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Jenna Copper

Teaching Secondary English Language Arts

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The Ten Best Picture Books to Teach Literary Devices In Secondary ELA

This blog post lists ten engaging picture books to teach literary devices in Secondary ELA. It also includes a description of the paired literary devices and an explanation of how the literary device illuminates the theme.

I first wrote about using picture books to teach literary analysis skill s to my secondary English students several years ago. In fact, it was my very first session at Keeping the Wonder Workshop back in 2018. I even wrote my own picture book The Magic of Wonder filled with literary, poetic, and rhetorical elements to teach secondary ELA students literary analysis skills.

Still, I often get questions about book recommendations for teaching specific literary and rhetorical concepts and devices. In this article, I’m going to list my top ten favorite picture books to teach literary devices.

Of course, there are thousands of picture book selections that could work for this post so narrowing it down to just ten is based on 1) books my three kids have loved over the past ten years and 2) books that worked well with my secondary ELA students over the same stretch of time. I also attempted to select picture books that were written for a variety of ages, from board books to hardbacks.

For each picture book, I’ll provide a brief summary, the literary elements I highlight with the picture book, and rationale. I’d love for you to include your favorites in the comments.

Picture Book 1: Giraffes Can’t Dance Written by Giles Andreae and Illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees

Picture book summary.

This book tells the story of Gerald, an awkward giraffe who loves dancing, but feels a little out of step. This is made obvious when his other animal friends are hosting a big dance party, and Gerald is singled out and teased for his so-called awkward dance moves. With the help of a little musical friend, Gerald finds music he loves and discovers his rhythm. Gerald learns to block out the noise of others and trust himself to find peace and harmony.

Literary Device(s): Rhyme and Rhythm

This book is perfect for teaching imagery. The setting and dance styles are beautifully described, and there is distinct auditory imagery that plays into the rhyme and rhythm. I love pairing this text with the Myth of Music by Rachel M. Harper poetry prompt from the 2017 AP English Literature and Composition Exam.

Picture Book 2: Llama, Llama Red Pajama Written and Illustrated by Anna Dewdney

Mama Llama tucks in Baby Llama and says goodnight, but the room looks and feels a lot different when he’s all alone. As Mama Llama does the dishes and talks on the phone, Baby Llama starts getting nervous wondering what his mother is doing. This turns into an all out panic, when he worries Mama Llama is gone. Mama Llama rushes back to his bedroom just in time to teach him a valuable lesson: Mama Llama is always near even if you can’t see her.

Literary Devices: Tone and Tonal Shifts

Llama Llama Red Pajama is a classic board book for good reasons. The message in this book is perfect to teach little ones about object permanence (for my parents out there), but it’s even better (in my opinion) to teach secondary ELA students tonal shifts. Little Llama starts off very calm, but intrusive thoughts of his mother disappearing soon creep in. The reader experiences these changing feelings through several very distinct tonal shifts. It’s a shared experience that we’ve all likely experienced at one time or another, so the changing feelings are something we can all relate too. Plus, the images perfectly capture the shift to help students recognize the impact of this change. Putting all of this together, students can identify how the tonal shift from calm to panicked highlights the object permanence lesson all kids have to learn.

Picture Book 3: The Day the Crayons Quit Written by Drew Daywalt and Illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

Duncan, an elementary student, is ready to color a beautiful picture. When he goes to get his crayons, he finds letters in their place. Each letter lists grievances his crayons have with what and how he colors. The book provides each letter and in doing so provides a great opportunity to discuss tone.

Literary Device: Tone and Point of View

This multiple perspective picture book is perfect for teaching tone. Each crayon has a different set of grievances (and some have none at all), so the tone of each letter and crayon is different. This picture book gives you an opportunity to discuss how tone is related to the way the speaker (the crayon in this case) feels about the subject (Duncan’s coloring). Sometimes, students struggle differentiating between mood and tone, and I’ve found this book very helpful to associate tone with speaker. As you read, students can track the tone for each crayon, just be sure to read each character with a different voice that matches their tone!

Picture Book 3: Pig the Pug Written and Illustrated by Aaron Blabey

Pig the Pug is a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Aaron Blabey. The story follows a greedy, selfish pug named Pig who loves nothing more than to eat and sleep. When he refuses to share his toys with his dachshund brother Trevor, he learns his lesson through an unfortunate albeit comedic event.

Literary Devices: Idioms, Foreshadowing, Puns, Exaggeration, Understatement

Pig the Pug is a funny story that teaches a very distinct lesson: don’t be selfish. There are several follow up books about naughty pig and his sweet brother Trevor that follow the same pattern but teach a different lesson. I like this book because it’s perfect for highlighting the elements of humor. There are clever idioms and exaggerations. Students will be able to connect the purpose of the humor: to teach kids not to be like pug. This series pairs well with “The Dog That Bit People” by James Thurber.

Picture Book 5: The Good Egg Written by Jory John and Illustrated by Pete Oswald

The Good Egg tells the story of a good egg who literally cracks under the pressure of always trying to be good. Frustrated with trying to manage his misbehaving friends, the Good Egg leaves his carton to find himself. He takes time for himself and discovers his cracks start healing, and he feels less scrambled. When he goes back to the carton, he realizes he doesn’t have to be perfect and neither do his friends.

Literary Devices: Narrative Style and Symbolism

The Good Egg teaches students how to cope with perfectionism through a unique character: an egg who looks and acts like a person. Hence, this book is great for teaching anthropomorphism. (As a side note, personification is strictly figurative, while anthropomorphism is directly giving objects human qualities. In this sense, I think anthropomorphism is the better term to describe the egg.) It is also told in first person from the Good Egg’s perspective.

Anthropomorphism is interesting here because the reader can connect the symbolism of the cracking egg to the pressure of being perfect, the message. This unique narrative style in combination with personification/anthromorphism and symbolism highlights the theme, making it perfect for teaching these literary devices. Plus, it’s a great read aloud. The illustrations perfectly represent the symbolism.

Picture Book 6: All the World Written by Liz Garton Scanlon and Illustrated by Marla Frazee

All the World is a poetic cataloging of the big and small things that make up our wonderful world. It abstractly follows a circle of family and friends from morning to night and beautifully describes all the things that make the world magical: from the majesty of the sky to the delicateness of a shell to the embrace of a parent and child.

Literary Devices: Pacing, Diction, and Syndeton

This picture book is one of the most poetic on this list. It uses intentional diction to describe all of the big and small things that make up the world. To do this, the writer plays with pacing with asyndeton and polysyndeton. Most of the book uses asyndeton (no conjunction) for fast-paced descriptions of observable objects. However, at the end, polysyndeton is used to describe abstract things that make up the work “Hope and peace and love and trust.” The slower pacing and, therefore, focus on these elements is a great concept for students to explore.

The overall message is summarized in the last line, “All the world is all of us.” But, what does that actually mean? Students can explore the universal connections, and it might even be fun for students to play with pacing through asyndeton and polysyndeton by writing their own poem in the same style.

Picture Book 7: Of Thee I Sing by Barack Obama and Illustrated by Loren Long

This picture book by President Obama is a poetic letter to his daughters. In it, he asks a question and follows it up with an exemplar of thirteen outstanding Americans. Each section follows a recognizable pattern and highlights the contributions of the person to American culture. The conclusion honors the diversity of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life.

