This week I read A Man for All Seasons: The Life of George Washington Carver, written by Stephen Krnesky, and illustrated by Wil Clay, and I really enjoyed it.

I’ll start with the writing—nothing that calls attention to itself, just an unfolding of Mr. Carver’s story from his birth to his death in about 1300 words or so. Yikes! How do you summarize a great man’s life in so few words? Stephen Krensky did a wonderful job. He focused, I think, on Carver’s desire to learn all he could and to give back all he could.

George Carver was an orphan raised by white slave-owners he called Aunt and Uncle. All his life, George suffered abuse from white people that felt superior to black people. He was, I’ve no doubt, persecuted by men who were not as smart or as wise or as good as he was, and yet George, instead of fighting, kept his focus on giving. He wanted to freely pass on the knowledge God had given to him.

I loved this story. I find men like this—ones who walk patiently under persecution—to be inspiring.

I also liked the pictures in this book very much. I love young George with the tomato plants and old George with letters from all over the world asking his advice—a man of learning and of peace.

This is a wonderful book. One that makes me wish I could sit down with [wikipop]George Washington Carver[/wikipop] and talk with him awhile.

For more great nonfiction book discussion, stop by the Lerner Publishing Group blog.

On the cover of the book I read today, it says “A tale both true and otherwise of the life of Molly Brown.” A warning that on the pages inside we’ll find some tall tales, perhaps, in keeping with Molly’s outrageous reputation.

The Heroine of the Titanic, written by Joan W. Blos, and illustrated by Tennessee Dixon, is a short biography of the unsinkable Molly Brown.

The biography had to be short because there is not much info available on Molly Brown. Still, the author did a fantastic job, I think, of fleshing out the life of this lively woman.

She starts with her childhood in Hannibal, Missouri and takes us to her death 65 years later. And from the pages covering those 65 years a picture emerges of a woman who loved life and enjoyed the spotlight and who was undaunted by things that would have put other women in her day out of commission. Molly Brown earned the title “unsinkable” because she bounced back. That much is clear about her.

There is much to love about this book. The prose and poetry is very nicely done. The layout of the text and pictures are lovely. The illustrations are vivid and full of treasures and all evoke emotion. I LOVED the illustrations.

The story is laid out with dates at the top, moving us through Molly’s life. It was all organized well.

What I loved less about this book was the fact that I couldn’t find a strong theme. We start out with a fun-loving girl, a brave girl, a girl who sets out on a dangerous journey in search of silver and we end up with a woman alone, abandoned by her husband and remembering happier days, and yet we are told “Molly had had all she wanted out of life: had fun, been rich, done good.”

All she wanted out of life hadn’t satisfied her, I don’t think. I wonder if she ended up with the preacher saying, “Vanity, vanity, it’s all a chasing after the wind.”

Because she apparently drove her husband away and sent her children to boarding school and then left  to travel around the world.

So we see a pattern in her life—she leaves her family chasing big dreams and she continues to chase happiness all her life. It is never apparent that she finds it. So she had had fun, been rich, and done good. And I guess the author couldn’t say much more about it than that because there is very little known about the woman. But I’m guessing she died a sad, lonely woman. There is no mention of her children in her latter days. I find that sad.

And I wonder if children, reading this book will come away believing that  fun, money, and good deeds give us fulfilled lives or if they will see that family is more important than fun and money and even, yes, more important than good deeds to strangers. Charity, after all, begins at home.

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For more great nonfiction posts visit The Miss Rumphius Effect.

I lived twenty years in Alaska and one of my happiest memories from my time there, is a train trip my family took down to Seward. We went out of a boat into Resurrection Bay. It was a special trip because my husband was a quadriplegic and that boat ride was his first since he’d broken his neck on his own fishing boat twenty years earlier. It was a really good day.

One of the highlights of the trip was standing on the deck of the boat and watching the puffins. They are quite comical at times. Powerful swimmers that dive down to a hundred and forty feet, they are graceful in the water. But on take-offs and landings? Not so much.

