What I’m Doing at Kirkus This Week,
Plus What I Did Last Week, Featuring Iacopo Bruno, Jamey Christoph, Kris Di Giacomo, & Christoph Niemann

and the hopes of her grandchildren.”
— From Gordon Parks:
How the Photographer Captured Black and White America
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— From The Potato King
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— From Mesmerized
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Today over at Kirkus, I wax devotedly about reading aloud to children. Yet again. (I’m pretty sure I just used “wax” all incorrectly, but I’m just gonna leave it on account of not having had any coffee yet.) That link is here.
Since last week (here) I wrote about a small handful of titles (mostly nonfiction), I’ve got art from each book today. They are: Matthew Burgess’ Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings (Enchanted Lion, April 2015), illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo; Carole Boston Weatherford’s Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America (Albert Whitman, February 2015), illustrated by Jamey Christoph; Mara Rockliff’s Mesmerized: How Ben Franklin Solved a Mystery that Baffled All of France (Candlewick, March 2015), illustrated by Iacopo Bruno; and Christoph Niemann’s The Potato King (Owlkids, April 2015), originally published as Der Kartoffelkönig in 2013.
Enjoy the art …

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Jamey Christoph:

nothing seems beyond reach. But his white teacher tells her all-black class,
You’ll all wind up porters and waiters.
What did she know?”
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That $7.50 is the best money he will ever spend.”
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illustrated by Kris Di Giacomo:

there once lived a poet I would like you to meet.”
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But even more than drawing elephants, trees, and birds, Estlin LOVED WORDS. …”
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ENORMOUS SMALLNESS: A STORY OF E. E. CUMMINGS. Text copyright © 2015 by Matthew Burgess. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Kris Di Giacomo. All images here reproduced by permission of the publisher, Enchanted Lion Books, New York.
GORDON PARKS: HOW THE PHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURED BLACK AND WHITE AMERICA. Text copyright © 2015 by Carole Boston Weatherford. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Jamey Christoph. All images here reproduced by permission of the publisher, Albert Whitman and Company, Chicago.
MESMERIZED. Text copyright © 2015 by Mara Rockliff. Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Iacopo Bruno. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.
THE POTATO KING. Text and illustrations © 2013 by Christoph Niemann. Published in North America in 2015 by Owlkids Books Inc. All images here reproduced by permission of Owlkids.
Wow, three of these are books I’d already made notes to myself to find — these spreads are just gorgeous.
Beautiful! I especially love the elephant flying away with balloons.