Literary Devices: Repetition and Rhetorical Questioning

Of Thee I Sing uses a unique and effective structure, which makes it great for studying repetition and rhetorical questioning. The repetition and rhetorical questions work together. Each section starts with a question that follows this pattern: “Have I told you that…” These questions lead into a pattern that highlights a groundbreaking American. At the end, the word people is repeated to illuminate the overall message. As a bonus, this picture could be used as inspiration for a research unit on groundbreaking Americans. I have had great success pairing this picture book with the Abigail Adams letter to her son from the 2014 AP English Language and Composition exam.

Picture Book 8: Love Written by Matt de la Pena and Illustrated by Loren Long

Love by Matt de la Pena and illustrated by Loren Long (who also wrote our selection) is a poetic celebration of love. Using rich imagery and shared experiences, Love is the perfect picture book to connect imagery and theme.

Literary Devices: Metaphor and Imagery

The universal theme is obvious in this picture book because it shares the title. Still, what makes this book special is the rich imagery used to describe the universal experiences tied to love. Each page uses distinct imagery to create an elaborate metaphor. The metaphor compares these shared experiences and feelings to love, or at least an expression of what love means. The beautiful illustrations enhance the imagery and lead readers to their own personal definition of love.

Picture Book 9: Dreamers Written and Illustrated by Yuyi Morales

Dreamers by Yuyi Morales is a picture book memoir that tells her and her son’s journey from Mexico to the United States and how she discovered her passion for storytelling when she found a local library. The story is told in lyrical verse and symbolic illustrations. It also includes a brief autobiographical essay at the end.

Literary Devices: Simile, Metaphor, Personification, and Symbolism

This unique memoir style is perfect for connecting the rhetorical situation to creative writing. Students can use the essay at the end to establish the rhetorical situation and then analyze the figurative language in the picture book to symbolically represent the factual aspects of the story. To take this further, students can make a literary argument to defend their take on the theme based on the text itself and the author’s autobiographical letter at the end.

Picture Book 10: The Magic of Wonder Written by Jenna Copper, Ashley Bible, Abby Gross, and Staci Lamb and Illustrated by Madeline Shearer

The Magic of Wonder (written by yours truly) is a whimsical rhyming picture book that explores the magic of the mind, inviting readers to embrace curiosity, surprise, freedom, and inspiration. Inspired by our bestselling k-12 education handbook Keeping the Wonder, the Magic of Wonder was written to inspire readers of all ages to find wonder in the world.

Literary Devices: Alliteration, Repetition, Tonal Shift, Rhyme, and Symbolism

I couldn’t write a list of picture book recommendations of teaching literary devices and leave out The Magic of Wonder! Obviously, I wrote it, but unlike all of the other books on this list (to my knowledge), The Magic of Wonder is the only picture book that was written with the intention of teaching literary devices. It’s true! Because I’ve been using picture books to teach literary analysis, I wanted to write a picture book that would intentionally teach those devices. The Magic of Wonder is perfect exploring all of these devices (and more). Here’s one way to do it:

Put students in groups.
Give each student a different literary device.
Ask them to define the device and then find an example of the device in The Magic of Wonder.
Explain how the example of the device illuminates an important theme of the book. (I did this for some of the picture books above.)

If you’d like to learn more about using picture books in secondary ELA, you can view my session (among many other awesome sessions) at Keeping the Wonder Virtual Workshop . You can also find more creative literary analysis activities in Keeping the Wonder: An Educator’s Handbook for Magical, Engaging, and Joyful Learning .

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Picture Books That Demonstrate Persuasive Writing

In my last post about teaching narrative writing , I mentioned how the subject of writing tends to be a thorn in the side of many homeschoolers. It doesn’t have to be that way, though! In this little series of posts, I hope to encourage you that teaching writing styles to your middle and high school students is as simple as reading a picture book. Literally.

Persuasive writing can also be creative writing! This post teaches you how to use picture book examples of persuasive writing as mini-lessons to improve your student's persuasive pieces.

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Master Writing as Examples for Kids

Master writers, otherwise known as authors of living books, are my go-to resources for teaching excellent writing practices and styles. And, often, I use picture books by master writers to demonstrate particular writing strategies because they make for quick and clear mini-lessons.

Today, I’m sharing several picture books I use when teaching my children to write persuasively. Whether the end goal is a persuasive essay, a speech, an editorial, or even an advertisement, these books can point my big kids in the right direction of writing persuasively.

What is Persuasive Writing?

Most persuasive writing has at least these five key parts:

A hook in which to grab the reader’s attention (Common in all forms of writing)
A thesis in which the writer states his belief about the topic
Supporting arguments to convince the reader that the thesis is correct
Counterarguments that offer answers to potential objections (Not always necessary)
A conclusion that restates the thesis

Picture Books that Demonstrate Persuasive Writing

Each picture book on this list uniquely shares a style of persuasive writing that can help your student(s) fine-tune their own writing.

How to Use the Books That Demonstrate Persuasive Writing

Besides simply reading through picture books that demonstrate persuasive writing, I sometimes use bits and pieces of them as mini-lessons to help hone particular skills.

We might talk about what makes a good hook and read the beginning sentences of a few of these books to see how published authors begin their writing.

I might read and reread the thesis from one or more books so we can discuss how important it is to define a clear and concise thesis.

We might analyze one of the books to see how many supporting arguments the author used and how those arguments were presented.

We might talk about the difference(s) in something they have written vs. the master writer. The purpose of this is usually to help my children learn to turn boring, factual writing into more creative writing that someone actually wants to read.

There are so very many lessons you can teach using picture books as examples. One of the easiest ways to start is to simply read a book aloud and ask your student to use the same story structure inserting his own characters, setting, and – in the case of persuasive writing – arguments. Having a skeleton on which to build their own story gives kids a bit more confidence in a new writing style.

Now that you’re armed with some lesson ideas, I can’t wait to hear about all the excellent persuasive writing your teens are doing!

Do you have anything to add? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks for teaching persuasive writing in middle and high school! Feel free to add other picture books that demonstrate persuasive writing in the comments, too!

Need a little more direction in this method?

I taught a practical class that can help!

iPad cover for a picture book masterclass product. It has a photo of a black pencil with pencil shavings.

Be sure to check out the other posts in this series to learn how to use picture books to teach a variety of writing styles!

10 Comments

Such wonderful ideas for teaching writing as I prepare for our first year of homeschooling next year! Thank you!!

You’ll love homeschooling!

We are all really looking forward to it!!

I love this so much! Did you ever write a curriculum to use these ideas with each of the above books, as you did with teaching grammar? Thank you.

Mimi, I am considering writing a curriculum from these ideas! It’s not been written just yet, though. 🙂

I want to purchase some of these books to teach the lessons, as the other lessons you’ve posted, but do you have a top three of the best ones?! Thank you! It seems like such a cool way to teach these concepts!

Tisza, that’s a hard question! 🙂 If I have to pick 3…The Great Kapok Tree, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type.

The list of books you used in the lesson are not showing up in the blog post. Can you send me the list?

