#19 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.
Sshhhhhh!
I hope you don’t mind my whispering, but I finally got all the lower case letters to go to sleep. As soon as I opened this doozy (or should I say dozy) of a picture book, those little rascals skitter-scattered every which way and their UPPER CASE parents kind of looked at me like this — :o(.
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CHARLOTTE IN LONDON by Joan MacPhail Knight,
pictures by Melissa Sweet (Chronicle, 2008). Ages 8+, 64 pp.
It’s August, the perfect time for some armchair traveling! Are you in the mood for a little cherry clafoutis, raspberry fool, and vegetable soup?
Earlier this year, while I was preparing for my interview with Caldecott Silver Medal winner Melissa Sweet, I noticed that she’s the illustrator for Joan MacPhail Knight’s Charlotte series. I had never seen any of these totally captivating, impeccably designed books before, and it was love love love at first sight!
This is just to say we have selected the winners in our Melissa Sweet Book Giveaway!
After riding around in a red wheelbarrow and consuming an inordinate number of juicy plums, Cornelius got right down to work.
Melissa with Rufus and Nellie.
Friends, I’m tickled pink and over the moon, because our very special guest at alphabet soup today is 2009 Caldecott Honor Medal winner, Melissa Sweet!
I can’t think of a better way to top off National Poetry Month, than with the illustrator who so brilliantly rendered the story of how Willie Williams, a doctor from Rutherford, New Jersey, became one of America’s most influential twentieth century poets.
If you’ve seen Melissa’s masterful work in A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams (beautifully written by Jen Bryant), then you know the award was supremely well deserved. Her mixed media collages embody the very soul and spirit of the poet, who “walked through the high grasses and along the soft dirt paths . . . stretched out beside the Passaic River . . . watched everything,” took notes “about things he’d heard, seen, or done . . . looked at the words . . . and shaped them into poems.”
Jama's Alphabet Soup 