picture book Archives - Page 671 of 712

When Spring Comes
by Kevin Henkes (Author) and Laura Dronzek (Illustrator)

The award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife team of Kevin Henkes and Laura Dronzek collaborate for the first time since their acclaimed picture book Birds (2009).

Before spring comes, the trees are dark sticks, the grass is brown, and the ground is covered in snow. But if you wait, leaves unfurl and flowers blossom, the grass turns green, and the mounds of snow shrink and shrink. Spring brings baby birds, sprouting seeds, rain and mud, and puddles. You can feel it and smell it and hear it—and you can read it!

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

Some pages of this picture book for ages 2-4 have a simple before and after pattern. It’s a compare and contrast story arc.

On one left page it says:

Before Spring comes, the garden is just dirt, and empty.

The facing page on the right says:

But if you wait, Spring will push green shoots through the dirt to fill up the garden.

The “before” page states a fact. The “after” addresses the reader with the words:

But if you wait

. . . before stating a contrasting spring fact.

Everything is personal to preschoolers, even the seasons!

BONUS! Read an interview with Laura Dronzek

Snippet: “Laura Dronzek’s color-drenched illustrations for When Spring Comes (Greenwillow, 2-4 years) bring husband Kevin Henkes’s poetic text into full bloom.”

Basketball (Making the Play)
by Valerie Bodden (Author)

Booktalk: The BIG Picture

Do you think about science when you play baseball? Probably not. But you use science anyway. See how the physics of launch angles and inertia affect dribbling and shooting.

#kidlit Writing Lesson: the small details

STEADY SPEED
A ball keeps going where
you threw it until something
stops it. This is called
inertia (in-NUR-shuh).

This page defines the word inertia, but it doesn’t do so by beginning with an unfamiliar word. It defines the new word by beginning with something that young readers understand:

A ball keeps going where
you threw it until something
stops it.

After showing readers what inertia looks like in the sport of basketball, the name is introduced:

This is called
inertia (in-NUR-shuh).

The phonetic spelling helps young readers pronounce this new unfamiliar word.

A new word is best defined by moving from a familiar idea to an unfamiliar one. Begin with something that young readers understand and then name it.

It’s Nonfiction Monday!