Thanks, Kelley

Kelley, thanks so much for letting me know! I have fixed the post and you can see the list now. :o)

Hi there! I am currently student teaching in a 6th grade classroom. I am having to put together and record a lesson using a picture book. I thought using pictures book would be a great resource to help teaching writing and then I found your post. Would you be able to give me a little more guidance on how you would begin a persuasive writing unit using a picture book? Like for the first lesson of the unit?

Thank so much.

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6 Upper Elementary Picture Books I Use to Teach Writing

Picture books are not just for primary grade students. I use picture books with my fifth graders during each genre unit to model what good writing should look like. Hidden in these gems, are also great examples of writing skills that they can use during writing time with any genre. I’ve listed below six of my favorites with examples of the writing skills I teach for each one.

Nothing Ever Happens on 90th Street by Roni Schotter

This is my favorite book to teach writing skills. In the story, Eva cannot come up with something to write for her class, so each person on 90th street gives her a piece of advice. Each piece of advice can be used to help guide her writing. For example, the 90th street baker says, “Find the poetry in your pudding.” We discuss what this can mean for writing such as improving overused words, turning an old story into something exciting, etc. I even create a chart with each characters advice for writing so the students can refer to it.

The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg

If you are looking to teach students how to develop a strong character, this book will do just that. Chris Van Allsburg is very good at creating a strong character using thoughts and actions. In this book, we discuss how to use a character’s actions to portray their character. Chris Van Allsburg creates this selfish, greedy, character, Monsieur Bibot, through actions and dialogue. It is a great book to demonstrate “show don’t tell.”

The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson

I love this upper elementary picture book because these students are able to relate to the plot. In the story, a boy gets carried away with his friends during a baseball game, and ends up ruining an older man’s garden. He feels terrible afterward, and works hard each spring to help the man rebuild it. It is a great story to show rising action and character change.

My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco

I often struggle when teaching personal narrative because I find students often write about the same topics. Since I am departmentalizing and teach four classes, after reading 99 stories about a day trip to six flags, I am ready to cry. Patricia Polacco is one of my favorite upper elementary picture book authors. In My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother , she does a wonderful job in modeling how to write a personal narrative. The story is about a typical brother sister relationship that reaches a turning point and completely changes. After reading this book, I often find students are able to understand more what I am looking for in developing a personal narrative.

The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland

One strategy that we use for writing is to base a story around an object. In The Lotus Seed , a young woman travels from her home in Vietnam to America. The only thing she has with her to remember her home is this tiny seed from a lotus flower. After I read this story to students, it is amazing what they are able to come up with. I often start by having them do a quick write and make a list of several objects they could write about. They then choose one of these objects to turn into a story. One of the best writing pieces I have ever gotten from a student resulted from this lesson. She based an entire story around a leaf. It was beautiful, and I use it as a model every year!

I Wonder Why Penguins Can’t Fly and Other Questions About Polar Lands by Pat Jacobs

My favorite genre for teaching writing is nonfiction. I love how interested the students become in researching their topics. Often times, they even go home and research on their own. They love to come in and tell me all they have found. I always start with this question and answer book because it peaks student interest in non fiction instantly. Instead of reading fact paragraph after fact paragraph, the book asks several interesting questions based on a topic. There is an entire series to choose from. I usually start the lesson by having students open their writing notebooks. I read several questions and they write down the one they would like to hear the answer to the most. I then go around and have students read their questions and I provide the answer. By structuring the lesson this way, students have more accountability and tend to engage with the lesson more. We then discuss how to structure their own question and answer books when they start researching.

These six books are some of my favorites but I have many more that I use to teach writing. Using picture books is a great way to engage students. Upper elementary students are not too young for these visuals and often need them to be able to understand what we are looking for in their writing!

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How picture books help kids develop literacy skills

Do you remember the picture books that first brought you joy? The ones that were read to you before you could read, or the ones that sparked your imagination for the first time? When you think about these stories what do you see?

For most of us, we might see our favorite characters or the enchanting setting of our childhood books. We see the illustrations brought to life through our memories.

Picture books bring tremendous benefits to kids who are in the early stages of developing their reading skills. Illustrations shown alongside text offer invaluable tools to help kids build understanding, fluency, vocabulary and other foundational literacy skills. The imagery in a picture book brings the pages to life, serving as a visual roadmap for the story.

Here are five important benefits picture books bring to children who are learning to read.

1. Build language skills

As kids begin to speak and build sentences, they learn to recognize sounds and patterns within spoken language. This is known as phonological awareness and serves as the foundation for learning to read. The rhythmic cadence of many picture books helps kids develop and practice phonological awareness. Kids may start by repeating passages of their favorite picture books, then go on to make up their own similar rhymes or stories.

Dr. Seuss’ ABC: An Amazing Alphabet Book! is a picture book that helps build phonological awareness while practicing letter sounds. “Big A little a, what begins with A? Aunt Annie’s Alligator. A…a…A.”

At a most basic level, picture books help kids understand that words convey meaning—connecting the pictures in the book with the words on the page. Kids will check pictures on the page for background knowledge or contextual clues for vocabulary development. They even use the images to learn the names of new objects.

You can ask a child, “Can you show me where the alligator is on this page?” or “What letter does the word alligator start with?”

2. Identify sequence

Miss Nelson is Missing! Written by Harry G. Allard Jr. and illustrated by James Marshall

By organizing the sequence of events in a story, kids can practice their ability to comprehend what they read. Mastering this skill starts with identifying beginning, middle, and end, and summarizing key events that take place (in order) throughout the story.

Visual aids and illustrations remind the reader what happened throughout the story and support their ability to confidently retell the key events. As kids hone their sequencing skills, let them look at the pictures to remind them what happened in the story. If they guess, and guess incorrectly, then use it as an opportunity to re-read the passage. This offers a chance to do an additional check for understanding.

Furthermore, books filled with pictures encourage kids to make predictions and inferences about what’s going to happen next . They can pair the words with the expressions and setting shown in the pictures to make an informed guess about what comes next in the story.

In Miss Nelson is Missing! , readers can infer that Ms. Viola Swamp is Miss Nelson in a costume. Clues in the book, such as the coincidental timing of Miss Nelson’s disappearance and the appearance of Ms. Swamp help lead to this inference.

As you read a book with a child, you are both likely making inferences throughout. The key to helping kids realize when they are making an inference is to talk through the inferences out loud throughout the book. Take breaks to ask questions: “How does Miss Nelson feel when kids misbehave in class?”, “Why do you think Ms. Viola Swamp was outside of Miss Nelson’s house?”, “What do you think happened to Miss Nelson?”.

3. Improve comprehension

There’s a lot to learn on the road to becoming a skilled reader. Along with sequencing and summarizing, there are many other essential skills kids must master in order to comprehend the text they read . Some of those skills include; sentence construction, problem solving, comparing and contrasting, drawing conclusions, inferring, and more.

Books rich with illustrations and photos offer many benefits to help enhance reading comprehension. Here are just a few of those benefits.

Pictures provide visual clues to help us discover more about the narrative.
Pictures show expressions, unwritten details, setting, and context that help us compare and contrast. These details allow us to analyze more complex details of character development.
Illustrations can provide important background knowledge and offer contextual cues based on what’s happening in the story. This helps us “read between the lines” to find meaning that may not be explicitly stated in the text.

