Non-Fiction Pic Books - Learning

Time to share on Wednesdays with Alyson Beecher's Non-Fiction Picture Book Challenge at her blog, Kidlit Frenzy.   

        Thanks Alyson!   Tweet - #NFPB15

            It's been a few weeks since I posted. I've been on vacation and shared a few books that I found and read at the beach last Monday. Here are some new n-f picture books recently read, many of which I've discovered through you who post here with Alyson. What wonderful books they are. I always appreciate what I discover through others' posts.

Ick! Yuck! Eew! Our Gross American History - written and illustrated by Lois Miner Huey

       You may or may not remember my love for Sarah Albee's Poop Happened: A History of The World From The Bottom Up. Perhaps it was a little too detailed for younger elementary students, but I enjoyed Albee's historical perspective so much. Here is another book with an approach that has fewer details, but oh so interesting. If you've wondered just how gross things were a few hundred years ago here in the US, this book offers a view of what happens with poop, insects, dirt, smells and diseases--EW! Mosquitoes, bedbugs and lice, oh my. They were prolific, disease ridden, and people were quite helpless at getting rid of them. Instead, sometimes they just covered them up, with those fancy wigs one sees in portraits, and sometimes they put poison on the bed linens. That killed the bugs, but also seeped into people's skin! I learned quite a bit from this reading. For example, rooms for powdering one's hair were small and isolated, to keep the powder contained, hence today's term for a small entry bathroom, the "Powder Room". Huey includes lots of pictures with good captions, and covers quite a bit of content. Perhaps it would be good for third grade and up. 

The World In A Second - written by Isabel Minhós Martins and illustrated by Bernardo P. Carvalho, translated by Lyn-Miller Lachmann

        Pages filled with the details of a second experienced all over the world. There is a horn honking in Mexico City and a a volcano erupting on the other side of the world, a ball flies through a window and a breeze finally flutter on the high seas. Illustrations fill the pages with action and the few words seem given in a second as I turn the pages. What a delightful book to imagine all these events. The authors share a world map at the back of the time and place for each event. I can imagine doing this in one's school, classroom, or community. What a delightful art and writing project it would be.

The Case for Loving, The Fight for Interracial Marriage - written by Selina Alko, and illustrated by

Sean Qualls and Selina Alko

          This story happened in my lifetime, hard to believe that once it was unlawful to marry someone of a different race. And just about the time I was getting married. Selina Alko and Sean Qualls are married and married in an interracial marriage, say they waited for the right story for their first book, and this is a great one. They lived in Virginia, one of five states still making this marriage unlawful, so they moved to Washington D.C. and married. But they missed their home; it was too busy in D.C. and they took the case to court, and the Supreme Court sided with them. The illustrations are colorful with background work splashed with creative collage work. And the back matter is already out of date, happily, because they share hopes that all couples obtain the right to marry whom they love, and this past summer, the Supreme Court did rule for same sex marriage too, another victory for love. 

I just received Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans by Don Brown, looking forward to reading it!