Caldecott Medal Contender: It Fell from the Sky

by Sam Juliano

The titular creature from E.B. White’s iconic Charlotte’s Web was noble, erudite and compassionate.  In the modern picture book classic, the Caldecott Honor-winning  The Spider and the Fly by the nineteenth century poet Mary Howitt and artist Tony Di Terlizzi an iniquitous conman, plots a carnivorous conquest.  In Eric and Terry Fan’s It Fell from the Sky the crafty anthropoid wearing a stovepipe hat lies squarely in the middle of those two literary incarnations on the moral compass.  From the start this schemer was driven by avarice, and his the story of his rise and fall is a cautionary tale with pointed political parallel, though the Fans bring a lesson-learned coda to their delightful tale.  The brothers,  presently working out of Toronto, hold dual citizenship, so they are eligible for Caldecott awards, much as they have been previously in a distinguished and prolific career of picture book masterpieces such as The Night Gardener, The Antlered Ship, The Darkest Dark, The Scarecrow and The Barnabus Project.  Each new work by the tireless duo invariably brings on proclamations from their admirers that they have outdone themselves this time, and the same can be said for It Fell from the Sky, a bonanza of graphic resplendence that stunningly combines beautiful monochrome with incandescent color.

The Fans open their latest fantasy with an announcement that an object fell from the sky on a Thursday, a mid-week day bearing no special significance. The green and yellow marble nestles between flower plants, from where a Ladybug claims she observed the unexpected intrusion on their normally tranquil space.  Her contention that the marble bounced three times before rolling to a stop is contested by the Inchworm who counters it only bounced twice.  All the others, including the first pipe-smoking insect to appear in a picture book since Carson Ellis’s Du Iz Tak?, a Caldecott Honor recipient, concur the event was unprecedented in their collective consciousness.  The walking-stick, another one smitten with pipe-smoking gleefully observed he was being upstaged in the “strangeness” department, and the frog concluded it must be a gumdrop until the taste turned him off.  The dung beetle resolved to move it, but found that task impossible, and the Stinkbug brings on yet another theory, whereupon this alien object didn’t come from the sky at all, but was home grown, like a flower.  At long last the Grasshopper, the insect denomination of the Rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof and the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz is consulted for what is expected to be a sage interpretation.  He asserts it did actually fall from the sky, but specifies it is probably a star, a comet or even a planet.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre

by Sam Juliano

On July, 15, 2021 children’s literature lost one of its most renowned luminaries.  With nearly one-hundred books as an illustrator produced in a remarkably prolific career launched in 1988, African-American Floyd Cooper, who passed from cancer at age 65 was an author-artist who moved mountains in the book community and on social media where he was revered as a personable and humble man who exuded positive energy in the direction of any person fortunate enough to have crossed his path.  Cooper, who also had Native American blood was one of the most critically celebrated figures in the industry and his works won numerous awards for the Coretta Scott King, Golden Kite and Charlotte Zolotow committees.  Floyd has never won a Caldecott medal or honor citation in one om those freakish omissions usually attributed to timing and the depth of competition in a given year.  In the Caldecott Medal Contender series staged here at Wonders in the Dark since 2013, four of Cooper’s books have been reviewed in sponsorship of award consideration:  A Dance Like Starlight (authored by Kristy Dempsey); Where’s Rodney? (written by Carmen Bogan); The Ring Bearer and Juneteenth for Mazie.  But Cooper’s full catalog is one of the most impressive of artist in children’s literature, and virtually every book he’s released has its own fan base.  Of course his wife Velma, children Dayton and Kai and his grandchildren have suffered the most from his untimely departure, so for the legions who feel cheated of more masterpieces, matters do need to be placed in the proper perspective.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Watercress

by Sam Juliano

The Merriam-Webster definition of watercress is as follows:  “a perennial cress (Nasturtium officinale) native to Europe and southwestern Asia that is naturalized in the U.S. and has leaves used especially in salads or as a potherb.”

The physical manifestation of the exotic foodstuff provides the narrative centerpiece of Andrea Wang’s Watercress, but in an expansive sense it embodies love of family, the power of memory and how a simple ritual at the dinner table can shape and redefine life moving forward.  An aching melancholia underscores a story about childhood resistance and the inherent embarrassment one may feel when reminded of a past replete with struggle and little means to get by.  Wang’s descriptive poetry weaves a sustained mood and tone, but also, as attested by the story’s parental figures telling verisimilitude.  The author’s language is so precisely crafted and suffused with emotion, and it potently establishes atmosphere and coaxes sensory immersion through descriptive language and lovely similes.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Someone Builds the Dream

by Sam Juliano

The creative process metaphorically evokes a conveyor belt, where each worker is assigned with a specific task, each vital to reaching the finish line.  In Someone Builds the Dream by Lisa Wheeler, just a single missing link in the undertaking will prevent final consummation and dash the titular expectation from reaching the final destination.  But this validation of teamwork doesn’t remotely ponder the failings of a work in progress, rather it celebrates the efficiency and passion of those committed to imparting their unique skills to a veritable melting pot of architectural, technological, and engineering acumen, where many hands and minds are needed to carry out ordered and time-orchestrated tasks to achieve the desired result.  In the spirit of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and a few other classic works by Virginia Lee Burton, Someone Builds the Dream is one of the busiest picture books on record, with nineteen spreads displaying physical and mental energy and documenting seven projects, the last of which joyfully brings this exhilarating book full circle.

