March is a big month for picture books, as many elementary schools celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday with Cat in the Hat costumes, green food-coloring and Read Across America.
Why not remind your
teens of the fun of picture books by recommending some they might have missed?
This is the perfect time to display those somewhat edgy titles that you may
skip for storytimes, but will delight your teens!
Do you have a teen that
enjoys twists and unexpected endings? Jon Klassen’s picture books, I Want My
Hat Back and This is Not My Hat, starring a determined bear and a
possibly doomed fish (respectively), are just a little bit twisted and
completely entertaining. Remember Lane Smith’s It’s a Book, which
shocked the library world a few years ago with its ending page? Our teen
library council still requests the
book trailer at parties (they love shouting out the ending line). And love
stories don’t get more tragic than that of the tadpole and the caterpillar in Tadpole’s
Promise by Jeanne Willis, illustrated by Tony Ross.
Have fans of the TV show
Community among your teens? Why not
hand them some similarly self-aware picture books? Picture book rockstar author/illustrator,
Mo Willems, has several delightful characters, but it’s We Are in a Book,
one in his Elephant & Piggie series, that is the most interactive. Read
this one aloud, and watch the grins spread. In both Chloe and the Lion,
by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Adam Rex, and An Undone Fairy Tale by Ian
Lendler, illustrated Whitney Martin, the illustrators’ inability or unwillingness
to keep up with the story is both fun and
a great example of playing with storytelling. Another great example of turning storytelling
on its head is Chris VanAllsburg’s Bad Day at Riverbend, in which
townsfolk wonder what the unsettling, jagged colors in the sky might mean…
What about the budding artists among your teens? From Caldecott Award winners and honors to the un-nominated, show them a variety of formats, like colored pencil drawings in Emily Graves’ Blue Chameleon or torn paper illustrations in Ed Young’s Seven Blind Mice. After taking them through Eric Rohmann’s precise and boldly-outlined relief drawings in My Friend Rabbit (I’d frame so many of these pages if I could bear taking the book apart!), Catherine Rayner’s loose lines and layered blocks of watercolors in The Bear Who Shared, and Chris Haughton’s pencil and digital media drawings (plus an unusual color combination) in Oh No, George, your artistic teens will find something to inspire their own creations.
Picture
books are a great way to remind teens to have fun with what they read – and
that picture book reading doesn’t need to end once you’ve started chapter
books! Share your favorites, encourage them to reread books from their
childhood, and who knows: maybe one of those teens will create picture books of
their own someday!
Great review. You really capture that age does not have to mar the love of picture books.
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