The Book Search

There are some amazing new non-fiction picture books that have just been released.  What a great way to start your summer reading! The first one is called "Voices from the Underground Railroad" by Kay Winters.  It's poems about the experiences of two slaves running away from a master who is planning to sell them south to pay off his gambling debts.  What's great about this one is that it has ALL the voices-so there are poems from the point of view of the master's wife and the slave catchers and the people who are station masters on the Underground Railroad.  Larry Day's pictures are lovely pen and ink with water color and help the reader understand the urgency and the immediacy of the action of the story.  I thought this one was terrific. The second one is called "Girl Running" by Annette Bay Pimentel and illustrated by Micha Archer.  It's about a young woman named Bobbi Gibb who liked to run.  She lived in a time before Title Nine spo...

I've been wallowing in so much middle grade fiction that I forgot that I can read picture books!  And they go fast!  What a treat!  And wow, were there some great ones in the Netgalley list this week. This first one really knocked me out.  It's called "Saved by the Boats" by Julie Gassman and illustrated by Steve Moore.  It's a short picture book about September 11 in NY.  It's not about the terrorists or even about the people who were killed, it's about a group of people who wanted to help (and if you can remember that day as clearly as I do, just about everybody wanted to help, but there just wasn't much to do from a distance).  This group of people were boat captains.  It turns out that when the planes crashed into the buildings, the debris falling completely closed car traffic in the area and the public transportation was also closed.  So how would all the people in the area get home safely?  It turns out that since NY is an island...