Mock Caldecott 2027 discussion

Rumpelstiltskin by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Carson Ellis.




Beatrix and the Unicorn by Lita Judge.




A Home on the Page by Kao Kalia Yang and illustrated by Seo Kim.




Navigating Night by Julie Leung and illustrated by Angie Kang.



I'm very excited to read these publications. What did you think of them?

Navigating Night

I liked the story of the little girl who resented helping her father, until he told her of his adventures immigrating to the States. I also liked the softly blurred illustrations rendered in gouache, colored pencil, crayon and pastel. To make the rainy night look more realistic, the artist sprinkled table salt onto wet paint. That worked very well, because the reader can almost feel the rain pouring down. And the softly blurred paintings imitate what vision is like on a hard rainy night. This is the sort of book that Caldecott committees seem to like.

Beatrix and the Unicorn
I loved this story of a little servant girl who searches for a unicorn so she won't feel so lonely, only to find other friends instead. The illustrations are gorgeous, rendered in watercolor and colored pencil, and are large enough to share with a group. One illustration views the young servant girl from a castle tower above. Alert readers will notice a small, marmalade cat following the girl in most of the illustrations. A delightful book.

Rumpelstiltskin
While I generally like Mac Barnett's books, I thought that this one was a little too casually written, without that folklore feel. And I did not like the change Barnett made: that the queen discovered the imp's name, rather than the king who reported back to the queen. In addition, I was not a big fan of the illustrations, even though Carson Ellis has won accolades for previous books. The illustrations, rendered in gouache, were just too drab, simplistic, and dark for my taste. However, I did like the up close illustration of Rumpel with steam coming out of his ears, when the queen guessed his name.
I prefer the classic beauty of Paul Zelinsky's illustrations for this story, and I also preferred his retelling, for which he used the Brothers Grimms' sources.