The prolific veteran illustrator Loren Long has fashioned expansive acrylic and colored pencil tapestries to Wheeler’s bouncy minimalist verse.  A New York Times bestselling artist of the Otis the Tractor  series and The Little Engine That Could with Watty Piper, Long illustrated the poll position hit Of Thee I Sing for President Barack Obama and on September 21st his art for the twenty-three year-old, Harvard educated inaugural poet Amanda Gorman in the work titled Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem.  After a mid-range line-up including a crane, a mechanical shovel and a tractor-plow on the title page spread, Wheeler makes a general statement that defines the book’s theme and foretells its narrative flow:

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Bear Island

by Sam Juliano

    In a melancholic pictorial prologue initiated by a worn, stationary baseball and continued with a dreamy depiction of a short-haired girl playing catch with the family canine, Bear Island’s soulful flashback introduction concludes with a tearful goodbye to the pet known as Charlie in brown tinted sketch drawings that are imbued with the aura of memory.  Wall pictures of the departed family member and the gathering up of its food bowl and toys bring wrenching closure to a period of time Dad, Mom and Louise would do anything to relive.  Then a double page title spread of a butterfly perched on a rock protruding from the sea, done in watercolor, pen and ink achieves widescreen aquatic resplendence, and the story moves to the present.

Picture books about death and the ensuing grief have slowly appeared more frequently in recent years as children, with parental support have come to terms with the difficulty in losing a loved one, and how to make good on the positive energy offered by other family members and especially devoted friends.  Most famously, E.B. White’s 1953 Charlotte’s Web opened more tear ducts than any children’s book up till the time of its publication, and decades later for many it remained the quintessential example of overcoming intense grief, depicting death as a necessary part of life.  Mo Willems’ and Jon Muth’s City Dog, Country Frog examined the cycle of life in similar terms, one where rebirth displaces sadness with the forging of a new friendship.  The same formula was powerfully employed in two recent Caldecott Honor winners, The Rough Patch by Brian Lies and Big Cat Little Cat by Elisha Cooper.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Unbound: The Life + Art of Judith Scott

by Sam Juliano

Wykoff, New Jersey born and bred artist Melissa Sweet twice finished in the Caldecott winners circle, scoring silver honor medals for a pair of books she illustrated for Jen Bryant, A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams and The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus.  On two other occasions, widespread buzz throughout the children’s book community was in sponsorship of two other Caldecott bids, one for Firefly July, a collaboration with the poet Paul B. Janeczko, and the other a solo biography, Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White, a labor of love fully endorsed by the deceased, iconic author’s estate.  In 2011, Sweet won boundless critical acclaim and a Sibert Medal for her Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade, a book she wrote and illustrated, one employing toys, puppets and fabrics to create her unique immersive technique where any object found is fair game in crafting all-encompassing art.  Like the Czech master Peter Sis, Sweet is a master of minutiae, and her tapestries are painstakingly rendered in pastel colors in the service of intricate designs that demand the the reader’s full attention, but reward with an emotionally resonant experience.

Perhaps her most deeply moving collaboration to date is with Joyce Scott and Brie Spangler on a biography of the former’s twin sister titled Unbound: The Life + Art of Judith Scott, a picture book about a seriously impaired person who defeats her limitations in a real-life story of astounding perseverance and poignancy.  Scott’s sibling was born with Down’s syndrome and deafness, yet before her disability was confirmed she grew up alongside her sister, sharing all aspects of their lives.  The authors define this propensity as “Entwined” in the opening chapter of the four that comprise the book in thematic terms.  Scott and Spangler define the depth of the relationship as such that they were united upon birth and knew each other even before they negotiated the feel of air on their skin.  Sweet responds with a soulful bedroom canvas of sisterly connection evoking Siamese twins, as the writers offer the metaphor of “spoons nestled in a drawer.”  Dolls, teacups and pails are all matching and the artist’s flower blouse design accentuates the mom’s perception of the sisters as “two peas in a pod.”  Their unique bond spills over into nocturnal bliss when the girls gaze up at the stars lying down on an outdoors couch, locked by Judy’s two-armed squeeze.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Twenty-One Steps

