In celebration of National Picture Book Month.
Subway Story, by Julia Sarcone-Roach, Knopf Books for young readers, $16.99.
Subway Story, by Julia Sarcone-Roach, Knopf Books for young readers, $16.99.
“When Jessie was born in St. Louis, Missouri, she weighed 75,122 pounds and was 51-and-a-half feet long,” begins author/illustrator Julia Sarcone-Roach’s 2011 book, Subway Story. Jessie is a gleaming new subway car that arrives in New York in the 1960s. Though Jessie has the special job of carrying passengers to the World’s Fair (and delights in her responsibilities), over time, she is eclipsed by younger, newer cars, and is left unused in an abandoned lot for a time. But soon she is re-purposed as an artificial undersea reef, finding joy in her new life as a home to a multitude of sea creatures.
It is a story about pluck and a gentle tale of recycling, about old things finding new purpose, told in a way that is as warmly engaging for the adults who read as for the children who listen.
That is the magic of picture books.
Sarcone-Roach, an Arlington native, says a trip to New York City helped her concieve what would eventually become Subway Story: “I got the idea for Subway Story when I went to visit the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn. I heard this great story about old subway cars being reused as artificial reefs. I went home and looked up marvelous images that scuba divers have taken swimming through these old subway cars full of fish. And I thought, ‘Okay, this would be a great book for children.’”
Now living in Brooklyn, the author-illustrator still feels the pull of her roots; she used that feeling to inform her newest book, The Bear Ate Your Sandwich, forthcoming in January 2015. “I just imagined a big black bear in the middle of a bright, colorful city just being completely bewildered. I grew up in Virginia but I moved to New York after college, and I feel a little bit like that bear frequently, like there’s some sort of bustling big city that’s moving around me all the time. So The Bear came out as an image first, and then the story trailed after it as I tried to figure out why the bear was in the city.”
Vibrant color and outsized characters are hallmarks of children’s books. “When you’re illustrating a children’s book,” says Newport News artist Terry Cox-Joseph, “it must include bright colors and lots of action. You want big expressions, splashes in the water, movement and interaction between characters.”
Cox-Joseph, a graduate of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, is known throughout Hampton Roads for her murals and fine art. But she is also the illustrator of the book Eric and the Land of Lost Things, written by Mac Todd (CreateSpace Publishing).
In this story, a boy loses his soccer ball and finds it in the Land of Lost Things. There he also finds the Keeper of Lost Things, who gathers such items as individual socks lost in dryers and organizes them in giant piles. The Keeper wears a bright blue suit, Eric a red-and-white striped shirt, and the mounds of lost items borrow from other parts of the rainbow. It is a story about daily events transporting children to magical places while teaching them about responsibility and courage.
At 1555 King St. in Alexandria, is a storefront whose bright blue sign shows a happy frog reading a book. This is Hooray for Books, a whimsical children’s bookstore. Inside, stacked against the pineapple-yellow walls, are folding chairs waiting to handle the crowds of parents and kids that gather for story time, which occurs three times weekly.
Emily Henry, the store’s marketing manager, knows better than anyone what children of all ages love to read (and the books that make the best gifts).
“I’d say the store favorite is probably The Circus Ship, by Chris Van Dusen [Candlewick Press],” says Henry. “It includes a double-page search-and-find where you have to locate the animals.” Henry adds that Hug Machine, by Scott Campbell (Atheneum Books for Young Readers), which is about a little boy who calls himself the hug machine, is another hit with the preschool and early elementary school set.
Another favorite is Camp Rex by Molly Idle (Viking Juvenile), a story in which children take a camping trip with a T. Rex. During their expedition, they learn where to set up camp and how to build a fire, all while respecting the animals living in the forest.
Sarcone-Roach’s Subway Story is always popular: “That’s something we try to keep in stock because little boys love subways,” laughs Henry.
Picture books help young children build reading comprehension skills and a solid foundation for their future learning, but they do something else that is just as important—they facilitate communication, allowing adults and children to weave the lessons of a story together with whatever is going on in their own lives.
The stories may be simple—but the most important things often are.
