Mo Willems - Author Illustrator

 

 



Name Ran Johnson

Date  11/27/2012

EED 312 – section 02

Mo Willems

    Mo Willems started with a love of Peanuts. When he was a child, he wrote a letter to Charles Shultz saying that he wanted his job when he died. Later when he was a young adult, he started his illustrative career making small independent cartoons. He was later picked by producers from Sesame Street to be a script writer and animator. While working for Sesame Street, he also worked for Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network on a few animated series.

            After spending several years working in animation, Mo Willems spent a few years at the University of Oxford hoping to work on children’s books. His first few attempts at writing were not successful. Mo Willems is always drawing and doodling characters. It wasn’t until the famed pigeon came into existence that Mo was able to turn his carrier around.

            The pigeon started as a funny character that Mo slipped into letters. His agent eventually gave him the push to turn this character into a book. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus became an instant hit and won the 2004 Caldecott honor award.  Since then, he’s written over 38 books and is still writing and illustrating today.

Mo Willems has a very simple style to his writing and drawing. Mo wanted characters to be so simple that children could create their own characters and comic strips like he did when he was a kid.His drawing style are very organic and simple. His main characters all appear to be drawn with color pencils. He makes good use of negative space and dynamic type facing. 

            In Knuffle Bunny, he blends his drawing with his photography.  In a video interview online, he said that he wanted to cover up the negative elements of his home town with drawings to tell a story. Mo makes good use of all elements of his children’s books, and you can sometimes find some little detail in the illustrations of the frontispiece and/or the flyleaf. You can follow Mo and his creative process at http://mowillemsdoodles.blogspot.com.

Works Cited

ReadingRockets. (n.d.). A Video Interview with Mo Willems. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/books/interviews/willems/JRank co, M. (n.d.). Mo Willem Biography. Retrieved from http://biography.jrank.org/pages/973/Willems-Mo.htmlWillems, M. (2012). Mo Willems Personal Website. Retrieved from http://www.mowillems.com/

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (2004) This Caldecott Honor award winning book is the story about a pigeon who wants to drive a bus. Would you let the pigeon drive the bus?

Leonard the Terrible Monster (2005) This heartwarming story is about a monster trying to find his place in the world. He might not compare to other monsters the way you’d think a monster should, but he might be a different kind of monster.

 Knuffle Bunny (2004) “Aggle flaggle klabble!” This is the story of a little girl who couldn’t yet speak who misplaces her stuffed bunny while doing laundry with her dad. You’ll have to read to find out if she finds her bunny.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Love My Hair!

I Love My Hair! 

Author: Natasha Anastasia Tarpley

 Illustrator: E. B. Lewis.

Publisher: Little Brown Young Readers

Copyright Date: 2001

            This is the story of a young Black American girl by the name of Keyana. At the beginning this story, she struggles with her hair while her mother combs it, but her mother tells her why she should be proud of her beautiful hair. I love how this book encourages young Black American females to be proud of the hair God gave them. It subtly refers to heritage, creativity, and self expression.

            The illustrations are done in mostly water colors and pen. The texture is very soft. The illustrations are very detail driven to focus on realism. The illustrator makes good use of perspective and proportions to direct reader focus and to draw attention. The lines are very smooth and curved. The colors in the book are very organic earthy colors of browns, blues, and greens. This was probably done to make focus to the worldly connectedness of the heritage of Keyana.

            This book could be appropriate for all ages in school. You could use this book as a writing prompt for something about your family’s heritage or your body that you’re proud of. You could provide this book to a Black American student who struggles with poor self image when it comes to her hair. I liked this book’s potential to instill pride within girls who are told by the media that they have to change to look different than their own culture.

(Special Note: Chris Rock did a documentary on Black American women’s hair called Good Hair.It goes deeper into the issues that these women face.)

I Love Saturdays y Domingos

I Love Saturdays y Domingos

Author: Alma Flor Ada

Illustrator: Elivia Savadier

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers 

Copyright Date: 2004

# of Pages: 32

Genre: Multicultural Fiction

             This cute story is about a little girl who has two sets of grandparents. On Saturdays, she meets with her Euro-American grandparents and on Sundays she meets with her Mexican-American grandparents. This book is chocked full of new words to orient young readers to some common Spanish vocabulary. The little girl loves both of her grandparents very much regardless how different they are from one another and the girl is able to embrace both parts of her culture.

`           The illustrations look like they were done with a mix medium of pen, water colors, and pastels. The textures are very organic and the colors are very soft and calming. The illustrator makes good use of negative space. The perspectives are very two dimensional with the perspective either being right in front or on top of the characters in focus.

            This would be a great way to celebrate Hispanic culture in your classroom. Introducing students to new words from the Spanish language could be appropriate in all age groups. This book is appropriate for ages five and up. This could really be a great addition to classroom where you saw a lot of diversity with  a lot of Hispanic students. You could make note that even though the little girl was able to experience both cultures, she was able to love them both for what they were. 

