the difference between picture books and books with pictures

Here is the last of my Caldecott Winner and Honors Winners.  for now...

Wenzel, B.(2016)  They All Saw A Cat. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books

“The cat walked through the world, with its whiskers, ears, and paws..”  This first sentence sums up most of the action in the book.  It’s quite adequate though because the story is less about action and more about the feelings of others towards the cat.  As the cat walks through the world it is observed by several different creatures, and every observer sees the cat in a different way.

        I absolutely adore this book!  The visuals are stunning and it’s no wonder this book received a Caldecott Honor. Each page of the book illustrates the cat in a completely new way.  The text is simple, and that’s good because the story is really told through the pictures.  It’s a great way to teach points of view, and to start discussions with a child on why the pictures change the way they do.  

 Henkes, K. (2015) Waiting. New York, NY: Greenwillow Books

                This story centers on a group of figurines on a windowsill.  Almost all of them are waiting for something.  The dog likes snow, the pig rain, and the owl the moon.  As they sit and wait they experience many wonderful sites together.

                The story is a simple one; it’s just the day to day life of a group of figurines.  The pictures do well in following the story.  When the text is describing just one figurine, they tend to be small.  When the event opens to the whole group, the picture takes up the page.  The story’s characters calmly do what many children can’t; they wait.

Mattick, L. (2015) Finding Winnie:  The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear. New York, NY: Little Brown Books for Young Readers

                Finding Winnie tells the stories of not one, but two bears.  This is the true story of the bear that inspired the “Winnie-the-Pooh” series of stories.  Lindsay Mattick, the author, as a character in her own book tells the story to her son about her great-great-grandfather, Harry Colebourn.  Colebourn, after he joins the Canadian Army, finds the bear as he is deployed to help in the war effort.  He eventually brings the bear to London, where Alexandre Milne meets him and writes his stories about him.

                Though the story is longer than expected, it doesn’t quite seem so.  Being that it’s written as a story being told to a child, the child will often interrupt and ask questions a child actually might.  This helps to not only break it up a bit, but then later expand the story past Colbourns’s experience.  The pictures are large and friendly.  Every person seems to have rosy cheeks.  It’s also done in muted colors, and a style that gives it an old feel.  Even though it was written down in 2015, you can tell this is a story that’s been passed down for generations.