4. Spark a love of reading

The Rainbow Fish written and illustrated by Marcus Pfister

When you think about your favorite childhood book, what comes to mind? You may see a sparkling fish with rainbow colors or a tree that gives everything in the name of selfless affection. Maybe you see your favorite characters or other-worldly settings.

The illustrations of a picture book can be enchanting, fun, and inspiring. They can tell a story of their own. Many of us remember picture books as the books that made us first fall in love with reading.

One key ingredient of picture books that we shouldn’t discount is the benefit of pictures in sparking joy and creating a fun and engaging reading experience for kids. Picture books do a better job of holding the attention of kids learning to read than books without pictures. And reading picture books with kids on a regular basis (ideally daily) can help them self-monitor their behavior until they can sit through a whole story and focus on the events.

When kids enjoy particular books or stories, they may ask to read the same book again and again. This is a good sign that this book sparks interest and intrigue for a young reader. Let kids choose the stories they love, read them often, and offer options to explore new books as well.

5. Boost social-emotional learning

The subject matter in picture books can introduce social cues and cultural differences that encourage social-emotional development . Books that model social behaviors help hone social language skills and reinforce positive behavior.

In the book The Name Jar, a young Korean girl living in America is teased about her name, Unhei. A passage from the book reads, “She was relieved that the kids on the bus had gone to other rooms, but her face still felt red.” Marked by this bullying, she decides to search for a different name. Throughout the story her classmates and family show gentle kindness, support, and encouragement for Unhei until she is ready to introduce herself and her culture, as Unhei, to the rest of her classmates.

The Name Jar offers a chance for kids to practice empathy for Unhei and observe the outcome of kind, encouraging behavior compared to the negative effects of bullying.

Picture books also explore difficult subjects like fear, grief, taking risks, building friendships, self-control, and so much more. These books offer outlets for kids to explore challenging subjects in a format that’s approachable to them.

The illustrations in a book can help kids relate to the characters and setting portrayed. Picture books featuring protagonists of different identities, races, cultures , and abilities allow kids to relate to the texts where they see their own image reflected back. Furthermore, #ownvoices books written from the perspective of an author who shares a certain identity can provide an experience that’s profoundly relatable to kids’ differing experiences.

For example, Grace for President , allows young girls of color see themselves as future leaders in positions of power.

Grace for President written by Kelly DiPuccio and illustrated by LeUyen Phan

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22 Good Compare and Contrast Examples in Picture Books

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Teach kids to compare and contrast is an important thinking skill for young learners so they can determine categories and classifications by considering what’s similar and what’s different. That’s why I’m going to share the best mentor text children’s books with compare and contrast examples to read aloud with children. You’ll want to start early–long before your children are writing contrast essays in high school with thesis statements and fully developed arguments. Comparing and contrasting is an essential skill!

What is the definition of compare and contrast? W hat does compare and contrast mean? Comparing the similarities and differences between two or more things or concepts is comparison and contrast.

Use these picture books as mentor text examples and models to compare and contrast thinking in preschool, elementary, or even middle school, teaching Venn Diagrams, or introducing basic writing compare/contrast text structure which features similarities and differences between two different topics or subjects.

Compare and Contrast Thinking Maps

For younger students, start with a Venn Diagram .

To support kids with the compare and contrast thinking strategy, take notes using a thinking map such as the double bubble map.

If you’re using the notes to write a compare and contrast essay, help students to use the block method to write paragraphs that discuss similarities in one paragraph and contrasts in another paragraph, or more. The thesis statement should be a general statement of what you’re comparing and contrasting and what the overarching similarities and differences are.

Compare and Contrast Questions

As you compare and contrast, guide students to deepen their thinking with these questions.

What is the author comparing and contrasting? (Go point by point.)
How are these things (ideas) similar? How are they different?
Are there more similarities or more differences or is it the same?
Do the authors use transition words to indicate a comparison?

You can even compare and contrast children’s books by the same author, style of illustration, style of writing, or two different characters. In fact, there are many possibilities if you want to drill down into even more specific literary elements or writing techniques.

In this list, you’ll discover picture books that include comparisons or that lend themselves to thinking about similarities and differences.

However, before you read, start by practicing with other compare and contrast examples. Here are some things you can compare and contrast for practice:

Animals or animals and humans

What are compare and contrast transition words?

compared with
as opposed to

Compare and Contrast Examples in Picture Books

This Baby. That Baby written by Cari Best, illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh Two babies in two different apartments go about their day — and this adorable story shows exactly what this baby and that baby do during the day. They play and read and look out the window. They nap or don’t nap, eat and drink. Finally, they walk to the park. Not only is this day-in-the-life cute, but it’s also sweet and fun.

Birds of a Feather Bowerbirds and Me by Susan L. Roth Beautiful collage illustrations illustrate these fascinating comparisons between a collage artist and a bowerbird who have more in common than you might think. It’s very out-of-the-box thinking which you will love. Use this brilliant book for teaching kids about making art with found objects as well as comparing and contrasting similarities and differences.

Tiny Dino by Deborah Freedman Learn all about the characteristics of dinosaurs as you compare the little bird’s many features to those of a dinosaur. The plot is clever and the dialogue between the animals is engaging.

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt written by Kate Messner, illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal See what’s happening above and below ground as a little girl and her grandmother work in the garden from the beginning of the spring planting season until autumn gives way to cold snow. It’s an oversized book with marvelous illustrations and juicy descriptions. Beautiful!

Goodbye, Friend! Hello, Friend! by Cori Doerrfeld These best friends show us how to say goodbye and hello. In fact, every goodbye leads to a hello. For example, saying goodbye to Mom at the bus stop leads to saying hello to a new friend at school. “ Goodbye to snowman…/…is hello to puddles! ” Sweet example after example captured in tender, charming illustrations reassures kids that endings can lead to wonderful new beginnings.

So Big and So Small written by John Coy, illustrated by Steph Lew A little boy explores size as he compares himself (so big, even gigantic) to different things like a pebble or a butterfly then so small when he compares himself to animals at the zoo and so tiny compared to a waterfall or mountain. “ I’m just right ,” sums up his thinking as he plays with his baby sister.

Poo-Dunit? A Forest Floor Mystery written by Katelyn Aronson, illustrated by Stephanie Laberis One morning, Mouse finds a huge poo outside her house — and she decides to investigate to find out who pooed it. Mouse asks the forest friends if it’s theirs but they each explain why their poo is different in DETAIL (gross and informative!) until they finally discover who did it. But then they have to get it out of Mouse’s way — and the mice work together to spread it as fertilizer for flowers.

Anni Dreams of Biryani written by Namita Moolani Mehra, illustrated by Chaaya Prabhat Anni enters a determined quest to find the ingredients to make the best biryani just like Uncle makes in the cafe across the street. This is a delicious story filled with dreams, culture, perseverance, and food.

Inside Outside by Anne-Margot Ramstein and Matthias Aregui Gorgeous, oversized illustrations with no text are meant to show readers the inside and outside of something — things like inside an anthill (ants) and outside the anthill (anteater waiting.) Inside an apple is a worm on one page. The next page is a bigger perspective showing a lady about to take a bite out of the apple. Some of the illustrations aren’t perfectly clear so this book begs thoughtful inference and discussion. It’s quite profound.