by Sam Juliano

Changing of the Guard events around the world have often showcased fervent nationlism and ethnic pride.  The United Kingdom’s version, staged with extravagent pomp and circumstance outside Buckingham Palace, symbolically reminds natives and tourists that the monarchy is an institution of permanence.  Fanfare abounds and ornate uniforms provide eye candy for onlookers in colorful militarist rituals, accompanied in some countries by aural bombast.  In the United States, the empahsis is on solemity and pitch-perfect execution, and the purpose is marked intimacy in holding the proverbial torch for an unknown soldier who perished during the Great War.  The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, set at the top of a steep hill in Arlington Cemetery in the nation’s capitol pays tribute to all unidentified soldiers who have lost their lives defending the nation in the specious bastion where war dead and celebrated Americans have been laid to rest.  Washington D.C. is memorial-laden and the center of the country’s most vital governmental buildings, yet a serene hamlet in a fastidiously manicured 639 acre memorial park is the most tear-inducing and goosebump-prompting location any visitor can encounter at any time during the year when the funereal ceremony is conducted.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Breaking Waves: Winslow Homer Paints the Sea

by Sam Juliano

Esteemed author Robert Burleigh and legendary artist Wendell Minor have previously gone aquatic in their non-fiction collaboration Trapped! A Whale’s Rescue.  The arresting work includes oceanic tapestries by Minor combining the visceral aspects of whale movement in the open sea with sublime compositions that convey the breathtaking aquamarine beauty of the sea.  The pair’s most famous partnership to date is the magnificent Edward Hopper Paints His World, based on the iconic artist, but leading up to that critically-lauded work they joined forces in taking on everybody’s favorite American, Abe Lincoln,  the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, and ornithologist John James Audubon.

The naturalist Winslow Homer (1836-1910), like Hopper, is an American treasure, and in a sensory exploration of Homer’s relationship with the sea, author and illustrator stress how nature’s changes enable this painter to re-create the environmental phenomenon of oceanic waves by negotiating a work-in-progress,  one replicating reality by dabs of a paint brush, and progressive incorporation of color.

Slowly, the painting shifts as layers of gray, white, and yellow magically transform the waves.   The painting is still – yet full of motion.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Home in the Woods

by Sam Juliano

In the elegiac A House That Once Was, a 2018 picture book by Julie Fogliano with illustrations by Lane Smith, a derelict house is a monument to memories.  The ghostly cabin in the deep woods seems well past the point of architectural resuscitation, and continues to exist in a kind of spectral sphere as a shrine to times well lived.  A similarly dilapidated shack encased in tar paper and nearly to the point of no return is brought back to life when a big and impoverished Depression-era family perform their own effective method of CPR by employing handyman ethics in the sumptuous Home in the Woods by Eliza Wheeler, an arresting story of grit and fortitude set in the Minnesota woods based on the true to life hardships of her grandmother’s family. Wheeler’s book, a love letter to her Nan, the fifth oldest in a family of eight, is a work of astounding craftsmanship in every aspect of its construction.  The painterly dust jacket, bathed in gorgeous yellow, green and turquoise in its evocation of the titular structure, establishes setting in the most pictorially resplendent of terms.  The inside cover, a replication of the text’s winter tapestry and a work of art unto itself, depicts two members of the family heading out to find food may inspire adult readers to recite The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep.  An annotated map of the family’s rural woodland hamlet appears on the end papers and their own shack lies near a swamp, with only deer paths falling between.  The title page, like the dust cover sports jumbo-font black India ink letters and a miniature facsimile of the most-unlikely of homes for nine people.

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Caldecott Medal Contender: Carl and the Meaning of Life

by Sam Juliano

A domino effect plays out in the narratives of three Caldecott Medal winners, One Fine Day by Nonny Hagrogian , Finders Keepers by William Lipkind and Nicolas Mordinoff, and Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Aardema and Leo and Diane Dillon depicts the insect and animal world fielding questions from one chronic questioner.  A fox repeatedly asks for a favor so that his tail can be sewn back on after he absconds with a pail of a pail of milk; two canines try to solve the question about the rightful owner of bone by asking others and a small insect instigates a panic that is sustained as creature after creature is approached to reach the truth in varying conceits. In Deborah Freedman’s similarly cumulative  Carl and the Meaning of Life a field mouse innocuously queries the titular earthworm for his seemingly bizarre underground propensities, setting off a chain of events where the scheme of things is adversely affected after this inveterate truth seeker suspends his indispensable elemental role to investigate its significance.  Soon enough after Carl goes interrogative he finds that also his prospective respondents are busy supporting their own families or keeping up the own end of the bargain to help keep the world ecologically sound.  After trial and tribulation the now nomadic earthworm encounters a bereaved beetle who through its own manner of deprivation provides the long-elusive answer that sends its enlightened mercenary to again function profoundly so the world can maintain its equilibrium.

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