Mock Caldecott 2026 discussion

Being Home by Traci Sorell and illustrated by Michaela Goade




What's New, Daniel? by Micha Archer




Something About the Sky by Rachel Carson and illustrated by Nikki McClure




Big Bear and Little Bear Go Fishing by Amy Hest and illustrated by Erin E. Stead


There are some strong contenders this month. Which was your favorite?

Here is my review for Being Home: Michaela Goade is one of my top favorite modern illustrators. The cover art for Being Home is swoon worthy. This is not your typical moving book. This is a joyous traveling book about getting out of the city and "coming home" to an ancestral land, family and nature. Joyous, bold, vibrant, deep colors (mostly all in pink hues). A real beauty. Being Home (sparse text), is a perfect at home or classroom read aloud. I love it! I believe Being Home has a chance at winning a Caldecott honor.

Something About the Sky by Rachel Carson is one of my top favorite titles to win a 2025 Caldecott. Here is my review for it: Something About the Sky is a forgotten piece written by the iconic science writer and marine biologist, Rachel Carson, in its entirety. Her work, Silent Spring, shaped a strong conservation movement that continues to this day. Beautiful, lyrical prose about the various clouds, their patterns, paths and much more. Nikki McClure was the perfect choice for illustrator. This may be McClure's finest work. Her illustrations make Carson's words even more lively and interesting. An amazing, lovely picture book and a must read/own for old and new fans of Carson. She was a remarkable woman.

I haven't read the other two works. I do love the art of Erin Stead. Anything she creates in my opinion has a chance at winning a Caldecott.

Big Bear and Little Bear Go Fishing
This story reminds me a little of Not the Piano, Mrs. Medley!. Like Mrs. Medley, the bears keep thinking of various items they need to take with them on their fishing trip, the difference being that Mrs. Medley was headed to the beach. Very simple, endearing story with appealing watercolor and pencil paintings by a Caldecott-award winning artist. It's a lovely book, but I'm not sure it is as good as A Sick Day for Amos McGee.

What's New Daniel?
Daniel runs around the city park, finding out what's new with the red-winged blackbirds, pollywogs, ducks, squirrel, butterfly, and more. The illustrations, rendered in acrylic inks and collage using patterned collage papers created by the author, are gorgeous. A lovely book to interest young ones in exploring the outdoors.

I was not able to make another thread, but thought I would throw this question out there to get a feel about what people are thinking at the halfway point and adjust my TBR pile accordingly.

What do you think are some strong titles so far or ones that you personally enjoyed that we have not already discussed.? For me, these titles are stand outs so far:

And Then, Boom!
Louder Than Hunger
Light & Air
Kyra, Just for a Day

I've read 23 titles so far this year.

My notes on Being Home:
Strengths:
- The contrast of the urban jumble of the beginning (very effective use of tumbled, layered elements) with the curving, ample, two-page-spread idyllic outdoor scenes later on.
- The piling up of landscape (urban and rural, including the road trip) to indicate size.
- The sketched details (birds, plants, sun) added extra and ancestral layers to the more fully rendered pictures of the character's present day.
- The childlike drawing and lively but easily followed loops of the "Are we there yet?" road trip map were fun, gave the sense of a kid's perspective, and successfully communicated the distance and landscape traversed.

Challenging for me:
The pinkish red hue, with swirls and sparks, read as forest fire to me, making me uneasy. Maybe it comes from living in an area with scary seasonal fires that sometimes turn the sky just this color. The cover especially conveyed conflicting emotions to me: at first I thought the people were running from a disaster, but then I decided they could be read as running and playing. But I honestly wasn't sure until I read the book, and even then, the pink smoky swirl on the second page ("More houses go up") read again to me like a fire, this time a house fire.

Shella wrote: "I was not able to make another thread, but thought I would throw this question out there to get a feel about what people are thinking at the halfway point and adjust my TBR pile accordingly.

What ..."

Just so you know, there is a thread entitled "2025 Contenders" to discuss other books not mentioned in the monthly reads.

Being Home
I really liked that this story turned the moving experience on its head: a child who is excited about moving rather than dreading it. I ditto Laura's review above (message 2), and I think that Goade was having a very pink day when she illustrated the book.

Something About the Sky
I was not as enamored of this book as others. It gave some basic, but rambling info on the water cycle and clouds. The illustrations did a good job of mirroring the text, and the illustrator did use a lot of blue, which was appropriate.
For books on clouds, I much prefer Partly Cloudy. It is narrated by a couple of adorable bunnies and the watercolor paintings are fantastic. I think this is one of the best books about clouds for children that I have ever read. For one thing, Freedman includes many more types of clouds than most other books for children do (including this Rachel Carson book). And all the extra information in the back matter really enhances the book. Also includes a bibliography.

Richie’s Picks: SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY by Rachel Carson and Nikki McClure, ill., Candlewick Studio, March 2024, 56p., ISBN: 978-1-5362-2870-0

“Rising, the warm air cools; at a certain point it can no longer contain its water invisibly, and the white misty substance of a cloud is born.”

“The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.”
– Carl Sandburg (1916)

“Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way”
– Joni Mitchell (1966)

“Clouds are as old as the earth itself–as much a part of our world as land or sea.
They are the writing of the wind on the sky.
They are the cosmic symbols of a process without which life itself could not exist on earth.
Our world has two oceans–an ocean of water and an ocean of air. In the sea, the greatest depths lie about seven miles down. Life exists everywhere. Corals–sponges–waving sea whips inhabit the bottom. Fish glide through the sea, carrying lightly the weight of all the overlying water. Waves move across it. Great currents flow through it like rivers.
We, too, live on the floor of an ocean–the vast atmospheric sea that surrounds our planet. From airless space down to where it touches earth, its depth is some six hundred miles, but only in the lowermost layer, some six or seven miles deep, is the atmosphere dense enough to support life. Here, close to the earth in the zone of living things, clouds are born and die.
Like the sea, the atmospheric ocean is a place of movement and turbulence, stirred by the movements of giant waves, torn by the swift passage of winds that are like ocean currents.
These movements of the air are made visible by the patterns of the clouds.”

I love to gaze out the window, westward, watching the clouds building up and spilling over the top of Twin Peaks. After reading Rachel Carson’s 1956 poetic essay on how clouds are a keystone to life on this planet–the reason humanity could come to exist–you may well never look at clouds the same way again.

“Like whitecaps on the crests of ocean waves, these clouds mark the crests of giant atmospheric waves–waves surging through space in an undulating pattern.
The bands of cloud mark the upsurges of condensation; the wave troughs of blue sky, the warmer air valleys of evaporation. Clouds give clues to the unseen structure of the ocean of air.”

Six years before the publication of SILENT SPRING, Carson’s seminal 1962 book that kickstarted the modern environmental movement, Carson developed this essay for a children’s educational television program. The script’s abridged version, presented here with Nikki McClure’s cut-paper illustrations, is not some cozy tale for four-year-olds. Given the conceptual science presented, and given its relationship to today’s significant climate issues; I would argue that second-, third- and fourth-graders would make a more appropriate readership and audience.

I would further propose that Nikki McClure’s washi paper/sumi-inked, cut-paper illustrations–predominantly featuring blues, whites, grays and blacks–are a pitch-perfect match for the sophisticated text and for the intended picture-books-for-older-readers audience. This is unquestionably McClure’s best-realized work to date, and I would be ecstatic to see it recognized by the current Caldecott committee.

SOMETHING ABOUT THE SKY is something else! Don’t miss it.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com