Caldecott Winners

 

Caldecott Award Winners 2010, 2009, 2007, 2005, and 2003

The five recent Caldecott Award Winners which I read were the following:  The Lion and the Mouse, The House in the Night, Floatsam, Kitten's First Full Moon, and My Friend Rabbit. Since I teach middle school students, I must admit I hadn't spent much time reading Caldecott books; I didn't know what I was missing.  I simply loved them!

The first two I read were at Barnes and Nobel--The Lion and the Mouse and Floatsam.  I had no idea how well an illustrator could tell a story, without the use of one single word.  I really think that picture books like these can get children into literacy before they can even read a word.  I really liked Floatsam, but I must admit, The Lion and the Mouse was my favorite.  Pinkney's use of watercolors to create dreamlike, yet realistic images of the characters is simply stunning.  I really loved this book, and I thought it was going to be my ultimate favorite picture book; that is, until I read The House in the Night.

I read a copy of The House in the Night at the ERC on campus, and I was blown away by its illustrations.  At first, I was surprised by the lack of color; my thought was, "How can this be a Caldecott Award Winner and not have color illustrations?"  What I didn't realize until I started looking through the book was that it did use color, especially when emphasizing the brightness of the moon, but the whole idea behind this story was to distinguish between the moon's brightness and the darkness of the night.  And, as I said before, I had no idea how wonderfully these pictures could tell a story.  Without the illustrations, this book would have had nowhere near the same effect upon me that it had.

I also read Kitten's First Full Moon--which also used pencil sketch-like illustrations--and My Friend Rabbit, a beautiful, color-illustrated book and the kind of book I actually expected to see when looking for Caldecott Award Winners.  Still, although I did have my favorites, I was really amazed by all of the books, and I am very glad I had the opportunity to not only read them but also to share them with my own children.  Again, this gave me a new insight into literacy--children can begin to become literate without be able to read a word.