Fall F&Gs

It’s been awhile since I went through the stacks of F&Gs (that’s ‘fold and gather’, the bookseller term for a picture book that hasn’t been published yet) at the store. Here are some titles I’m looking forward to seeing (and selling) this fall.

Blue on Blue by Dianne White, illus. by Beth Krommes

A great read aloud about a summer storm with beautiful scratchboard illustrations from Beth Krommes, who won the Caldecott for The House in the Night. Set on a country farm near the water, short rhyming sentences and fun details of animals and plants will make this a new favorite. Teachers may want to use with Come on Rain by Karen Hesse or Tap Tap Boom Boom by Elizabeth Bluemle to compare thunderstorms in the city with those in the country.

I Am a Witch’s Cat by Harriet Muncaster

Perfect for Halloween (or anytime, really) is this sweet story about a little girl and her mother. The narrator (who always appears in a black cat outfit) is sure that her mother is a witch. Doesn’t she have strange potion bottles in the bathroom and magic to stop hurts? The illustrations are photographs of mixed-media settings along the same lines as the books I highlighted in this post. Young artists will be inspired to create their own similar settings for their own stories and read this one again and again to look at the magical details.

Draw! by Raul Colon

Colon is one of the most well-known illustrators in children’s lit, with hundreds of unique titles to his credit. We’ve been seeing many more children’s illustrators creating books about their own evolution as artists (Allan Say, Lois Ehlert) and Colon creates a beautiful tribute here to the power of imagination and the inspiration of the natural world. He depicts himself as a child reading books about africa and then through smaller panels, shows how he imagines himself getting up close and personal with elephants, zebras and hippos. He even invites one of the primates to draw a portrait of him! This is a lovely wordless book to add to your collection and hand to aspiring artists or naturalists.

The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee

This title reminded me of nothing so much as The Wizard of Oz, probably because of evocative grey backgrounds. The farmer is working on his land when a circus train passes by and something–someone?–falls off. What will he do? This is perhaps the simplest but most touching picture book I’ve seen so far this year and the final spot illustration is just perfect. This is a book that will put a smile on your face every single time you read it. Beautiful!