2010 Wrap: Books, Part 1

I wrote about most of my favorite kids' books of 2010 in individual posts during the year, of course, and especially in this category, a true "best of" list would for the most part just echo those posts directly. So instead, I'm going to mention some of the trends I saw during the year in my and my kids' reading, which will allow me to give nods to both books I've covered in the blog and ones I've missed or not gotten around to yet.

And since I haven't been posting nearly as often as I'd like of late, and this post will probably get long enough that writing it will put things off another few days otherwise, I'm also going to break it up into multiple posts.

So, first off: As has been common in recent years, many of the most brilliant and revelatory picture books of the year were either nearly or entirely wordless. In some cases, the focus on image and imagination was the explicit point (David Wiesner's Art & Max, Suzy Lee's Shadow); in others, it was just a remarkably effective way of telling the story (Elisha Cooper's Beaver Is Lost and even his somewhat wordier Farm; Bill Thomson's Chalk; Lane Smith's It's a Book). All of them demonstrate one of the lessons Pixar—and Charlie Chaplin, for that matter—have been teaching creators of kids' entertainment for years now: Sometimes, a great idea told entirely through images is the best storytelling there is.

Tomorrow: What Rick Riordan hath wrought.

[Images courtesy of Chronicle Books (Shadow) and Macmillan (It's a Book)]

New Books: Chalk

I've mentioned once before how magical a wordless picture book by an accomplished illustrator can be, and thanks to the generosity of our friend Tanya, we've just encountered one that both my sons are currently crazy about—Chalk, by Bill Thomson. (Somehow we missed it when it first came out early in the year, so I'm especially grateful to her for bringing it to our attention!)

The story is straightfoward: Three kids discover that their sidewalk chalk drawings are coming to life—good when one girl draws a bunch of beautiful butterflies, less so when a boy (natch) draws a T. rex. But it's told via a series of drop-dead-gorgeous illustrations that look so photorealistic, it's hard to believe at first that they're illustrations. (There's a note at the back assuring readers that they are, in fact, drawn, and Thomson even details his fascinating process for achieving such realistic detail, complete with his remarkable sketches for Chalk, on the publisher's website.)

It isn't simply that the art is stunning, though; Thomson does a fantastic job of telling the story without a single word. The result is a quietly masterful page turner of a picture book that, if my kids are any indication at all, will have yours obsessed in short order.

[Cover image courtesy of Marshall Cavendish]