picture books

nine cool things on a tuesday

~ jama ~ 7 Comments

1. Happy June! Are you ready for the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer? In her charming watercolors, Louisiana artist Amariah Rauscher captures the magic of childhood play. Remember those long summer days when you had the leisure to daydream, look for fairies in the forest, befriend dragons or catch a falling star?

I was first drawn to Amariah’s treehouse pictures, delighted by the prospect of visiting a bakery, candy store, greenhouse, or ice cream shop perched high atop the branches. Of course there are lots of adorable animal friends to keep you company and share in the fun.

Amariah is the illustrator of the Princess Truly book series written by Kelly Greenawalt and published by Scholastic. She has a Masters in Communication but prefers spending her time painting pictures. She also enjoys reading, watching cartoons, playing board and video games and spending time with her two daughters. A peanut butter and jelly fan, she can attest to the joys of wearing slippery socks in order to slide into every room of her house.

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[tropical review] Aloha Everything by Kaylin Melia George and Mae Waite

~ jama ~ 30 Comments

Care to swim with the sea turtles, soar high above the earth with regal hawks, or hear wondrous tales of heroic voyagers navigating the Pacific by wind and stars?

Then join a young Hawaiian girl as she takes a magical journey around the Islands in this gorgeous new picture book, Aloha Everything by Kaylin Melia George and Mae Waite (Red Comet Press, 2024). Through the traditional storytelling dance of the hula, she learns about the history, culture, and folklore of her homeland while embracing the true meaning of “Aloha.”

We first meet little Ano one enchanted night:

In the hush of the night
with the moon still aglow,
a small baby was born
where the koa trees grow,

where lehua blooms bright,
where the mo'o give chase,
where the ocean spray's kiss
meets the sky's close embrace.

With her curls kapa soft,
breath like breadfruit so sweet,
this dear child evermore
shared the island's heartbeat.

This fierce-spirited, courageous child, so swift and smart, grew in both mind and heart. She was indeed special, but still had much to learn. What did hula teach her with its generations of treasured stories and rich lore?

First, she learned how the islands were formed, and about the evolution of plants and wildlife. As “humble seeds burst to blooms,” and “rock eroded to sand . . . a world born ablaze turned to lush wonderland.” Soon creatures filled the land, sea and sky from “mauka to makai.” Clinging to a hawk’s wings, the girl surveyed all these wonders from her perch amid the clouds, while the majestic bird imparted his wisdom: “To our ‘āina be just./When we care for our earth,/then our earth cares for us.”

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[review] Miss MacDonald Has a Farm by Kalee Gwarjanski and Elizabet Vuković

~ jama ~ 15 Comments

Veggie lovers: grab your trowels, spades, and watering cans. Warm weather’s here and it’s time to make delicious things grow.

In Miss MacDonald Has a Farm by Kalee Gwarjanski and Elizabet Vuković (Doubleday BFYR, 2024), we’re all invited to tag along with busy Miss MacDonald as she cultivates, harvests, and then cooks colorful crops of healthy, flavorful produce. With a pick-pick here, and a shuck-shuck there, she takes us from seed to table with hard work, patience, and careful tending.

Debut author Gwarjanski’s upbeat female-centric spin on the traditional “Old MacDonald” song, with its rhythmic, rollicking text, is equally fun to sing or read aloud. Since the verse scans so well, those familiar with the song will likely find it hard to resist vocalizing, especially with the jaunty tagline “E-I-E-I-GROW.”

So what is Miss MacDonald actually growing? Lettuce, peas, tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, potatoes, corn and pumpkins. She begins by planting lettuce:

Miss MacDonald has a farm.
She loves things that grow.

And on that farm,
she has some lettuce.

E-I-E-I-GROW

With a seed-seed here
and a sow-throw there,

here it shoots, there it sprouts,
everywhere it sprout-sprouts.

Miss MacDonald has a farm.
She loves things that grow.

(I can hear you singing!) 🙂

She then goes on to complete a different task for each of the other vegetables: waters her peas, weeds her tomato plants, picks her green beans, prunes her zucchini, hills her potatoes, shucks her corn, and finally washes and cans her pumpkins.

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[artsy review] Gifts from Georgia’s Garden by Lisa Robinson and Hadley Hooper

~ jama ~ 7 Comments

American modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe is best known for her meticulously rendered, large-scale depictions of flowers and stark desert landscapes — Oriental Poppies, serene Calla Lilies, fiery Red Canna, deer skulls and wildflowers floating above the horizon.

A fiercely independent nonconformist, O’Keeffe created abstract distillations of natural forms that gained international recognition and confirmed her stature as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. O’Keeffe took a personal and provocative approach to art, seeking to create an equivalent of what she felt she was looking at, rather than merely copying it.

Beautiful front end papers.

In their gorgeous new picture book, Gifts from Georgia’s Garden: How Georgia O’Keeffe Nourished Her Art (Neal Porter/Holiday House, 2024), Lisa Robinson and Hadley Hooper focus on how O’Keeffe’s art-centric lifestyle as a sustainable gardener fed her muse and enabled her to flourish as a painter. Deeply inspired by place and environment, Georgia believed everything was art, and art was everything.

The book opens with Georgia at her easel, painting “flowers so lush and large they filled the canvas.” This microscopic perspective enabled the viewer to appreciate a flower’s minute details. She hoped to make people in the city slow down and take the time to really see the beauty that she saw.

Love the stunning case cover under the dust jacket!

But Georgia grew tired of New York and fled to New Mexico, where she felt free amidst its canyons, mesas and skyscapes. The scent of the soil reminded her of growing up on a farm in Wisconsin, where she had developed her “love of wide skies and sweeping vistas.”

The golden shimmer of a field of wheat;
rectangular rocks, twisted sticks, oval leaves;
barns with haylofts, windows, and doors.

Early on, she knew she wanted to become an artist.

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nine cool things on a tuesday

~ jama ~ 8 Comments

1. Hey, hey, hey, it’s May! Breathe in that fresh air. Revel in the flowers and make like a butterfly. Or perhaps you’re up for a lovely picnic?

UK artist Jenny Miriam’s charming digital illustrations celebrate the joys of nature, the sweet adorableness of small animals, and the fun of working and playing together.

Now based in Bristol, Jenny grew up in “the mysterious and magical county of Cornwall,” where she found joy and inspiration in the natural world, from the strange sea life in rock pools to the beautiful wildflowers that grew from seeds carried across the Mediterranean.

After earning a BA in Graphic & Packaging Design and an MA in Multimedia, Jenny worked as a digital and print designer for 18 years. She was always most at home with illustrative work, and today enjoys creating with painty textures and Procreate on her iPad.

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