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Picture a Life: Picture Book Biographies
By Megan Schliesman
Picture book biographies have been around for decades, but only in recent years has this genre evolved into one of the most intriguing areas of publishing for
children. Authors and artists have tackled diverse, complex, and sometimes surprising subjects, creating books that are engaging, dynamic, and illuminating, and in which both the text and the art have something important
to contribute to an understanding of the life revealed.
In the classroom, outstanding picture book biographies have the potential to spark the imagination of children in myriad ways. They offer insights that
can deepen a child's understanding not only of an individual life, but also of history (both ancient and recent), of character traits, and of the type of work in which the biography's subject engaged. Perhaps most
important, each book that opens the door to a life offers the potential for children to discover a kindred spirit, to recognize in the life of another something essential about themselves.
How can the lives of complex individuals be distilled into something meaningful for children in 32 or 48 pages? There is no single way to do it, but in the best
books, the life of the subject dictates something about the form the work will take.
In My Name Is Georgia (Harcourt Brace, 1998) and Beatrix (Farrar, Straus, 2003) Jeanette Winter creates intimate portraits of two artists: Georgia O'Keeffe and Beatrix Potter. The books integrate quotes from the two women into the original texts, giving the quiet narratives an intimate feel (they are intimately sized as well) and providing young readers with acute insights into each subject. A simple phrase like Georgia O'Keeffe's "When my sisters wore sashes, I wore none," has powerful potential for resonance within any child who has dared or desired to be different, even as it reveals something about the standards of the time for a young girl. The two books have dramatically different artistic styles, each one suited to, and revealing something about, its subject's view of, and relationship to, the world around her. (This relationship can also become a point of discussion in the classroom.)
Some books are grounded in the realm of the familiar, using traditional narrative structures or styles, focusing on the lives of well-known figures in history.
Other books experiment with structure and form, or with subject matter, shining their light on individuals who are unfamiliar to most adults, let alone children. (Are you familiar, for instance, with the books of Don
Brown?) Some books blend the expected and the unexpected.
Amy L. Cohn and Suzy Schmidt's Abraham Lincoln, illustrated by David A. Johnson(Scholastic Press, 2002), hardly tackles a surprising subject, but their
folksy narrative style is unexpected—and remarkably engaging and effective. Nikki Grimes uses poems from multiple viewpoints to explore the life of African American aviator Bessie Coleman in Talkin' about Bessie,
illustrated by E.B. Lewis(Orchard, 2002).
Nancy Andrews-Goebel creates what amounts to three books in one in The Pot That Juan Built, illustrated by David Diaz (Lee & Low, 2002). She uses the
structure of "The House That Jack Built" to compose a lyrical narrative about the life and work of Mexican potter Juan Quezada, and then provides brief informational text to accompany each new addition to the tale. And at
the end of the book is a brief photodocumentary about Quezada and his work. In another book from Lee & Low, Cool Melons—Turn to Frogs! The Life and Poems of Issa, illustrated by Keiko Smith (1998), author Matthew
Gollub extends his biographical narrative about the19th-century Japanese Haiku master with poems by Issa himself, integrating the poems into the text in a way that helps to illuminate elements of Issa's life that have just
been explained.
Writer Andrea Davis Pinkney and artist Brian Pinkney have created books about a number of African Americans, from the relatively unknown Bill Picket in Bill Picket: Rodeo Ridin' Cowboy (Harcourt, 1996) to jazz icon Ella Fitzgerald in Ella Fitzgerald: The Tale of a Vocal Virtuoso (Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, 2002). The hip cat that narrates each "track" of the Ella Fitzgerald book manages to provide young readers with the historical context needed to understand Ella's achievements without ever losing his cool.
There is a tremendous range of creative and inspired picture book biography being published today. And while there are no guarantees that you will find
the perfect book about a specific individual, rest assured that there are many excellent books on a wide range of subjects out there. One or more of them is almost certainly just what you're looking for after all.
Megan Schliesman is a librarian at the Cooperative Children's Book Center of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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