Jonah Winter, Author . Scholastic $5.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-439-37604-4
"Certain to be a hit with kids who take baseball seriously, this volume devotes a spread each to 14 stars of the Negro Leagues, from pitcher Satchel Paige to center fielder Oscar Charleston," said PW.
Ages 7-10. (Apr.)
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Jonah Winter, Author . Slope $14.95 (80p) ISBN 978-0-9718219-2-7
If Garrison Keillor were in his early 30s, hailed from Texas and had a terrific sense of the poetic narrative line, Winter's debut might be his latest dispatch. From a sestina based on the names of "My Women" to "Hair Club for...
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Jonah Winter, Author , illus. by Sean Addy. Scholastic/Levine $17.99 (64p) ISBN 978-0-439-62307-0
“We need a set of heroes who do not hurt people,” writes Winter (The Fabulous Feud of Gilbert & Sullivan
) in his introduction to 14 short biographies of figures who have embraced nonviolence, each portrayed by Addy (Amelia to Zora:...
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Jonah Winter, Author Scholastic $15.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-590-39464-2
Certain to be a hit with kids who take baseball history seriously, Winter's (Diego) handsome volume devotes a spread each to 14 stars of the Negro Leagues. Balancing stats with engaging trivia and anecdotes, the author will open readers' eyes to the
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Jonah Winter, Author, Edel Rodriquez, Illustrator , illus. by Edel Rodriguez. S&S/Atheneum $16.99 (0p) ISBN 978-1-4424-0303-1
Winter (Barack
) offers an impressionistic, at times repetitive, bilingual biography of Supreme Court justice Sotomayor. The author explains that Sotomayor's mother, raising her two children in the South Bronx, “worked night and day, day...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Red Nose Studio, Illustrator , illus. by Red Nose Studio Random/Schwartz & Wade $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-85218-3
The message is the medium in this zany fictionalized version of the 1987 story of a garbage-laden barge that left Long Island for North Carolina after local landfills closed. To create the book’s innovative artwork, Red Nose Studio, aka artist
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Jonah Winter, illus. by James Ransome. S&S/Atheneum, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4169-4080-7
“Baseball, believe it or not, was once the biggest sport in America.... And it wasn’t just the biggest sport—it was the biggest thing.” That’s some terrific context and tone setting for Winter’s readers, many of whom may view baseball as quaint at...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Marjorie Priceman. S&S/Atheneum, $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4169-6123-9
The life of entertainer Josephine Baker isn’t an easy one to translate to the picture book form, but Winter and Priceman attack her story with a gusto worthy of Miss Josephine herself. Opening with her impoverished childhood in St. Louis, Mo.,...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Pete Oswald. Random House/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-525-58179-6
Winter (Elvis Is King!) and Oswald (The Bad Seed) imagine a fact as a small, mottled blue circle with big eyes and spindly arms and legs—a vulnerable critter who is nonetheless certain and resolute about one thing: “A fact is a fact.” The watercolor-
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Raul Colón. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-553-53388-0
Winter (The Founding Fathers!) kicks off his enthusiastic profile of 2016 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton by ranking her as the modern-day successor to Queen Elizabeth, Joan of Arc, and Rosie the Riveter. He traces the roots of Clinton’s...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Keith Mallett. Roaring Brook/Porter, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-59643-963-4
Winter uses a second-person narrative to create a sense of immediacy as he describes Jelly Roll Morton’s tumultuous upbringing and immersion in music: “If you’d been Jelly Roll Morton/ you would’ve known/ that the only way to rise up/ and fly away/...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Shane W. Evans. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-385-39028-6
Winter (How Jelly Roll Morton Invented Jazz) introduces an elderly African-American woman whose walk up a steep hill to cast her ballot doubles as a metaphor for the struggle for voting rights. En route, miragelike figures from the past appear in...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Barry Blitt. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-87013-2
Winter uses the same playfully irreverent narration he brought to his books about Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays to this highly entertaining introduction to Charles Dillon Stengel. Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1912, the “left-handed, bowlegged,...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by C.F. Payne. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-101-93352-7
In an engagingly conversational narrative laced with baseball lingo, Winter (You Never Heard of Casey Stengel?!) vividly traces Mickey Mantle’s trajectory from a small child with a bone disease to one of America’s most beloved baseball players. But...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Ana Juan, Illustrator , illus. by Ana Juan. Scholastic/Levine $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-0-590-20320-3
Winter, who brought the Mexican muralist vividly to life in Diego, focuses on Diego Rivera's bride, Frida Kahlo—an accomplished artist in her own right—in this striking picture book–biography. With a spare narrative more...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Nancy Carpenter. Random House/
Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-449-81291-4