It’s Not Jack and the Beanstalk written by Josh Funk, illustrated by Edwardian Taylor On every page, the narrator of this hilarious story interrupts narration to boss Jack around. Of which Jack isn’t a fan because he doesn’t really want to be a thief and murderer. His dialogue with the narrator will crack you up. Finally, at the giant’s house in the sky, Jack changes everything. He befriends the giant, makes him a taco salad, and goes to Cinderella’s house for a party. It’s the perfect updated version of Jack and the Beanstalk with a take-charge hero and curmudgeonly narrator. Use this picture book to compare the two different voices.

A New Home by Tania de Regil Parallel stories show a little girl and a little boy who are nervous about moving, one is moving from Mexico City to New York City, and the other is moving from New York City to Mexico City. They each share the fun things they’ll miss about their home. As they do, we notice how fun each city is and feel reassured that they’ll probably love their new, fun home. Simple, clear text accompanies charming illustrations.

Wagons Ho! written by George Hallowell and Joan Holub, illustrated by Lynne Avril Side by side stories in diary and scrapbook form share two girls’ experiences, both of who are moving from Missouri to the West . One story takes place in 1846, the other, in the present day. It’s a fascinating comparison of what is the same and what is different from each girl’s different setting.

I Will Fight Monsters for You written by Santi Balmes, illustrates by Lyona This clever parallel story is of a young girl (and a young monster) who are both frightened to sleep because of the upside-down world of monsters (and humans) beneath (above) their beds. Luckily, dads will fight monsters for their kids, and they give good advice: “the size of the monsters depends on how scared you are. If you feel very brave, the monster will shrink and run away.” Creative, reassuring, and heart-warming!

Lovely by Jess Hong Striking illustrations show “ lovely ” people who are different, short, tall, simple, complex, fluffy, sleek, and more. Use this book to teach adjectives, opposites, and appreciation for diversity.

compare and contrast example in children's book

When the Shadbush Blooms by Carla Messinger with Susan Katz, illustrated by David Kanietakeron Fadden Compare and contrast past and present cultural traditions and values of the Lenni Lenape. See both past and present-day families planting corn, playing games, harvesting crops, telling stories, and more. Learn the Lenape words for different seasons and moon cycles for significant aspects of nature. Several pages of back matter explain the words and their meanings.

Up and Down Mom by Summer Macon This little girl lovingly discusses her mom’s days in bed contrasted with her mom’s days of excitement. She shares that she feels many different feelings — and how she stays with her granddad or friends when her mom has to go to the hospital. I’m impressed with how much about bipolar disorder that this book covers in kid-friendly, relatable language.

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Melissa Taylor, MA, is the creator of Imagination Soup. She's a mother, former teacher & literacy trainer, and freelance education writer. She writes Imagination Soup and freelances for publications online and in print, including Penguin Random House's Brightly website, USA Today Health, Adobe Education, Colorado Parent, and Parenting. She is passionate about matching kids with books that they'll love.

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How to Write a Children's Picture Book in 8 Steps

It might be tempting to think that writing a children's picture book is easier than writing a full-length novel. However, a picture book actually requires all the same major storytelling elements that a novel does — such as well-drawn characters and an intriguing plot — just in a much smaller space.

The good news is that if you can achieve these things (with engaging illustrations to boot!), you’ll be poised to inspire the imaginations of young readers, who are always looking to welcome their next beloved picture book into their library.

To help all the aspiring authors who want to be the next Maurice Sendak or Margaret Wise Brown, we’ve put together this eight-step guide for how to write a children's picture book — plus tips for editing, illustrating, and publishing it!

Let’s start with the basics...

1. Come up with your idea

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Choose Your Picture Book Idea

Successful picture books are the ones that strike the right balance between appealing to two different audiences: while a picture book is intended for children, it’s ultimately the parents who decide whether or not to buy it — or to read it aloud. (That being said, appealing to and entertaining adults shouldn’t take priority over the children you’re writing your children's picture book for.)

Luckily, coming up with an idea for your picture book is essentially the same as coming up with an idea for any book, for any age category. It’s how you present that idea that will differ. For instance, your picture book idea might center around specific childhood experiences, such as:

Losing a favorite toy
Bedtime struggles
Imaginary friends
Fear of the dark

But when you strip those ideas down to their core, you’ll find that their concepts are universal:

Overcoming challenges

In that respect, successful books don’t connect with readers because they present an idea that’s never been explored before. They succeed because they convey topics in new and interesting ways. Sure, Goodnight Moon has been helping parents put their children to bed for over 70 years. But you can be sure that stories about bedtime will continue to hit the shelves for a long time to come, provided that they look at the topic from different angles or act as an educational tool .

To ensure your idea is solid, ask yourself the following questions:

Am I presenting the theme of my book in a way that’s relevant to children?
Do I explore the themes of my book in a way that feels unique?
Will my book appeal to parents? This question can be trickier to answer, but if you can say “yes” to the first two questions, you’re probably on the right track here as well. Also, as an adult yourself, think about the picture books that have stuck with you, and then take note of the elements that keep the book fresh in your mind as an adult.

If you’re struggling to nail down the core concept of your book, this guide to story themes might help. Or perhaps it’s inspiration you’re after, in which case this list of the best 100 children’s books of all time is sure to get your creative wheels turning!

2. Identify your reading category

Picture book reading categories, including reading ages, word count and examples

Let’s take a quick look at the different types of books that rely on illustrations, as well as some popular examples of each.

Board Books

Reading age: 0-3 years
Length: around 300 words
Examples: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr., The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Picture Books

Reading age: 4-6 years
Length: 400-600 words
Examples: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

Early Readers

Reading age: 6-8 years
Length: around 2,000 words
Examples: Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, Curious George by H.A. and Margaret Rey

Chapter books — for readers between 9-11 years-old — also typically contain illustrations. However, they’re often black and white sketches as opposed to full-color illustrations, and the pictures are used to complement the story rather than to help tell the story. If you’re looking for more in-depth details on the reading ages of various kid lit, check out this guide to writing a children’s book or sign up for the course below!

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3. Work out your narrative voice

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Read The Book Aloud

Even though many kids are able to read to themselves by the time they’ve graduated to the picture book and early reader categories, all books that rely heavily on illustrations are often still read aloud. That’s why rhyming in children’s books is pretty common — it creates a fun and engaging vocal storytelling experience. (Still, rhyming is not always a good idea for picture book writers — more on that below!)

Besides prose that sounds good out loud, there are a number of other factors to keep in mind regarding the narrative style of your picture book:

If you’ve ever casually dropped a word into a conversation with a child, only for them to ask you what it means, and stump you as you try to find a way to explain it, you’ll know the importance of tailoring the vocabulary of your picture book to the age range of your readers.

This, again, means striking the right balance. You want the vocabulary you use to be accessible to children. At the same time, you also want to offer young readers the chance to expand their understanding of language — aided by the illustrations. As children's editor Jenny Bowman says, “Children are smarter than you think and context can be a beautiful teacher.”

If you’re unsure whether the vocabulary in your book hits the right note, your best bet is to read other picture books to compare, and to get feedback from parents and children themselves. (But more on that later.)

