A Few Favorites

Picture Books I love. A lot.

One of the best pieces of advice I received as a new illustrator was to read. Read everything. Read every single children’s book you can get your hands on. Park yourself in the kids’ section of the library and get reading. Pour over those titles and examine every little thing. What works? What doesn’t? How do text and image interact? Where is variety necessary and where is sameness needed? What would you have done differently if you were illustrating this book? How do you tell a story with pictures?

So if I were to send you off to the children’s section of (insert your bookstore of choice) here’s five books I’d hand you. Some are old, some are new, but all are well-worth the read.

1. Oh What a Busy Day, by Gyo Fujikawa: If you aren’t familiar with Gyo Fujikawa’s backstory, you can get up to speed here. I was obsessed with Fujikawa’s books as a child and the joy-filled universe her children populate. What I appreciate, though, as an adult, is the quiet that permeates her work. I think there’s a common misconception that children need entertainment and action on every page of a book. But silence provides peace. There’s a happiness in messing around in a ditch, hunting for frogs. Lying on your back looking at the stars is mesmerizing. Riding your bike and listening for the, “whoosh” of the air rushing past you is exhilarating. Not everything needs to be loud or bright or in-your-face. And I think this is where Fujikawa excels and is worth studying.

2. When You Were Small, by Sara O’Leary, illustrated by Julie Morstad: This is my go-to baby shower gift. It’s oh so charming and wonderfully timeless. There’s nothing more cringe-worthy than a picture book with outdated technology, like a huge early 2000’s desktop computer or a kid skating by with a Walkman. So one thing I especially appreciate about When You Were Small is that it doesn’t look like a book that’s coming up on being two decades old. In addition, Julie Morstad’s use of white space is exceptional and her winsome characters are a delight.

3. Saint George and the Dragon, by Margaret Hodges, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman: All of us living in 2024 have fractured attention spans. We’re squirrels chasing the next bright, shiny thing, unable to focus for more than a milisecond. The antidote to this is a book like Saint George and the Dragon. Trina Schart Hyman’s stunning line-work and detailed scenes drew me in as a child and still captivate me as an adult. I have to really pause to appreciate her art. And the drama! The illustrations pull no punches, showing a truly evil, fire-breathing dragon intent on destruction. St. George is portrayed exhausted, wounded and ultimately victorious. This one gets dark for a picture book. And I think that’s a powerful lesson: children are far more able to handle intense content than we appreciate. There are no dragons (that I know of) roaming North America. But there are a thousand “dragons” that we encounter on a daily basis, fighting whatever good and evil come our way. So what better way to form a child in handling life with courage than a picture book like this? I’m not a fan of overly didactic picture books, especially stories that are preachy. But you can send a message in a subtle, meaningful way that respects your readers’ ability to decode.

4. The Jolly Postman, by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Janet Ahlberg: I had a hard time choosing just one Ahlberg picture book. They’re all phenomenal! But the Jolly Postman squeaks by as my favorite. An epistolary picture book, the story is told through a combination of prose and real, honest-to-goodness letters placed in envelopes scattered throughout. And Janet Ahlberg’s ability to develop a visual narrative is phenomenal. The book could be understood entirely through her illustrations and the way she introduces plot elements subtly is genius.

5. The Selfish Giant, by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. Similiar to Janet Ahlberg, I had a hard time choosing just one Lisbeth Zwerger book to include. But this one always gets me in the feelings and it’s a beautiful example of an emotionally difficult story handled softly. Zwerger’s art just glows and her characters are always some of my favorites.

6. Home, by Carson Ellis. So much of Home feels like it flys in the face of traditional picture book advice and I love it for that. Loads of white space, a sophisticated color palette, detailed architecture: none of that sounds like a typical picture book. There’s a place for simplicity in picture books, for sure. But detail is glorious, too (just look at a Richard Scarry book for reference). And detail is where Home is tremendous.

7. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg: Similiar to Saint George and the Dragon, this book can be… well let’s be honest, it’s creepy. Like “Twilight Zone”-for-children creepy. But it’s delicious in its darkness, challenging us to peer into dim corners and to follow mysteries. And the book is entirely in black and white pencil illustrations, proving that you don’t always need color to make a picture book. Also, this is one of my nephew’s favorites.

8. Journey, by Aaron Becker. Magical, ethereal, enchanting… I could go on and on. The use of color in this one is exceptional and it’s a pitch-perfect example of a wordless picture book.

9. The Maggie B, by Irene Haas. I wanted to live on a houseboat in the WORST POSSIBLE WAY after my mom read this one to us. Not every adventure needs to be loud and blaring. Sometimes we set off into the unknown just to bake bread and tend fruit trees and that, in a way, is a protest against the world.