What would you do if you woke up one morning and discovered that you had grown antlers?  If the thought has never even crossed your mind, then you should read Imogene’s Antlers, written and illustrated by David Small (Random House, 1985).

When Imogene wakes up on Thursday to find antlers on her head, it creates a few problems.  Getting dressed is tricky.  Getting out the door is  trickier.

Imogene’s mother is so shocked she faints clean away.  The doctor can find nothing wrong.  The principal has no suggestions.

But Imogene doesn’t seem to mind.  Antlers make great towel racks, lovely perches for birds, and the perfect candelbra when Imogene practices the piano.

Besides, Imogene wakes Friday morning to find the antlers gone.  Voilà, problem solved!    

Or is it?

(First let me say, this photo does not do justice to these illustrations  because they are rich and gorgeous. )

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams  by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans, 2008).  is a picture book biography of the Imagist poet William Carlos Williams.   Williams is considered one of the great American poets, and the pared down simplicity and strong images of his poems makes them accessible to children.  Their very simplicity also creates a unique intensity and force.

Little Willie Wiliams grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, playing baseball and racing his friends. “But when the other boys went inside, Willie stayed outside.”  He observed everything and listened to the rhythm of the river.

In high school Willie’s teacher read him poetry and he tried to write his own.  But “he had pictures in his mind that didn’t fit exactly into steady rhythms or rhymes.”  “I want to write about ordinary things–plums, wheelbarrows, and weeds, fire engines, children, and trees.”  So he did. 

Willie was a good poet.   But he needed money too.  Willie’s mother suggested  he become a doctor like his Uncle Carlos.  Willie liked the thought of helping people, so off he went to the university to study medicine.  Could he write poetry and study medicine too?

Of course!  And when he returned to his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey to be a family doctor, Willie was busier than ever.   “But not matter how many babies he delivered, no matter now many sick people he cured, Willie could not stop writing poems.”  ”After his long doctor’s day, Willie climbed to the attic” and as the lights in the town turned off one by one Willie tooks words and “shaped them into poems.”

Jen Bryant’s lyrical style  is wonderfully suited to a book about a poet.  She has also written other books about artists:  Georgia O’Keefe, Marianne Moore, composer Olivier Messiaen.

Illustrator Melissa Sweet weaves several of the poems into her artwork and more poems are printed inside the front and back covers.  The dust jacket calls the illustrations “stunning” and that is not too strong of a word for Sweet’s mixed media.

 I adore this book.  I loved studying William Carlos Williams in college, and when I won this book at a writer’s conference, I was surprised by how many of my fellow writers had never even heard of him.  This simple biography provides a fantastic introduction.  It introduces Williams’ life, his poetry, his motivation, his style, and his amazing persistance and work ethic.  It has a timeline, additional biographical information, and a bibliography at the end.  All in just 32 pages!  A River of Words proves once again that picture books aren’t just for children.

Have you ever lived far away from relatives?  Wanted to go visit but couldn’t?  Then The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison, illustrated by Joe Cepeda (Harcourt, 2003) is a must read for you.

The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman tells the story of Tameka from Redcrest, California.  She writes her Uncle Ray in South Carolina and begs him to come for a visit.  Uncle Ray replies that he can’t make it–he’s got to work all summer–but he’s sending his friend Oliver K. Woodman instead.

Well, Oliver K. Woodman is a man that Uncle Ray made from wood scraps (he reminds me of the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz), and he hitchhikes all the way from South Carolina to California.  Along the way, Oliver’s benefactors write to Uncle Ray and tell him about Oliver’s journey.

Aside from being a great way to learn geography, the story is told as a series of letters written by different characters.  Author Darcy Pattison does a fantastic job with all these different voices.  Tameka is simple and straightforward: “Please come to visit us this summer.  We will go camping.  We can swim and catch fish.  You are my favorite uncle.  Please say you will come!”   

A trucker writes Uncle Ray that Oliver K. Woodman is “an easy fella to travel with.  He never needs bathroom stops.  He doesn’t care where we eat.  And he stays awake with me all night.”   Three little old ladies who give Oliver a ride from Salt Lake City to California tell of their “distinct pleasure of entertaining Mr. Oliver K. Woodman for the past 23 days . . . he has the loveliest manners.” 

And finally, Bernard Grape, attorney at law, writes that he will deliver Oliver to Tameka’s doorstep: “Our family, currently on vacation, picked up the above named person in what I thought was a misguided goodwill gesture.  Little did I know how lucky that gesture would be.”

Oliver makes it to Tameka’s house thanks to the kindness of strangers, and Tameka and her family make it to Uncle Ray’s too.  At home with the people you love best.  The perfect happy ending.

If you love the art of Georgia O’Keefe, you’ll love the picture book My Name is Georgia written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter (1998, Harcourt).  I picked this picture book up in Santa Fe when I was visiting the Georgia O’Keefe museum there.  It’s a very simple biography of the artist from her days as a girl to art school in Chicago and then New York:  “At school, I painted my teacher’s ideas.  But when school days were over, I went out into the wide world to discover my own ideas.” 

Georgia paints the Texas sky, the sunset and clouds.  She paints flowers:  “I painted a camellia.  I painted it BIG, so people would notice.  I painted a jack-in-the-pulpit.  I painted it BIG, so people would see.”

Then she goes to the New Mexico desert.  Georgia again finds things to paint:  bones, deserts, mountains, and again the sky.  And in her last painting, she painted the sky.  “I painted my sky BIG, so people would see the sky the way I did.”

Georgia O’Keefe lived to be ninety-eight years old.  To my mind, her art seems particularly accessible to children.  It has a childlike immediacy and boldness of form and color that appeals to them.  So take your kiddo to the art museum then come home and read My Name is Georgia.

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by DuBose Heyward and illustrated by Marjorie Flack tells the story of the five Easter bunnies.  Yes, five.  If you haven’t read the story, you probably didn’t know there were five.

At any rate, a little country girl bunny decided that she wanted to grow up to be an Easter bunny.  But all the fancy white bunnies and big Jack-rabbits with their long legs laughed at her.   ”The little girl Cottontail grew up to be a young lady Cottontail.  And by and by she had a husband and then one day, much to her surprise there were twenty-one Cottontail babies to take care of.”  And all the fancy white rabbits and big Jack-rabbits laugh at her again and say, “Only a country rabbit would go and have all those babies.  Now take care of them and leave Easter eggs to great big men bunnies like us.”  I kid you not.  That is a direct quote from the book.

Well, those baby bunnies grew and their Cottontail mama taught two of them to sweep, two to make beds, two to cook, two to wash dishes, two to wash linens, two to sew and mend, two to sing and two to dance to entertain the others while they worked, two to garden, and two to paint, and the last little bunny she made keeper of her chair, and he pulled out the chair for her at supper.

Eventually the time came again to pick another Easter bunny.   Little Cottontail Mother and her family travelled to the Palace of Easter Eggs to see Old Grandfather pick the newest Easter bunny.  And naturally Old Grandfather picked Cottontail Mother because she was wise, kind, and swift, and the kids would have no trouble taking care of things while she was gone (don’t ask me where Papa bunny was–the story doesn’t say a word about him). 

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes was first published in 1939 Houghton Mifflin not long after women got the vote, but well before the Women’s Movement of the 60′s.  Little Cottontail Bunny is the original supermom.  She breaks through the glass ceiling of male Easter bunnies, proves her bravery and gets fancy gold shoes to boot.  And she does it all before her little baby bunnies wake up.