On the note of helping young ones expand their vocabulary and reading skills: repetition plays a key role in many picture books!

The use of repetition allows children to anticipate what the next word or sentence of a story might be, encouraging them to participate in the act of reading and following along.

Examples include Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin, and One Day in the Eucalyptus, Eucalyptus Tree by Daniel Bernstrom. Oh, and almost anything from Dr. Seuss, of course!

As with repetition, rhyming can help children anticipate upcoming elements in a story. It can also contribute to a more fun, memorable reading experience — how many of us can still rattle off “I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam, I am!”

However, as all aspiring picture book authors know, it’s incredibly tough to get rhyming really right . An otherwise wonderful book can be brought down by sloppy rhyming, and unless you’re Dr. Seuss’ equally-talented grandchild, publishers will likely be wary of your rhyming manuscript. So deciding to go the rhyme-time route is taking a risk.

But if you decide that rhyming is the style for you and anything else simply won’t do (see what we did there?), remember that the story should always come first. Don’t sacrifice plot or any other important story elements for the sake of your rhymes.

Point of View

Point of view refers to the perspective of the narrator. If a story is told from…

First person, the narrator is the person the story is happening to and will use words like “me” or “I.” For example, Love You Forever by Robert Munsch.
Second person, the narrator is placing the reader within the story and will use words like “you” or “your.” For example, In New York by Marc Brown.
Third person, the narrator is telling the story from outside the action. In third person limited, the narrator is only able to reveal the thoughts and feelings of one particular character, while in third person omniscient, the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all characters. This POV uses words like “he” or “she.” For example, Corduroy by Don Freeman.

Deciding what POV you want to use is a big decision when it comes to how to write a children's picture book, and all of them have their own strong suits, depending on the story you’re telling. Love You Forever , for instance, is a book about unconditional love and is a comforting read (of course, until you’re older and suddenly it becomes a real tear-jerker!), so it makes sense that the narrator is speaking directly to the reader, using second person language like “you.”

Which famous children's author do you write like?

Find out which literary luminary is your stylistic soulmate. Takes 30 seconds!

Learn more about each narrative perspective in this guide to point of view.

4. Develop engaging characters

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Create Lifelike Characters

Writing a picture book is not an opportunity to scale back the work that goes into creating realistic, well-rounded characters with their own motivations, struggles, strengths, and weaknesses. Yes, you’re telling a story with far fewer words than a novel, and you have the benefit of using illustrations to help convey meaning, but your characters should still feel like real people .

Think back to the books you enjoyed as a kid. Likely, they stand out to you because you loved or related to their characters. If a parent or guardian knows their child has become a fan of a specific character, they’re also far more likely to continue buying more picture books about that same character. So taking the time to write fully-realized characters will not only allow you to hone your craft, but it’ll also allow you to build a fanbase.

Keep in mind that characters don’t need to mirror kids to appeal to them. You don’t need to worry about alienating your customer base by writing characters that don’t look, sound, or act as they do. Indeed, striving to create a cast with as broad appeal as possible is a ticket to creating forgettable characters. Don’t be afraid of cooking up unique characters that will connect with children in their own special ways — think about how many kids hold animals, aliens, or anthropomorphized objects near and dear to their hearts.

To help you out on that front, we’ve got three handy resources:

A character profile template to help you build your character from the ground-up.
A guide to character development to help you really zero in on what makes your characters tick.
A list of character development exercises that you can turn to any time you feel a sense of disconnect with your characters.

Don’t forget to consider the significance of providing children with access to characters that represent them. Read up about the importance of diversity in children’s books here.

5. Show, don’t tell

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Show, Don't Tell

A piece of advice extended to all authors, “show, don’t tell” actually puts picture book writers at an advantage because of the illustrations that accompany their books! And you should absolutely rely on your illustrations to convey things to readers, allowing you to save your limited word count for other things.

Of course, the concept of “showing” by employing sensory details in your writing still applies to children's picture books, too. For instance, in Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day , author Judith Viorst doesn’t need to repeatedly remind readers about how annoyed Alexander becomes throughout the day. He does so by focusing on the frustrating events Alexander encounters, and by using the illustrations to elaborate on how Alex is feeling. Consider his disgruntled expression and tersely folded arms in the image above.

One tip for making sure your picture book shows instead of tells is to look for instances of the words “is,” “are,” “was,” or “were.” Double-check if any of the sentences associated with these words are telling the reader something you might be able to show them instead.

Brush up on this golden rule of writing with this comprehensive guide to “show, don’t tell.”

6. Edit and seek feedback

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Get Feedback From Children

As we just mentioned, every word really needs to count in a book with so few words. So the first step of your editing process should be to go through your book line by line, and for each one consider: is this line crucial for my story? If the answer is yes, carry on. If it’s no, remove it!

After you’ve finished that, go back through your manuscript looking for any spelling or grammatical errors.

Once you’ve gotten your manuscript as polished as you can, it’s time to seek out feedback from the most honest beta readers out there: children!

If you have friends or family with children, ask them to read your book to their little ones, taking note of their feedback. Bonus points if you can watch someone reading your book to a child, as you’ll not only get their reaction, but you’ll also get a chance to hear what your book sounds like read aloud by another person.

There are also a number of great communities for children’s book authors out there that you can join for critiques and feedback.

Finally, if you want to be really sure that your picture book is ready to capture the imaginations of young readers, consider working with a professional editor . Editors pull from their insight into the publishing market they specialize in to inform their feedback — so the benefits an experienced children’s book editor can provide your story are significant.

If you want to dip your toes into the idea of working with a professional editor, you can sign up for a free Reedsy marketplace account and request quotes from a number of different children’s editors at no cost — including some who have worked with popular authors like R.L. Stine and Daisy Meadows!

Get a professional to edit your picture book.

Over 2,000 of the best picture book editors are on Reedsy. Sign up to meet them today!

Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book.

At this point your children's picture book should be complete! You can now turn your sights to illustration and publishing.

7. Illustrate your picture book

How to Write a Children's Picture Book | Illustrate Your Picture Book

If you’re hoping to have your book traditionally published, you can skip this step and go straight to the next. In just about every case, if your book is acquired by a publisher, they will want to choose their own artist to take care of the illustrations. In fact, sending a publisher your already-illustrated manuscript could harm your chances of landing a book deal as it may prevent editors from seeing how your book fits them . Think of it as going to see a house you’re interested in buying. If the place is covered with the current owner’s personality, you might have a tougher time seeing yourself living there. If the house is presented as more of a clean slate, you might walk in and spot the potential right off the bat.

Now, if you’re planning to self-publish your children's picture book, you will absolutely want to hire a professional artist to do the illustrations — unless you happen to be Eric Carle and possess both excellent writing and illustrating chops. Here's how to find the right illustrator for you.

1. Get an idea of the kind of illustrations you like.

Ultimately, the illustrator you hire will have input regarding what sorts of illustrations tend to work with the kind of book you’ve written. That being said, you should absolutely go into the process of finding the right collaborator with an idea of what you like. Head to your local bookstore and spend time browsing through the picture books there. Make notes of illustration elements you do or don’t like. Alternatively, scroll through these book illustration examples for inspiration.

