Picture Books Aren’t Just Fiction

I’ll be honest, I’m new to the world of youth literature. My career in libraries thus far has been solely in adult literature and, specifically here at Ingram, with adult nonfiction. A position came open on the youth team for a focus on youth nonfiction and I decided to take it, thinking I would finally dip my toes into the water of current youth literature. Instead, I dove headfirst and found the category of children’s nonfiction fascinating. Far and away, my favorite of these were the picture book biographies.

Upon reflecting on my own interests asa child, this makes sense. Once I learned to read independently in elementary school, I became obsessed with reading biographies of people, so it tracks that I’d find the veritable smorgasbord of picture book biographies fascinating. The inclusion of more and more stories from diverse and immigrant backgrounds can do so much in the hands of children, as these biographies show the potential that everyone has to make a difference, no matter where they come from or what they look like. Below is a small (but mighty) sample of what’s out there.

Just publishing in 2022, there were so many fantastic titles covering a variety of topics and a diversity of people. Yes We Will: Asian Americans Who Shaped This Country by Kelly Yang is a collective biography of athletes, politicians, dancers, inventors, and more who are Asian American. After watching the documentary “Crip Camp,” I was happy to see a biography of disability rights activist, Judith Heumann in Maryann Cocca-Leffler’s Fighting for Yes!: The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann. In Rise Up with a Song: The True Story of Ethel Smyth, Suffragette Composer by Diane Worthey, we can learn about this lesser-known key figure in the fight for women’s suffrage. For a tasty bite of a bio, Tziporah Cohen’s On the Corner of Chocolate Avenue: How Milton Hershey Brought Milk Chocolate to America tells of the man behind the most famous chocolate and candy brand (and town) in the country. Hope is an Arrow: The Story of Lebanese-American Poet Khalil Gibran by Cory McCarthy invites us to learn about the famous poet’s struggles to be both Lebanese and American. Picture book author and illustrator, Katie Yamasaki, turns to biography while profiling her grandfather, Japanese American architect Minoru Yamasaki, in Shapes, Lines, and Light: My Grandfather’s American Journey. It's also worth mentioning a fantastic debut picture book memoir by renowned Indigenous dancer, Ria Thundercloud, titled Finding My Dance.

The ALA Youth Media Awards were announced in January, and a handful of great picture book biographies were among the winners. Winning the Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience was Shannon Stocker’s Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion. Chana Stiefel’s The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town won the Sydney Taylor Book Award for Picture Book, which portrays the life of Jewish Polish American, Yaffa Eliach, who helped to create a permanent exhibit of her town for the National Holocaust Museum in Washington DC; the title was also a Sibert Honor Book. For the upper elementary set, Janelle Washington, illustrator of Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award; the book was also a Randolph Caldecott Medal Honor Book and a Sibert Honor Book.

The year 2022 has given us a plethora of great picture book biographies, but let’s look at a few titles that are forthcoming in 2023. Publishing this month is Aida Salazar’s Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter, the biography of a woman revolutionary who commanded a battalion in the Cristero Rebellion in Mexico. I’m always a fan of reading the story behind well-known items, and Pedro’s Yo-Yos: How a Filipino Immigrant Came to America and Changed the World of Toys by Roberto Peñas does just that with the story of businessman Pedro Flores. The first black female cartoonist is the subject of Liz’s Montague’s May release titled Jackie Ormes Draws the Future: The Remarkable Life of a Pioneering Cartoonist. Judit Polgár became the youngest chess grandmaster in history, and her story is profiled in Laurie Wallmark’s The Queen of Chess: How Judit Polgár Changed the Game, publishing in July.

We all know how important it is to have diverse representation in our public and school libraries and thankfully those books are no longer as hard to find. Picture book biographies are popular, winning awards, and delighting readers, and I, for one, am looking forward to what is to come.