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!
As with They Were Strong and Good, the illustrations in the first winner of the Caldecott Medal (awarded in 1938), Animals of the Bible, A Picture Book, are completely unimpressive in this day of endless choice in picture books. Likewise, the text does not stand out today: the text is simply verses from the King James Version of the Bible, selected by Helen Dean Fish.
Fish selected verses that contain animals, but besides that, there is little relation between pages in the children’s book. It was illustrated by Dorothy P. Lathrop with simple black-and-white illustrations (the cover only has color). Yes, it’s my bias in a world of color, but they seem rather boring to me. This isn’t a book I’d choose to read to my son. I found the unrelated and uninspiring Bible verses to be boring and the illustrations failed to draw me in.
I like Bible verses! I thought a picture book of Bible animals would be fun for my little one! This Caldecott winner was simply disappointing.