2. Establish a budget, brief, and deadline.

These are three key things you want to have in mind before you start looking for an illustrator. You want to know how much you can afford to spend on illustrations, how much work you need to be done (for instance, how many pages need illustrating and what type of illustrations you’re looking for), and what date you need the work completed by. This information will all play a big role in scouting out the designers that are right for your project. But remember, you may need to adjust your expectations as you start talking to illustrators and begin to get an idea of how much they typically charge and how long the average turnaround time is.

3. Thoroughly look through illustrator’s portfolios.

This is the best way to come up with a shortlist of illustrators you’re interested in working with. As well as getting a sense of their work and whether it’s up your alley, you should keep an eye out for their credentials: have they illustrated picture books for your age group before? Have they illustrated characters that resemble yours before? And so on and so forth.

4. Reach out to illustrators.

Once you’ve finalized your shortlist, start reaching out to illustrators by telling them about your book, and the budget, brief, and deadline details you worked out beforehand. If you’re looking for a secure environment to scope out experienced illustrators, sign up for a free Reedsy account to gain access to our vetted marketplace of professional illustrators. You’ll be able to check out their portfolios and past work experience with just the click of a button!

Looking for a professional picture book illustrator?

Over 100 of the best picture book illustrators are on Reedsy. Sign up for free to meet them!

8. Publish your picture book

If you’re not yet sure which publishing path you want to take , here are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Self-publishing a picture book

If you want to dictate the amount of time it takes to bring your book to market, have the final say on all creative decisions, and keep a much larger percentage of royalties, then self-publishing your picture book is likely the right move for you.

That being said, self-publishing also means that you need to be willing to do all the marketing and distribution work yourself — and the costs associated with publishing your book will all have to come out of your own pocket.

For many authors, one of the biggest draws of self-publishing is accessibility. The picture book market is notoriously competitive when it comes to landing a publishing deal. It can be a very long game with an unclear outcome. So if your primary goal above all is to see your book published and available for little readers, stick to self-publishing.

Here some resources to help you along the way:

How to Self-Publish a Children’s Book [blog post]
Guide to Marketing a Children’s Book [free course]
Guide to Print on Demand [blog post]

Traditionally Publishing a picture book

In a plot twist that everyone saw coming, the benefits to traditional publishing coincide with the potential pitfalls of self-publishing. Those benefits include wider distribution and greater chances of seeing your book stocked in brick-and-mortar stores, a production team who will work on the book at no cost to the author, an advance against sales, and at least a degree of book promotion — though even with traditional publishing, authors are expected to shoulder a portion of marketing efforts as well.

On the other hand, there’s the inaccessibility, slower publishing timeline, less creative input, and smaller percent of royalties that we also mentioned above.

If you’re set on traditional publishing, don’t forget to consider independent publishers and small presses , who might be more likely to take a chance on an unknown children’s author.

Here are is some extra reading to answer more of your trad publishing questions:

How to Publish a Children’s Book [blog post]
How to Write a Query Letter [blog post]
How to Identify The Target Market of Your Children’s Book [blog post]

Finally, whether you’re planning to self-publish your book or go the traditional route, this free online course is a great resource that breaks the process of publishing a picture book down into manageable steps.

Free course: How to publish your picture book

Get your picture book into the hands of little readers everywhere with this 10-day online course. Get started now.

And there you have it: how to write a children's picture book in eight steps. Whether you’ve landed on this blog post at the very start of your writing journey or in the middle of the publishing process, remember to keep the goal of reaching young readers in mind every step of the way. Bonus points if you can approach this often-challenging endeavor with a sense of childlike curiosity and fun 😊

Are you in the process of writing a picture book? Tell us about it — and ask any questions you might still have — in the comments below!

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The Best Reviewed Essay Collections of 2021

Featuring joan didion, rachel kushner, hanif abdurraqib, ann patchett, jenny diski, and more.

Well, friends, another grim and grueling plague year is drawing to a close, and that can mean only one thing: it’s time to put on our Book Marks stats hats and tabulate the best reviewed books of the past twelve months.

Yes, using reviews drawn from more than 150 publications, over the next two weeks we’ll be revealing the most critically-acclaimed books of 2021, in the categories of (deep breath): Memoir and Biography ; Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror ; Short Story Collections ; Essay Collections; Poetry; Mystery and Crime; Graphic Literature; Literature in Translation; General Fiction; and General Nonfiction.

Today’s installment: Essay Collections .

Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

1. These Precious Days by Ann Patchett (Harper)

21 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed Read Ann Patchett on creating the work space you need, here

“… excellent … Patchett has a talent for friendship and celebrates many of those friends here. She writes with pure love for her mother, and with humor and some good-natured exasperation at Karl, who is such a great character he warrants a book of his own. Patchett’s account of his feigned offer to buy a woman’s newly adopted baby when she expresses unwarranted doubts is priceless … The days that Patchett refers to are precious indeed, but her writing is anything but. She describes deftly, with a line or a look, and I considered the absence of paragraphs freighted with adjectives to be a mercy. I don’t care about the hue of the sky or the shade of the couch. That’s not writing; it’s decorating. Or hiding. Patchett’s heart, smarts and 40 years of craft create an economy that delivers her perfectly understated stories emotionally whole. Her writing style is most gloriously her own.”

–Alex Witchel ( The New York Times Book Review )

2. Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion (Knopf)

14 Rave • 12 Positive • 6 Mixed Read an excerpt from Let Me Tell You What I Mean here

“In five decades’ worth of essays, reportage and criticism, Didion has documented the charade implicit in how things are, in a first-person, observational style that is not sacrosanct but common-sensical. Seeing as a way of extrapolating hypocrisy, disingenuousness and doubt, she’ll notice the hydrangeas are plastic and mention it once, in passing, sorting the scene. Her gaze, like a sentry on the page, permanently trained on what is being disguised … The essays in Let Me Tell You What I Mean are at once funny and touching, roving and no-nonsense. They are about humiliation and about notions of rightness … Didion’s pen is like a periscope onto the creative mind—and, as this collection demonstrates, it always has been. These essays offer a direct line to what’s in the offing.”

–Durga Chew-Bose ( The New York Times Book Review )

3. Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (Viking)

12 Rave • 13 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Orwell’s Roses here

“… on its simplest level, a tribute by one fine essayist of the political left to another of an earlier generation. But as with any of Solnit’s books, such a description would be reductive: the great pleasure of reading her is spending time with her mind, its digressions and juxtapositions, its unexpected connections. Only a few contemporary writers have the ability to start almost anywhere and lead the reader on paths that, while apparently meandering, compel unfailingly and feel, by the end, cosmically connected … Somehow, Solnit’s references to Ross Gay, Michael Pollan, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Peter Coyote (to name but a few) feel perfectly at home in the narrative; just as later chapters about an eighteenth-century portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds and a visit to the heart of the Colombian rose-growing industry seem inevitable and indispensable … The book provides a captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker … And, movingly, she takes the time to find the traces of Orwell the gardener and lover of beauty in his political novels, and in his insistence on the value and pleasure of things .”