A doughty white-haired woman, arms akimbo, nearly steps off the opening page of this book: “My name is Mother Jones,/ and I’m MAD./ And you’d be MAD, too, if you’d/ seen what I’ve seen.” Using Jones’s folksy voice, Winter whirls readers into...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Raul Colon, Illustrator , illus. by Raúl Colón. Atheneum/Schwartz $16.95 (40p) ISBN 978-0-689-85643-3
Winter's (Fair Ball!: 14 Great Stars from Baseball's Negro Leagues
) uneven narrative offers an overview of baseball great Clemente. The opening spreads introduce Roberto as a child in Puerto Rico, with "very little/ but a fever to play/
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Jonah Winter, Author, Barry Blitt, Illustrator , illus. by Barry Blitt. Random/Schwartz & Wade $15.95 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-83602-2
While the pseudo-scholarly tone of this amusing "mockumentary" will undoubtedly float over the heads of some, older readers will enjoy its tongue-in-cheek lampoon of portentous documentaries. Beginning with the fact that Beethoven (1770–
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Barry Blitt. S&S/Atheneum, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4424-4274-0
Pointing out that the expression “Founding Fathers” sounds like the name of a rock band or baseball team, Winter looks into who 14 of these men really were, warts and all: “Thomas Jefferson was sort of a mixed bag. Dude wrote that ‘all men are...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Susan Guevara. Holiday House, $16.95 (40p) ISBN 978-0-8234-1601-1
Winter and Guevara offer 16 portraits—his in lively, straight-shooting prose; hers in stoic watercolor-and-ink—of women who made their names in the lawless years of the Wild West. From familiar figures like Calamity Jane and outlaw Belle Starr (“She
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Kevin Hawkes. Scholastic/Levine, $18.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-545-13291-6
Winter (Barack) resists the “good for you” air of some picture-book biographies in this dynamic reimagining of Picasso’s rocket trip to the top of the 20th-century art world, while Hawkes (The Wicked Big Toddlah Goes to New York) is energized rather
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Terry Widener. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-86844-3
Winter and Widener, who previously teamed up on Steel Town, return with a stellar companion to Winter’s equally superb You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! Like its predecessor, this profile of Hall of Famer Mays immediately grabs attention with its...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Terry Widener. Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-385-38342-4
The creators of You Never Heard of Willie Mays?! bring poignant and personal dimension to the story of Thomas Jefferson’s family with Sally Hemings through the fictionalized first-person perspective of one of their sons. A somber mix of historical...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Jeanette Winter. Beach Lane, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4814-6913-5
Secrets seldom come grimmer than in this unsettling tale, which describes the Los Alamos nuclear lab and the creation of the atomic bomb. The mother-son team behind Diego and other picture book biographies pairs an informational tone with simmering...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Jeanette Winter, Illustrator , illus. by Jeanette Winter. Scholastic/Levine $16.99 (64p) ISBN 978-0-439-50739-4
How does one explain to a child a girl's ability to see mystical visions? In this intriguing picture book biography of the 12th-century German scientist, musician and Christian heroine Hildegard von Bingen, the mother-and-son Winters use a...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Calef Brown, Illustrator , illus. by Calef Brown. S&S/Atheneum $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-4169-4088-3
Taking his title from Gertrude Stein's famous saying about a rose, Winter (Frida
) crafts a Steinesque “word portrait” of the modernist author. Stein wears a serene smile in Brown's (Soup for Breakfast
) patchy acrylic images,
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Kimberly Bulcken Root. Random/Schwartz and Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-86197-0
Root’s sun-faded, ink-and-wash drawings make gentle companions for Winter’s (Here Comes the Garbage Barge!) account of his father’s hardscrabble Depression-era childhood. She softens the rough edges and sees the beauty of the East Texas country...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Jonah Winter, Illustrator, Bruce Markusen Rodriguez, Introduction by Lee & Low Books $16.95 (32p) ISBN 978-1-58430-012-0
Children who collect baseball cards will appreciate the 14 stars featured in B isbol! Latino Baseball Pioneers and Legends by Jonah Winter. Striking full-page portraits accompany biographical information on standouts such as Jos M ndez, the ""f
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Jonah Winter, Author, Francois Roca, Illustrator , illus. by François Roca. Random/Schwartz & Wade $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-83622-0
With biblical references and a reverential tone, this lyrical story of Muhammad Ali paints the fighter (and the history of African-American boxers) in mythic proportions: “In the beginning
was Jack Johnson.” A subsequent spread features
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Stacy Innerst. Abrams, $18.95 (48p) ISBN 978-1-4197-2559-3
Winter (The Secret Project) and Innerst (The Music in George’s Head) use the frame of a court case to trace the life of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The evidence of the sexism and discrimination Ginsberg faced is abundant, often...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Sean Qualls, Illustrator , illus. by Sean Qualls. Scholastic/Levine $16.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-439-50737-0
Winter (Frida
) adds a winning volume to the burgeoning array of picture books about jazz giants. Written in up-tempo, occasionally rhyming free verse, the narrative trips off the tongue as it sketches Dizzy Gillespie's early sufferings: his...
