book recommendation in before I begin hauling home stacks and stacks of your nominated titles. I won't be surprised is this one is among them.

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 I never doubted that there would be books of many kinds related to the 2020-21-and-counting pandemic. Those Covid 19-inspired books are hitting the market now. As a global event that cost millions of lives, this is an important way to process the reality for current kids and for future young readers, in my opinion. Even so, the quality of storytelling, information sharing, writing, and illustrating should be as high or higher for these as they are for any other published works, whether incorporated into fictional stories, inspiring poetry, of explored in picture books. 

MINEDITION: A Maria Russo Book. 2021

SEA LIONS IN THE PARKING LOT: Animals on the Move in the Time of Pandemic is written by Lenora Todaro and illustrated by Annika Siems.

Todaro is an ecological writer/activist/guide who shares her thoughts about this new book in a brief interview that deserves a careful listen, HERE.

Siems is a master of scientific illustration (with a background in fashion design!) who clearly identifies and reveals the lives inside the creatures she brings to the page.

This timely nonfiction picture book is a tremendous documentation of ways in which our "built human landscape" was reclaimed by nature and animals during the "anthropause". What is that, you ask? Anthropause is a term coined when the pandemic led to a pause in typical human patterns, effectively removing humans from public spaces. This allowed scientists and naturalists to observe changes in animal patterns, globally. 

With brief but informative and accessible text blocks that describe particular species and their changes, readers are invited to a dozen places across our planet in which animals wasted no time at all in noting newly-available territories and found their places among them.

Several of these fabulous illustrations call to mind images that spread via social media during past months. Others feel  like entirely new revelations. In expansive and artful  double page spreads they are rendered with accuracy and perspectives that celebrate their natural/scientific qualities while placing them in settings that they would normally avoid. A gentle humor and wryly ironic point of view surfaces in several of these, 
The curiosity, resilience, and (temporary) adaptations of various land and water species from around the world are eye-popping and smile-inducing, while the often lyrical text remains accessible and clarifying about the places, circumstances, and consequences of this human-absent effect on  otherwise nature-unfriendly environment. 

As gloriously fascinating as this new picture book is, it should also be considered a valuable resource for readers of all ages, including older ones who will find rich connections and content for discussion regarding climate change, habitat, wildlife behavior, and finding balance between progress and environmental responsibility. Back matter includes an epilogue (with real-time and future action plans), along with brief notes about each of the twelve species and their natural biomes. A few kid-friendly resources are provided along with links to  more materials about the "anthropause".

I encourage you to take a close look at this, to suggest it to teachers and families, and to reflect on the compelling question of your/our place in the world.