A CALEDCOTT CELEBRATION by Leonard S. Marcus

This blog was constructed for a course at TWU.

Bibliography

Marcus, Leonard S. 1998. A Caledcott Celebration. New York: Walker and Company.

ISBN# 0-8027-8656-1

Summary

A Caldecott Celebration talked about six winners, over six decades, of the Caldecott Medal. These winning authors included Robert McCloskey for Make Way for Ducklings published in 1942, Marcia Brown for Cinderella published in 1955, Maurice Sendak for Where the Wild Things Are published in 1964, William Steig for Sylvester and the Magic Pebble published in 1970, Chris Van Allsburg for Jumanji published in 1982 and David Wiesner for Tuesday published in 1992. The book started off with a history of the Caledcott Medal. From there the author introduced each author, gave a background of the author and the story of how the winning book came to be.

Analysis

The introduction and history of the Caldecott medal was a great way to start off this book. The author not only gave a history of the medal but also the process used to choose the winners. For each book the author gave a history of the illustrator as well as a bit of information on how the book came about. This book did a very good job describing the six artists and their winning books. Marcus did an excellent job of drawing you into each authors process of the illustrations. I do wonder what criteria was used to pick these six winning authors. The pictures used in this book are the pictures from the winning book. I like how the author also included early sketches as well as the finished illustrations. I learned a lot about the Caldecott Medal process as well as some of the things it takes to get an award winning book.

Review Excerpts

Horn Book Magazine review: "A fresh, inviting examination of an established process and ritual."

Book Report review: "The artist's own words add a sense of humanity and help readers gain respect for their humility, hard work, and the inventive vision in telling significant stories succinctly and with profound and esthetic power."

Connections

I think the main connection I would use this book for would be to introduce and use the books that are featured in the book. If you are not sure about books to share use in your class this gives you a good start.

There is a connection mentioned in the book that I felt was really good. The idea actually came from David Wiesner the author of Tuesday. Tuesday is a wordless book about frogs on flying on lily pads. His suggestion was to let kids put their own words to the story. I thought this was an excellent idea! Kids would h ave such a good time adding words to a story about flying frogs.