The Keeping Quilt

The Keeping Quilt

Authors: Patricia Polacco 

Illustrator: Patricia Polacco

Publisher: Aladdin

Copyright Date: 2001

# of Pages: 32

Genre: Multicultural Fiction

            This is the story of a little girl names Anna and her family coming to America from Russia. When Anna comes to America it’s very busy and she has to learn a new language, but soon she learns English and learns to get by in this new culture and environment. As Anna becomes too big for her clothes, Anna’s mother turns her old clothes and the old clothes of her loved ones into a quilt that represents family and tradition.

            The illustrations are made to use color to make focus to main characters and events while everything else is desaturated and made to look like an old vintage sepia photo. The illustrations look like they’re done in color pencil and water colors. Texture is very rough except for the smoothness of the water colors that bring life and focus to the illustrations. It’s almost like the images provide negative space and focus without actually having any negative space at all. I love the details in the designs Patricia Polacco put into things like the women’s bonnets and dresses.

            You could use this for writing prompt involving stirring questions of perspectives regarding diversity with displacement. You could talk about family traditions or time you had to move and learn the customs of a new place. There are tons of writing prompts within this story. You could discuss some of the traditions and cultures of the Jewish faith or people with Russian heritage. It’s an amazing book with loads of character development opportunities.

Chopsticks

Chopsticks

Authors: Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Illustrator: Scott Magoon

Publisher: Hyperion Book CH

Copyright Date: 2012

# of Pages: 40

Genre: Multicultural Fiction

            This book is the story about a set of chop sticks who are best friends. They do everything together until one day of the chopsticks gets broken while they’re practicing martial arts. The other chopstick learns to do things on his own while the broken chopstick heals, and they find out that having the time apart to find what they were good at independently made them stronger friends.

            The illustrations look like a mixture between color pencil and water color. The author makes really good use of background color to signify emotion and climax. All of the characters are drawn with very expressive facial features. Texture is very organic with very curved and smooth lines until there’s a climax or major event where the lines become very sharp and jagged.

            This book would be appropriate for all school age children. You could use this book to discuss the Asian cultures and celebrate have students try to use the chopsticks to find all they uses they could write about doing with chopsticks besides eating with them. I loved the illustrations and the story in this book. I would highly recommend this for a classroom along with their other book Spoon.

Uncover: Dogs

Uncover: Dogs

Authors: Paul Beck 

Illustrator: Jennifer Fairman

Publisher: Silver Dolphin Books

Copyright Date: 2008

# of Pages: 16

Genre: Non-fiction

            The uncover books are always really interesting books because they allow you see into the animal they’re covering. In this book, you get to move system to system by each page as the animal is “uncovered” and broken down. Each page is filled with information about each system and how dogs use that system. Sometimes the information will compare and/or contrast the system in the dog to humans.

            Many of the illustrations are photographs, but most of the illustrations are drawings with mixed media of color pencils and paint. They’re very organic and made to represent the lifelike characteristics of the animal they’re illustrating. The center of the book has a model of the dog has he’s being broken down which is made of plastic that sits on each layer by page. The illustrator doesn’t make a lot of use of intense angles or color tones. Everything is very two dimensional besides the center piece of the book.

            This book is appropriate for ages eight and up. I could see this as a great book to pull out in the sixth grade for a lesson on the body systems. You could also use this book in the fourth grade on a comparing and contrasting project. You could refer to certain pages when talking about mammals in the third grade, but that’s about as low as I could go with this book. I really like the novelty of this book, and I feel like it would be a great conversation piece in a classroom that would engage curiosity in students.

Snakes

Snakes

Authors: Rachel and Jonathan Shelkh-Miller

Illustrator: John Woodcock

Publisher: Scholastic

Copyright Date: 2001

# of Pages: 64

Genre: Non-fiction

            What really caught my eye about this book when I was browsing down the aisles of Books-A-Million’s new children’s floor in Birmingham, Alabama, was how large and bold green the snake was sitting on the shelf. When I think of this book, I think back to a conversation I had when a student in my practicum class. Boys love snakes. I’ve yet to come across a boy that doesn’t, and when you ask them about nonfiction books they like to read, it’s always about really fast vehicles or creepy crawly things. This book is chocked full of the creepy-crawlies. It’s all about snakes, and from cover to cover you get tons of information on these amazing creatures. The great thing about this book that you could use in your classroom is the online database and CD that comes with the book, so you get tons of resources for your classroom.

            Most of the images you see in the book are photographs of snakes at different angles doing the various things snakes do. There are a few illustrations that appear to be done in color pencil. As a photographer’s husband, I could imagine how fun it would be to take shots of these animals up close and personal. I’m sure kids would really enjoy it too!

            You could introduce at any school age, but I think you’d get the most bang out of your buck with a 3^rd for 4^th grade class and up. You could do a lesson on habitats or reptiles. You could do a compare and contrast chart to another book of a certain type of mammal like pandas or something. Between the subject material and the online and offline digital material, the options for the classroom are broad. If I had to be honest with myself, I think I liked this book because, at the core of it, I’m a big kid who loves to read about odd and gross things.