Caldecott Medal

I got...

Newberry or Caldecott winning? I forget which, but yeah, anyways.

I have no fucking idea.

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I don't know.

She had red hair.

Yeah, maybe that's all I'm kind of mixing up in my head, but that's, yeah, that one definitely, again, I don't think this is one of mine, but this is one that was around our house plenty, and the artwork in particular, which apparently another Caldecott winner, by the way.

Yeah.

Let's go surprise everybody at Marianne's birthday party at Bowl-a-Rama.

I'd be like, "I prefer to read." [laughs] This one has a Caldecott Medal.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so anyway, so they roll up there, and also they're in Jesse's Jeep, which is literally not stealthy at all.

Her 2024 picture book, Chooch Helped, was about an older sibling accepting a younger brother's desire to be included.

That book was awarded a Caldecott Medal.

Her new novel, Death in the Tallgrass, is both about siblings and about frightening circumstances, though not supernatural.

Death in the Tallgrass uses narrative and occasional interstitials to explore atrocities in eastern Oklahoma.

And so that was part of it.

So yeah, there's, that place is magical and it's, it's given birth to another book and Jovita and Her Parents was a Caldecott honor winning book.

So I'm very proud of that work as well.

Oh, and she's an actual member of your, your bloodline, your family.

stalactite and stalagmite is a good example.

I just want to Caldecott honor where the two are talking to each other.

And obviously we know that stalactites and stalagmites can't really talk to each other, but the, but exactly.

Cause we're picture book authors.

Oh, it's called The Oxcart Man.

It's a Caldecott Medal winner, so it's pretty well known by...

I'm hesitating here because I was about to say, if you go to a library, I mean, they will definitely have it in stock, but they might have put it on the back shelves because a lot of the libraries, especially we've seen since 2020...

No, they have been just dropping a lot of the classics and hiding them and not bringing them out like they used to.

Let's switch things up and take a look at new releases, starting with Starman, The Cosmic Voyage of David Bowie by Matthew Cordell.

Reinvention is the engine driving Caldecott medalist Cordell's ardent, shapeshifting picture book biography of David Bowie.

In this narrative tour of the musical artist's eras, Bowie is depicted as a cosmic, celestial music artist who spends his life seeking inspiration.

Early spreads show the little prince-like traveler flying through a hand-hatched purple cosmos that practically hums on the page.

[laughs]

Had never heard of No, David, had never heard of a Caldecott Award.

Oh.

[laughs]

I loved the heartbreak and triumph of each of the storylines and the ways he developed his characters, especially through showing instead of telling.

The story of Philippe Petit, who is the tightrope walker, is really well known in our home because we have a picture book that won the Caldecott Medal in 2004 called The Man Who Walked Between the Towers.

It's beautifully illustrated and I have read it so many times to my children.

So I loved pulling back from that showstopper of a story that I know so well.