What are your Favorite Picture Books?

So, I have A LOT of picture books out from the library right now (there's a sampling of them above) but last week in my Children's Literature class we were asked to think about what makes a picture book great.  On Tuesday we discussed picture books and Thursday comics/graphic novels, and our professor asked us to think about what makes a perfect picture book, and also what are our favorite picture books and graphic novels, excluding Where the Wild Things Are and Hugo Cabret, which we discussed in class.  So, these are the books I ended up bringing in, and I even found my favorite picture book from when I was little on our bookshelf!

Picture Books:

My all time favorite book when I was little, that I remember looking at and reading all of the time was Nancy White Carstrom's and Bruce Degen's Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear?

Some of my favorite spreads and pages from the book:

And this last spread here below, was my absolute favorite, I think in part because the light is so wonderful and magical and safe, but also because I was obsessed with The Little Princess film when I was little, and well still am, and I loved the idea that when she was asleep or when she close the door her toys came to life, and I remember thinking that about this page, that perhaps as I turned the page and Jesse's eyes finally closed, all of these toys would burst to life!

Here are my other personal favorite picture books which I brought into class:

Now for graphic novels and especially comics, that's a place that I have yet to really experiment a lot with.  However from what I have read, I do have some favorites, and some not so favorites, and I'll share the ones I brought into class that I really liked:

I absolutely loved this book by Eugene Yelchin!  And I put it here with graphic novels because it's toeing the same line as Hugo Cabret.  Of course it's shorter than Hugo, and thus has fewer images, but in this text the images play as important a role as the words, and as in Hugo Cabret where there are pages in which the story is only being conveyed in image, the same is true to Breaking Stalin's Nose.  And the illustrations that Yelchin has created are just so perfect for the novel, there's something so quintessentially Soviet about them, I felt as if I was bringing to life the moments of history I had learned about in my "Portraits of Soviet Russia" college course three years ago!  Also, I'm not sure if anyone else has read a book called Timur and his Gang/Team, probably not, but it's an old Soviet children's book, and I keep coming back to the idea that it would be incredible to see that text with Yelchin's illustrations!

 Here are a few more images from Breaking Stalin's Nose:

The other graphic novels that I've really loved (I really also want to read Spiegelman's Maus, I've heard about it for so long and haven't read it yet!):

So, what are you favorite picture books and graphic novels/comics?? What was your favorite picture book when you were little?

Mid-Week Meme – Audiobook Week Discussion

I just discovered the wonderful posts from the blog, Devourer of Books, and this week she is holding her "Audiobook Week" which is exciting!  About two weeks ago I posted part 1 of my post "In Praise of the Audiobook" (see it here) and I promise I'm currently working on Part 2 of that which should be finished tomorrow :)  However, I wanted to contribute and participate in today's Audiobook discussion run by Jen at Devourer of Books, and today the task is to answer some questions related to our experiences with audiobooks.  So here we go:

Current/most recent audiobook and Impressions:
My Current Audiobook is The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan and Read by Tony Chiroldes, it's pretty good so far but it hasn't hooked me in as much as other audiobooks have.  However I'm still listening, so there must be something there because I haven't completely stopped and moved on to my long list of audios to listen to...


My most recently finished audiobook is The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, The Unseen Guest Book 3 by Maryrose Wood, Read by Katherine Kellgren.  This lived up to the other books in the series and was just such a great listen.  There was a bit more drama and action, but so many things are still unanswered, waiting impatiently for the next one (out early 2013!).

Current/most recent favorite audiobook:
My most recent favorite audiobooks HAVE to be the Incorrigible Children series read by Katherine Kellgren.  They books are just in themselves so sharp, quick witted, funny, smart and a throwback to the Victorian and Gothic; and Kellgren just does an amazing job of bringing everything together.  From the howls, to the calm and intellectual Miss Lumley, to Lady Constance and her constant nagging and high pitched voice and Mrs. Clarke the caring head housekeeper, Kellgren just really brings them each to life with their own voice, intonation and spark.  THESE ARE JUST AMAZING!



Favorite narrator you’ve discovered recently:
So other than Katherine Kellgren, a favorite narrator I've recently discovered is Michael Maloney who read The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.  He really did a great job of adding life to the narrative and of bringing an innocence and rawness to his reading.

Titles from your TBL (to be listened) stack, or your audio wishlist:

Well, I've really been wanting to continue to listen to John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice series read by John Keating and The Irish Country Doctor series (which I started but also haven't finished) by Patrick Taylor and read also by John Keating.  However, those aren't even on my list of audios for the summer... the ones I have coming up for the summer that are actually on my list are: Esperanza Rising, The Magician's Elephant, Alphabet of Dreams, Rodzina, Marie Dancing and Brooklyn Rose. 

Your audio dream team (What book or author would you LOVE to see paired with a certain narrator, can already exist or not):

So back early this year I read Eugene Yelchin's Breaking Stalin's Nose.  I just loved that book!  Partly I'm sure because I have a slight obsession with Russian-ness and for the past few years have been really interested in how that manifests itself in the Soviet Period.  However this is the first book I've read where as I was reading the physical book I was hearing sound effects, music and also a specific voice of a narrator, and I don't mean that the character was so real that he had a voice of his own, that's happened to me a lot as I'm sure it has for all of you, but I actually imagined a specific person/actor narrating it in my head.  So when the audio finally came out a few months ago, first of all I think that the narrator they picked really doesn't fit well with the story, and of course I was even more disappointed because it wasn't the exact thing that I had imagined! (so shocking, right? I mean shouldn't the publishers just guess my thoughts? haha)  So anyways, I'll let all of you in on my dream for what this audiobook could have been.  So I imagined them utilizing sound effects but tastefully, I imagined the beginning music being played perhaps by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra or perhaps John Zorn.  But MOST IMPORTANTLY I specifically imagined the actor Liev Schreiber from films like Defiance and Kate & Leopold.  I just think he would have been perfect!  And I was at least hoping for someone similar, but it fell far short, so much so that I didn't even listen to it, especially since I'd already read it and could just tell I would be disappointed.