Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

“Nina has two grandmothers who live on opposite sides of the world. …”
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)

 
Nana, Nenek & Nina (Dial, August 2022) is the debut picture book from author-illustrator Liza Ferneyhough. It is the story of Nina, who has a Nenek and a Nana who, as you can see above, live on “opposite sides of the world.” Nina is in San Francisco; Nana is in England; and Nenek is in Malaysia. “If she misses them and wants to visit,” we read, “there’s a lot of figuring out to do.” In the opening spreads, we see her packing. She’s on her way to visit both grandmothers. Ferneyhough — who created the warm, playful illustrations on “tea-stained paper, using watercolors, many tiny brushes, and a crow quill dip pen” — dedicates the book to her own British-Malaysian-American family.

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— From Rachel Vail’s Sometimes I Grumblesquinch,
illustrated by Hyewon Yum

 

“Friendship sits down beside you when you trip and fall.”
— From Tina Oziewicz’s What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking,
illustrated by Aleksandra Zając and translated by Jennifer Croft
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
Over at BookPage, I had the pleasure of writing about Rachel Vail’s Sometimes I Grumblesquinch (Orchard, August 2022), illustrated by Hyewon Yum, and What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking (Elsewhere Editions, July 2022) from Polish author Tina Oziewicz. This import was translated by Jennifer Croft and illustrated by Aleksandra Zając.

Both of these picture books capture the complex interior lives of children. The feature is here, and below are some spreads from each book. (The spreads from Sometimes I Grumblesquinch are pictured without the text, but I do provide the text in the captions.)

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I promise I’ll be back with art on Thursday, but for now I direct you to the Horn Book’s website if, by chance, you missed their wonderful ALA coverage. If you go here, you can read things like 2022 Caldecott, Newbery, and Coretta Scott King speeches (including a profile of the late Floyd Cooper). And you can head here to read all about “The Year in Words and Pictures — and Stories,” which takes a look back at last year in the world of children’s literature.

(No one at the Horn Book asks me or pays me or bribes me to share this here. I just reeeeeally appreciate their coverage.)

More later this week!

One of Chuck’s early illustration tests

 
Illustrator Chuck Groenink visits today to share some early sketches from Tanya Rosie’s Mum, Me, and the Mulberry Tree (Candlewick, July 2022), a book that both author and illustrator dedicate to their respective Mums.

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“‘I’ve had it with kindergarten!’ Bea Jones said to her father
as he was sitting down to breakfast. …”
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)

 
Here’s a post to celebrate 40 years of the work of author-illustrator Amy Schwartz by way of taking a look at her debut picture book, which has been reissued in a new edition by Penguin Random House. Bea and Mr. Jones arrived on shelves in 1982, and this new anniversary edition has what the publisher calls “gentle updates to the design,” which includes a larger trim size and a new dust jacket illustration.

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Ah! This book! Pauline David-Sax’s Everything in Its Place (Doubleday, July 2022), illustrated by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, really gets introverts. It’s a story for those children with their small social circles, for those children who are energized by their alone time, and for those who would rather read a book alone than make that fearful entrance onto a playground with children playing in groups. And it is sensitively told and playfully, beautifully illustrated.

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“and the sun shines”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
Antoinette Portis’s ebullient and sun-dappled A Seed Grows (Neal Porter Books, June 2022) is a thing of beauty. It captures the life cycle of a flower — in this case, a healthy, glowing sunflower. The entire text consists of one long sentence and then one final short one that brings everything full circle. The images — which feature visually rich colors, textures, and patterns — are bright and bold and will engage the young children, particularly the emerging readers, at whom this book is aimed.

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“He flew higher than ever before.
He flew farther than ever before.”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
Sadly, we lost author-illustrator John Burningham in 2019. But his fans will be happy to see one final story from him — Air Miles (Candlewick, June 2022), which features the main character from Motor Miles. (Motor Miles was published in 2016. Click here to read about Motor Miles and here to see some spreads.)

The story here is based on an idea of John’s, though the text was completed by his friend Bill Salaman and illustrated by John’s wife, the one and only Helen Oxenbury. The book also includes three of John’s illustrations, and his thumbnail sketches adorn the endpapers.

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“A tractor has wheels. A llama has no wheels.”
(Click spread to enlarge)

 
One of the funniest picture books you’ll see this year might fly so low under the radar that you’ll miss it. Here’s me doing my small part to ensure you don’t. Shannon McNeill’s Wheels, No Wheels (Tundra Books) arrived on shelves last month.

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Originally published in Argentina in 2018 and translated into English by Elisa Amado, Suniyay Moreno’s The Youngest Sister (Greystone Kids, May 2022), illustrated by Mariana Chiesa, brings readers a day in the life of a Quechua girl who lives in a mountain village in Argentina: “In the mountains, far from Vaca Huañuna, on the other side of the river, the mum, the five sisters, the seven cousins, and the two children of Swallow the peon had slept in the hut that night.”

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