Fact Friday: Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration by George Butler

Image: Candlewick Press

Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration written and illustrated by George Butler. 56 p. Candlewick Studio/ Candlewick Press, March 16, 2021. 9781536217759. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

Happy Friday! We made it through another week and this weekend marks the beginning of spring! The vernal equinox will take place tomorrow, March 20 at 5:37 EDT. Our daylight/ night hours will be roughly equal and each day after, we will have just a bit more daylight on our march to the summer solstice on June 20. As someone who is definitely affected by dwindling daylight, my spirits are lifting. 

Fact Friday features Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration written and illustrated by George Butler. Mr. Butler is a journalist and artist who, from 2011 to 2018, traveled to twelve locations in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East to sketch and interview people who were forced by a variety of circumstance to leave their home. 

One man migrated to Russia in order to work and send money home to his family, others were forced to leave because their homes were destroyed by bombs or no longer safe to live in. Unlike photojournalists, who can snap a photograph from a distance without ever interacting with a subject, Mr. Butler spent time with his, interviewing each subject while he sketched. The result is this hefty, beautifully designed portfolio/ journal. 

Arranged chronologically beginning in 2011, readers take an international journey and learn about why there are refugees and the plight they face finding new homes, often enduring discrimination and racial or ethnic hatred.

The text is spare, compelling and emotionally resonant, as are the pen, ink and watercolor illustrations. Each invites lingering.  Drawn Across Borders is a work of art that needs to be shared widely. This book erases the monolithic "them" and places human faces front and center. The past few years has seen the publication of a variety of books depicting the refugee experience for young readers such as, When Stars are Scattered or The Unwanted. among others. Drawn Across Borders is a superb addition to that collection.

Fact Friday and Review: Playlist: the rebels and revolutionaries of sound by James Rhodes

Image: Candlewick Press

Playlist: the rebels and revolutionaries of sound by James Rhodes. Illustrated by Martin O'Neill. 68 p. Candlewick Studios/ Candlewick Press, October, 2019. 9781536212143. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

One vivid memory I have from my senior year of high school has to do with a brand new LA class called "Humanities." It was taught by a brilliant woman named Miss Kehoe. She had that rare combination of control and approachability and she was so cultured! Thanks to her, I can pretty accurately identify the major (and some minor) artists through the ages. 

She touched a bit on musicians as well. I recall a bunch of boys rolling their eyes at the idea of classical music and extolling the musical virtue of groups like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes and the Rolling Stones. She was prepared; explaining that most rock and roll musicians had classical training and were even adapting classical pieces in their own music. She used ELP's "Pictures at an Exhibition" as an example. Color me impressed.

Color me impressed by Rhodes' approach in this book. Colorful, cool,  and occasionally comic, this LP-sized book will captivate students of music as well as lure readers who are not musicians.

These sixty-plus pages brim with information. In straightforward and conversational text, Rhodes immediately engages the readers making the hundreds-year-old history relevant. He talks about seven classical musicians (acknowledging that they are all white and male) and highlights two pieces from each. You might be wondering how he can do this in print. He created a Spotify playlist for each and readers can log on to hear the examples he provides. 

Each musician gets a two-page "Facts of Life" spread followed by pages devoted to explaining the pieces that were chosen. There's added information about orchestras as well as a timeline interspersed among the biographies. Eye-popping sometimes psychedelic illustrations add energy and zest. A two-page vocabulary concludes the book. There are no source notes and specific recommendations for further reading. 

Playlist is a first-purchase! Book talk it and display it prominently and it won't sit. 

Middle Grade Monday and Audiobook Review: Begone the Raggedy Witches by Celine Kiernan

Image: Candlewick

Begone the Raggedy Witches by Celine Kiernan. Unabridged audiobook on one MP3-CD. Read by Kate Rudd. 6 hours, 12 minutes. Candlewick on Brilliance Audio, September, 2018. 9781978644335. (Review of purchased audiobook.)

Middle Grade Monday features Begone the Raggedy Witches by Celine Kiernan. Mup first sees the witches in the treetops when she and her brother are en route home with their mam after visiting her gravely ill great-aunt in hospital. The witches are deathly pale and terrifyingly serious and definitely following her as they leap from treetop to treetop. Mup is terrified to enter her own home and she should be. Turns out Mup's aunt spirited her mother away from the Witch's Borough for her own protection. Now that Aunty is dying, her protective spell weakened. The witch's have found "the heir" and intend to return her to her mother, the queen.


Vivid and creepy, this first book in the Wild Magic trilogy will hook readers on page one and not let go, leaving them panting for book two, which is due out September 3! The writing is lovely for so suspenseful a story. Mup is immediately endearing and everyone around her is unique and memorable from her baby brother, Tipper, who becomes an irrepressible talking dog in the Glittering Kingdom through Crow, a talking crow/ young boy who has trouble speaking in rhyme as required by the queen.


Kate Rudd subtly shifts her voice for each character in this measured performance.


Fans of scary stories will gobble this one up.

Here's a link to a pretty cool book trailer that I think conveys the atmospheric vibe of the book quite nicely.

Teen Tuesday and Review: The Good Son by Pierre-Jacques Ober

Image: Candlewick Press

The Good Son: a story from the first World War told in miniature by Pierre-Jacques Ober. Illustrated by Jules Over and Felicity Coonan. 104 p. Candlewick Studio/ Candlewick Press, May 14, 2019. 9781536204827. (Review of finished copy courtesy of publisher.)

Happy book birthday to The Good Son by Pierre-Jacques Ober. This picture book for older readers is remarkable. Spare and evocative text combine with photographs that are as devastating as they are striking. 

A young soldier named Pierre leaves his post to visit his mother at Christmas. When he returns after two days, he is arrested and told to prepare to be executed for desertion. His friend, Gilbert brings food and wine. Otherwise, Pierre is left alone to contemplate his fate. The reader learns that he signed up to fight enthusiastically after being promised the war would be over in a few months. The young recruit dreamed of glory until the first bloody battles. Even when he won, he felt he lost so much. He relates a cruel irony in a final letter home to his mother.

The photos are incredibly realistic considering they are of miniature toys and scenery. They have the look of old photos. Most are slightly sepia toned and they are also slightly blurred. That combined with the sturdy paper and beautiful design, gives the reader the feeling of looking through an album. Creator notes at the back reveal the challenges of making these plastic figures appear real. They used a shallow depth-of-field (a technique I could never wrap my head around when I played around with SLR photography in the 80s.), natural light and digital adjustments. 

Really, I can't do justice to the wonder of these photos. They have to be seen and contemplated. I can't even imagine the process of gathering the materials! The details present in each photo invite pause. The use of chiaroscuro lighting causes the reader to lean in and linger, perhaps guiltily.

Photos of the process shown in the back matter that include fingers of the creators help give the reader scale. A note from the author explains that he came from a military family and that his grandfather was a decorated soldier in World War I. This book started as a series of images that were a gift to his father at the centenary of the war. 

My single quibble is wondering about the "based on a true event" claim of the front flap. As an adult reader, I came to the book knowing about the hundreds of men who were executed during that war for treason and cowardice when they were suffering from what we now know is PTSD. Young readers may not know this. I would've appreciated knowing more about this from back matter notes. Was there really a soldier named Pierre who went home for the holiday or was this based on a composite of stories?

The Good Son is a fine addition to all collections. Hand this to your budding military historians and give your social studies teacher a heads up. I usually donate my review copies to my school library collection, but this is such a powerful work of art, I am tempted to keep it for myself. 

Visit The Children's War blog for a much more cogent review of The Good Son that includes extra resources I didn't think to hunt down.