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Jonah Winter, Author, AG Ford, Illustrator , illus. by AG Ford. HarperCollins/Tegen $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-170392-8
This most recent picture book about a 2008 presidential candidate (see Reviews, Aug. 11 for more books on the subject) could serve as an object lesson in haste: the publisher has said that Winter (Frida
) turned the text around in two weeks and,...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by AG Ford. HarperCollins/Tegen, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-176807-1
Winter opens this picture-book biography of John F. Kennedy with his 1963 assassination and a striking bit of personal history: just a year old, Winter himself was there that day in Dallas: “I watched his car pass by, watched him waving to the...
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Jonah Winter, Author, Andre Carrilho, Illustrator , illus. by André Carrilho. Schwartz & Wade $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-375-83738-8
The huge lenticular cover image of pitcher Sandy Koufax in action makes this book hard to ignore; Winter’s fan-in-the-stands-style prose and Carrilho’s high-impact, editorial-style images make it hard to forget. Neither author nor artist
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Jonah Winter, Author, Richard Egielski, Illustrator , illus. by Richard Egielski. Scholastic/Levine $16.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-439-93050-5
Covering much of the same ground as Mike Lee's marvelous 1999 biopic Topsy-Turvy
(with a G-rated filter, of course), Winter (Barack
) and Egielski (The End
) present the backstory of The Mikado
. The storytelling gets off to a slow start;...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Red Nose Studio. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-399-55470-4
This picture book biography from the duo behind Here Comes the Garbage Barge! conveys the story of Elvis Presley’s life, from crushing loneliness and poverty early on to his first #1 hit, “Heartbreak Hotel.” Reality and fantasy blend together in the
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Bob Staake. Random House/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-0-593-12272-3
The citizens of Bobville are the epitome of conformity: all named Bob, they also look and act the same. Staake (The Book of Gold), leaning into his stylized aesthetic, draws the Bobs as black-and-white figures with rotund, striped bodies; mostly...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Gary Kelley. Creative, $18.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-56846-394-0
Censor bars gradually fill the pages of this bleak, self-referential exploration of book banning. Following a classic fairy tale opening, a pointed voice recounts the tale of a work—subject redacted—in which “words had been blacked out/ by people...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Jeanette Winter. Beach Lane, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5344-3077-8
Marking the 30th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, lyrical prose and textured illustrations in layered colors distinguish this picture book treatment of the environmental disaster. Using repetition in both narration and artwork (“F
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Jeanette Winter. Beach Lane, $17.99 (32p) ISBN 978-1-66590-213-7
Jonah Winter narrates with quiet respect the journey of the saw-whet owl found in the 2020 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, starting by describing her at home in the forest: “The owl didn’t have a name—/ and of course she didn’t:/ She was a wild...
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Jeanette Winter. Beach Lane, $18.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-66593-239-4
The mother-son team (Oil) create a wry, poignant picture book biography about a reclusive man—billy barr, an author’s note reveals—who lives in a cabin on a snowy mountain and, with nothing else to do, becomes a scientific researcher. “He propped up
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Jonah Winter, illus. by Bryan Collier. Random/Schwartz & Wade, $17.99 (40p) ISBN 978-1-5247-6533-0
Excellent storytelling in word and image unite in this essential biography of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993). In percussive text that combines the pacing of a courtroom recital with plainspoken accessibility, Winter covers...
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