Picture Books for Older Readers Round Up

All last week I posted about how fairy tales aren’t just for little kids.  And, it seems, neither are picture books these days.  Teachers and librarians have long been using picture books with upper elementary and middle school students to great effect.  Some use wordless picture books like those by David Wiesner and Barbara Lehman to inspire creative writing assignments (or even foreign language writing assignments).  Others use historical fiction like Eve Bunting’s Terrible Things to start off social studies units or a book like Jacqueline Woodson’s Show Way to bring up a discussion of truth.  One might also bring a little humor into that discussion with John, Paul, George & Ben, which is a hilarious look at the founding fathers.

Add to your Holocaust curriculum with Memories of Survival.  This beautiful picture book tells the story of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz’s experience during World War II, illustrated by remarkably intricate embroidered panels. The story is in Esther’s words, supplemented by her daughter Bernice’s contextual explanations about the time and place. In the introduction Bernice said that while many Holocaust survivors refused to speak of the past, her mother “couldn’t keep from telling” about the things she experienced. She tried writing her stories in notebooks, but eventually she wanted to show her children visually what her life had been like. That was the beginning of The Esther Project. She used her talent as a seamstress to create these embroidered panels to tell her story visually.  This critically acclaimed book is not to be missed in any collection of picture books for older readers.

Picture books are great opportunities to talk about art and photography with your students.  P Is for Peanut is a photography book disguised as an alphabet book.  It features twenty-six black and white photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum collection.  Each photo is accompanied by a simple statement that is sometimes obvious and sometimes might make you think about what the photograph is saying.  At once playful, witty, and dramatic, this alphabet book is definitely for more than just those learning their ABCs. 

But photography books aren’t just for art teachers.  English teachers will want to take note of Charles R. Smith’s new picture book version of a Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If: A Father’s Advice to His Son.  Smith takes the classic poem and pairs the lines with his signature photographs of athletes in action.  He writes in the afterword that he wanted to use sports to illustrate the poem because to him “sports share the virtues explored in “If”: confidence, determination, leadership, effort, and the ability to dream.”  Use this book to connect poetry with sports or to start a group discussion about the poem.