Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909 by Michelle Markel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This non-fiction picture book by Michelle Markel is a fascinating and important look at an era of America’s history that saw the rise of the labor movement and life-saving changes in worker’s conditions. Told through the eyes of young Clara Lemlich, a recent immigrant who finds work in the garment industry, this is a story of one young girl’s struggle to make a difference in the world. With her father unable to find work, it’s up to Clara to help support the family. When she gets a job stitching blouses in a garment factory, her eyes are opened to the unsafe and unfair working conditions that women (and men) of the day were forced to endure. For example: if you pricked you’re finger and bled on the cloth, you were fired; if you were a few minutes late you lost half a day’s pay; the doors were locked and every night the workers were searched to make sure they hadn't stolen anything; three hundred girls had to share two toilets. Disgusted by these unfair practices, Clara urges the other girls to fight for their rights. This is a book about standing up for what you believe in, not backing down and showing the courage of your convictions. These are lessons that shouldn’t be forgotten and are as important today as they were one hundred years ago when this story takes place. The story is beautifully complimented by Melissa Sweet’s mixed media illustrations that combine watercolor and gouache with collaged and stitched pieces of cloth and torn paper.

One of Melissa Sweet's mixed media illustrations

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A Little Book of Sloth

A Little Book of Sloth by Lucy Cooke
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you’re not yet a member of the Sloth Appreciation Society, you will be after reading this adorable non-fiction book by Lucy Cooke that immerses readers in the world of orphaned and injured sloths. Filled with sweet photographs that are guaranteed to make even a curmudgeon smile, you’ll learn fascinating facts about the Bradypus or three-fingered sloth with their Mona Lisa smiles and their two-fingered cousins, the Choloepus who, according to the author, look “like a cross between a Wookie and a pig.” One of the things I learned  from this book about these adorable creatures is that sloths, unlike other mammals, can not regulate their body temperature. Consequently, sloths, like reptiles, need to bask in the sun in order to warm up. I also didn’t know that sloths are slow and slothful due to their diet. Cooke informs us that in the jungle, they eat slightly toxic leaves which don’t give them much energy. Because it takes them four weeks to digest a meal, they need to take it easy to stay free from painful indigestion. As fascinating as all of these facts are, I think the main attraction to this book, at least for kids, will be the adorable photographs of Buttercup, Wally, Honey, Sunshine, Sammy, Velcro and the other cute sloths that fill these pages with their cuddly personalities and sweet smiles.

Below are some of Lucy Cooke's photographs from "A Little Book of Sloth."

Mateo with his plush toy, Mr. Moo

Sunshine and Sammy

Baby sloth in a special onesie

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The Snow Book

While on a recent overnight getaway to Cincinnati, my partner Mark and I visited a used bookstore called, simply enough, the Ohio Bookstore. The website for this bookstore states that, distributed over its five floors, it has over 300,000 books and magazines in stock. I only had time to browse two of its five floors, but I believe their claim. I ended up spending a hundred dollars on used children's books and left with two shopping bags of books. Over the next several months, I'll share some of my finds on this blog.

Because it was recently requested that I feature it, I'm going to start with a non-fiction work called "The Snow Book," by Eva Knox Evans, published by Little, Brown and Company in 1965, with illustrations by Aldren A. Watson. Other than the fact that the author won the Jane Addams Children's book award in 1953 for another of her titles, "People Are Important," I was unable to find any other biographical information on her, though judging by the number of her books that are available through Amazon, she seemed to be a quite prolific non-fiction author. Though "The Snow Book," is out of print, there are used copies readily available through Amazon. If you are interested in a copy for yourself, you can click on the link in the book's title.

What convinced me to buy this book though, were the beautiful illustrations by Aldren A. Watson (Watson, who is also a woodworker has also written several books, including "The Blacksmith," and "Country Furniture"). When I first glanced through this book, it flipped open to one of several two-page spreads. I think this one of a man shoveling snow on a rural road, is the first one that caught my eye (click on any of these illustrations to see them larger). All of the book's illustrations are done in this style - black graphite or (or is it conte crayon?) lines, with the shadows colored in a beautiful aqua blue.  The snow is indicated by allowing the white of the paper to show through. The composition of this image with its curved road in the foreground, invites the viewer to enter the scene. Our eye begins with the man in the road, shoveling snow by a group of mailboxes.  The man appears to have stopped shoveling for a second and seems to be watching the truck that has just passed by.  We follow his gaze down the road to the truck that is plowing the road. We then notice a figure opposite the truck, who appears to be waving to the driver. From there we wander further into the scene and see another figure walking across the snow covered landscape. From there our eye wanders up to the snow covered hills. As our eye moves up and to the right, we come back to the foreground by moving down the tree that anchors the right edge of the scene. It's a beautiful illustration, one that keeps your eye moving and leaves you with the desire to study it and revisit it.

I'd say that the book is probably written for a 4th or 5th grade level, but it's a wonderful little book for anyone who wants to know more about this natural phenomenon. It explains what snow is, what makes it fall, how it is plowed, how people travel across it, how it is predicted, how it can be induced artificially (Chapter 8 "The Snow Gun") and what happens when it begins to melt away. Above each chapter heading, is an illustration. One of my favorites is the illustration for Chapter 4 "Snowshoes and Dogsleds." In this image, the illustrator has cleverly given us a cut-away side view that lets us see what is hidden by the high drifts of snow. On top of the snow, a man trudges along in his snowshoes. The fence he is walking towards is half-hidden by the height of the snow, and the artist allows the viewer to see just how deep the snow is, through his clever cross-section.

Here is another chapter heading illustration that I think is quite beautiful, this one from Chapter 2 "What is Snow?"

There are also images sprinkled throughout the margins of the book. In the section devoted to Wilson Bentley, the famous snowflake photographer, we see images of Bentley and his microscope, his camera and the different types of snowflakes.

 One of my favorites of these margin illustrations is this one that depicts the shadow of an airplane as it passes over a tiny figure standing beside a house that is half buried in the snow. I love the unusual perspective of this illustration. It's almost like the artist has invited us to sit alongside the pilot of the plane.

Earlier, I mentioned that the book contained several illustrations that spanned two pages. Here are several of the others. In case you are wondering where the page gutter is in these scans, I have attempted to remove the dividing gutter in all of these two-page illustrations, through some Photoshop manipulation.