Wild, beautiful, and highly creative illustrations await readers in the following picture books – which play with color, words, and textures to create a memorable experience.
Jimi Hendrix: Sounds Like a Rainbow
Author Gary Golio and artist Javaka Steptoe take readers on a surrealistic and synesthetic journey through the early life of Jimi Hendrix and his experiences with sound, music, and instruments.
While the book covers key moments in the creative process of a young Jimi Hendrix– including the way he learned to play music by strumming a ukulele, mimicking instrument sounds, and mastering his first white Supro Ozark electric guitar – it’s the way the book explores how music registered in Jimi Hendrix’s mind that gives it its real flavor.
Thought by some to have synesthesia (a condition that causes one’s senses to mix, enabling people to “taste” sounds or “see” flavors) Jimi Hendrix often referred to musical sounds as colors – which are brought to brilliant life in Steptoe’s abstract illustrations, which show colored sound waves and auras surrounding different objects as Golio describes the experience, “Blue was the whoosh of cool water splashing over rocks… Orange and red, the crackling of a campfire… Green, the rustle of a thousand leaves.”
Other pages show Golio’s text bending and swirling like concrete poems around the Steptoe’s mixed media art, allowing Golio’s descriptions of Jimi’s music to take on the appearance of his guitar’s sound. It’s a different way to look at the world that helps suggest the unique way people can perceive their surroundings.
Both a unique item for Jimi Hendrix collectors, and a fun example of the way different texts, color, and poetry can come together to form unique visual and reading experiences, Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow is a winner in any library.
The Seeing Stick
Long ago in Peking, the emperor’s only daughter Hwei Ming is born blind, making her father offers a fortune in jewels to anyone who can help her see. His promise brings many monks, physicians, and magician-priests to the palace, yet none can offer a cure.
Then one day, an old man makes the trek to the palace with something new – a “seeing stick” filled with his carvings of his home, his journey to Peking, and portraits of people he met along the way. As word of the old man’s carving skill reaches the palace, he gains an audience with Hwei Ming – and teaches her a different way of seeing through touch.
First published in 1977, this original fairy tale by Jane Yolen is now back in print with new illustrations by Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini. As with all good picture books, Yolen’s text, while beautifully written, does not overshadow the artist’s illustrations, which include several embossed pictures that let the reader feel the stick’s carvings with Hwei Ming. Sensitive and illuminating, this picture book will please many of Yolen’s fans.
Find other picture books with amazing illustrations at Picture Books of Japanese and African Stories, Funny Picture Books Toy with Word Plays and Unexplained Phenomena, and Fun Read Aloud Picture and Board Books for Kids.
Golio, Gary and Javaka Steptoe. Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix. New York: Clarion Books, 2010. ISBN: 978-0-618-85279-6
Yolen, Jane and Danilea Jaglenka Terrazzini. The Seeing Stick. Philadelphia: Running Press Kids/Running Press Book Publishers. 2009. ISBN: 978-0-7624-2048-3
Michael Jung - Michael Jung is a professional writer, children’s literature specialist, and online book dealer whose articles, reviews, interviews, ...
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