–Claire Messud ( Harper’s )

4. Girlhood by Melissa Febos (Bloomsbury)

16 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed Read an excerpt from Girlhood here

“Every once in a while, a book comes along that feels so definitive, so necessary, that not only do you want to tell everyone to read it now, but you also find yourself wanting to go back in time and tell your younger self that you will one day get to read something that will make your life make sense. Melissa Febos’s fierce nonfiction collection, Girlhood , might just be that book. Febos is one of our most passionate and profound essayists … Girlhood …offers us exquisite, ferocious language for embracing self-pleasure and self-love. It’s a book that women will wish they had when they were younger, and that they’ll rejoice in having now … Febos is a balletic memoirist whose capacious gaze can take in so many seemingly disparate things and unfurl them in a graceful, cohesive way … Intellectual and erotic, engaging and empowering[.]”

–Michelle Hart ( Oprah Daily )

5. Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told by Jenny Diski (Bloomsbury)

14 Rave • 7 Positive

“[Diski’s] reputation as an original, witty and cant-free thinker on the way we live now should be given a significant boost. Her prose is elegant and amused, as if to counter her native melancholia and includes frequent dips into memorable images … Like the ideal artist Henry James conjured up, on whom nothing is lost, Diski notices everything that comes her way … She is discerning about serious topics (madness and death) as well as less fraught material, such as fashion … in truth Diski’s first-person voice is like no other, selectively intimate but not overbearingly egotistic, like, say, Norman Mailer’s. It bears some resemblance to Joan Didion’s, if Didion were less skittish and insistently stylish and generated more warmth. What they have in common is their innate skepticism and the way they ask questions that wouldn’t occur to anyone else … Suffice it to say that our culture, enmeshed as it is in carefully arranged snapshots of real life, needs Jenny Diski, who, by her own admission, ‘never owned a camera, never taken one on holiday.’” It is all but impossible not to warm up to a writer who observes herself so keenly … I, in turn, wish there were more people around who thought like Diski. The world would be a more generous, less shallow and infinitely more intriguing place.”

–Daphne Merkin ( The New York Times Book Review )

6. The Hard Crowd: Essays 2000-2020 by Rachel Kushner (Scribner)

12 Rave • 7 Positive Listen to an interview with Rachel Kushner here

“Whether she’s writing about Jeff Koons, prison abolition or a Palestinian refugee camp in Jerusalem, [Kushner’s] interested in appearances, and in the deeper currents a surface detail might betray … Her writing is magnetised by outlaw sensibility, hard lives lived at a slant, art made in conditions of ferment and unrest, though she rarely serves a platter that isn’t style-mag ready … She makes a pretty convincing case for a political dimension to Jeff Koons’s vacuities and mirrored surfaces, engages repeatedly with the Italian avant garde and writes best of all about an artist friend whose death undoes a spell of nihilism … It’s not just that Kushner is looking back on the distant city of youth; more that she’s the sole survivor of a wild crowd done down by prison, drugs, untimely death … What she remembers is a whole world, but does the act of immortalising it in language also drain it of its power,’neon, in pink, red, and warm white, bleeding into the fog’? She’s mining a rich seam of specificity, her writing charged by the dangers she ran up against. And then there’s the frank pleasure of her sentences, often shorn of definite articles or odd words, so they rev and bucket along … That New Journalism style, live hard and keep your eyes open, has long since given way to the millennial cult of the personal essay, with its performance of pain, its earnest display of wounds received and lessons learned. But Kushner brings it all flooding back. Even if I’m skeptical of its dazzle, I’m glad to taste something this sharp, this smart.”

–Olivia Laing ( The Guardian )

7. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan (FSG)

12 Rave • 7 Positive • 5 Mixed • 1 Pan

“[A] quietly dazzling new essay collection … This is, needless to say, fraught terrain, and Srinivasan treads it with determination and skill … These essays are works of both criticism and imagination. Srinivasan refuses to resort to straw men; she will lay out even the most specious argument clearly and carefully, demonstrating its emotional power, even if her ultimate intention is to dismantle it … This, then, is a book that explicitly addresses intersectionality, even if Srinivasan is dissatisfied with the common—and reductive—understanding of the term … Srinivasan has written a compassionate book. She has also written a challenging one … Srinivasan proposes the kind of education enacted in this brilliant, rigorous book. She coaxes our imaginations out of the well-worn grooves of the existing order.”

–Jennifer Szalai ( The New York Times )

8. A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)

13 Rave • 4 Positive Listen to an interview with Hanif Abdurraqib here

“[A] wide, deep, and discerning inquest into the Beauty of Blackness as enacted on stages and screens, in unanimity and discord, on public airwaves and in intimate spaces … has brought to pop criticism and cultural history not just a poet’s lyricism and imagery but also a scholar’s rigor, a novelist’s sense of character and place, and a punk-rocker’s impulse to dislodge conventional wisdom from its moorings until something shakes loose and is exposed to audiences too lethargic to think or even react differently … Abdurraqib cherishes this power to enlarge oneself within or beyond real or imagined restrictions … Abdurraqib reminds readers of the massive viewing audience’s shock and awe over seeing one of the world’s biggest pop icons appearing midfield at this least radical of American rituals … Something about the seemingly insatiable hunger Abdurraqib shows for cultural transaction, paradoxical mischief, and Beauty in Blackness tells me he’ll get to such matters soon enough.”

–Gene Seymour ( Bookforum )

9. On Animals by Susan Orlean (Avid Reader Press)

11 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed Listen to an interview with Susan Orlean here

“I very much enjoyed Orlean’s perspective in these original, perceptive, and clever essays showcasing the sometimes strange, sometimes sick, sometimes tender relationships between people and animals … whether Orlean is writing about one couple’s quest to find their lost dog, the lives of working donkeys of the Fez medina in Morocco, or a man who rescues lions (and happily allows even full grown males to gently chew his head), her pages are crammed with quirky characters, telling details, and flabbergasting facts … Readers will find these pages full of astonishments … Orlean excels as a reporter…Such thorough reporting made me long for updates on some of these stories … But even this criticism only testifies to the delight of each of the urbane and vivid stories in this collection. Even though Orlean claims the animals she writes about remain enigmas, she makes us care about their fates. Readers will continue to think about these dogs and donkeys, tigers and lions, chickens and pigeons long after we close the book’s covers. I hope most of them are still well.”

–Sy Montgomery ( The Boston Globe )

10. Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South by Margaret Renkl (Milkweed Editions)

9 Rave • 5 Positive Read Margaret Renkl on finding ideas everywhere, here

“Renkl’s sense of joyful belonging to the South, a region too often dismissed on both coasts in crude stereotypes and bad jokes, co-exists with her intense desire for Southerners who face prejudice or poverty finally to be embraced and supported … Renkl at her most tender and most fierce … Renkl’s gift, just as it was in her first book Late Migrations , is to make fascinating for others what is closest to her heart … Any initial sense of emotional whiplash faded as as I proceeded across the six sections and realized that the book is largely organized around one concept, that of fair and loving treatment for all—regardless of race, class, sex, gender or species … What rises in me after reading her essays is Lewis’ famous urging to get in good trouble to make the world fairer and better. Many people in the South are doing just that—and through her beautiful writing, Renkl is among them.”

–Barbara J. King ( NPR )

Our System:

RAVE = 5 points • POSITIVE = 3 points • MIXED = 1 point • PAN = -5 points

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