My Caldecott challenge: Although these Caldecott winner and honor books are not, for the most part, books I’ve read aloud to my son, I still found them interesting. A few I had strong negative opinions of; they show that even books that earned the Caldecott award do become dated!
A River of Words by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Caldecott Honor 2009) is a picture book biography of the poet William Carlos Williams.
While the story of his life is interesting, my favorite part of this book is the incredible collages that illustrate it. Illustrator Melissa Sweet did extensive research about Williams’ life before she began work on the book. In the end, she used bits of old discarded books. The endpapers became the background for her paintings.
Each page has some words from Williams’ poems: either cut-outs from a book, typewritten, or handwritten somewhere on the page. These beautiful, detailed, and interesting collages help tell the story of a boy who became a doctor and yet still loved the times when he looked at words “…and shaped them into poems.” Highly recommended.