Because I love puffins, I picked up Puffins Climb, Penguins Rhyme,  written and photo illustrated by Bruce McMillan, at the library last week.

And, I mean, come on. If you don’t love puffins, you at least love penguins. Is there a person alive that doesn’t love penguins?

But with puffins AND penguins, Mr. McMillan couldn’t easily fail. I’m happy to report he succeeded beautifully. His book alternates between two-page spreads of puffins and penguins and each spread has a four-word rhyme—”Puffins land. Puffins stand”—that goes along with the pictures.

This is a lovely, lovely book for children just beginning to read (and for those of us who already know how to read but who love puffins and penguins). The children will learn new words (preen, brawl) and enjoy the pictures and rhymes.

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video of a puffin misjudging his landing by a foot or so:

There is something romantic about Mississippi riverboats and I think Mark Twain had a hand in making me think that. He wrote about the long, slow river, the moonlit nights, the truck and trade of the days, and the colorful characters along the way.

So it makes sense that I would be attracted to Mark Twain and the Queens of the Mississippi, a picture book aimed at first through third graders, written and illustrated by Cheryl Harness.

I enjoyed this book. The pictures and text had a somewhat rambling feel to them, which fit the twin subject matters of Mark Twain and the Mississippi River.

I thought the author started the book too early, giving too much history of the river before Mark Twain came on the scene. The title said the book was to be about Mark Twain and the steam boats that paddled up and down the river, but for the first several pages I read about the Indians that lived along the river, how big the river was, and the fight between the North and South. I think this backstory diluted the story I wanted when I picked up the book with Mark Twain and steamboats on its cover.

I read on, though, and am glad I did. I learned enough about Mark Twain to want to read more about him. I connected with him. I admired his sense of adventure and I felt sorry for him as I read about his losses.

So I’m very glad I read the book and I think it is a wonderful starter book for students to read, so they can see if they might be interested in reading more about Mark Twain or the Mississippi River.

The pictures in this book are perfect for young readers. There are picture maps of the river showing the different towns at different times in history. There are several pictures that are of the “pictorial encyclopedia entry” type. And there is much detail in the pictures so you can spend some time noticing things. Perfect for a picture book of this sort! Just the thing to keep boys interested and to set their thoughts soaring to new adventures they might take themselves on one day.

For more great posts about nonfiction children’s books, head over to Practically Paradise, a School Library Journal Blog. Diane Chen has put a beautiful post–with pictures!–and you don’t want to miss the great books over there.

This week I read The Pirate Queen, by Emily Arnold McCully.

If you recognize Ms. McCully’s name it may be because she is the prolific author/illustrator who won the Caldecott in 1993 for Mirette on High Wire.

The Pirate Queen is a wonderful mixing of the facts and the stories surrounding the legendary sea captain, Grania O’Malley.

I loved this book, which is aimed at children in the first to the third grades, for several reasons. The first being the illustrations. I immediately fell in love with the defiant girl on the cliffs with her shorn hair and her bare feet and the wind whipping her skirts around her.

But the illustrations only serve to give life to a girl who was legendary for her bravery and her willingness to do whatever it took to rule. In this book we’re told that she gave birth to her first-born son on the high seas and the next day she was up on deck fighting Turkish pirates. It also tells about the time she proposed marriage to a man who owned a castle she wanted.

And that’s what I find attractive about Grania O’Malley. She was a woman who was not afraid to do what it took to achieve the goals she set. She was brave and bold.

Unfortunately, not too much is known about her for sure. There are some court records. Some of the history of her fight with England and her meeting with Queen Elizabeth I is recorded. But most of her life is handed down in stories and how her exploits grew in the telling, we don’t know.

Still, this picture book is delightful, well researched, and tells the tale of a woman who fought alongside her men to hold for her family the estate she thought was theirs by birth.

For more great nonfiction books, go over to The Art of Irreverence and see who else is posting today.