The greatest escape
It's a fairly safe bet that we'll all be happy to see the end of this year. It's been a miserable one worldwide, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, and we're all placing our hopes on a vaccine as 2021 arrives. Which is not to say that 2020 was a total disaster. Most of us learned to appreciate things we too often took for granted: the importance of family and friends, the value of random acts of kindness, and the significance of shared pleasures. Parents rediscovered that reading a book with a child is mutually beneficial, and children who could read for themselves found that books offer an escape from daily strife and a glimpse of inspirational lives such as those in these picture books.
The Lady with the Books
Kathy Stinson
Illustrated by Marie Lafrance
Kids Can Press
Ages 6 to 9
Ontario's Kathy Stinson tells the story of Anneliese, a young girl in postwar Germany who, while searching for food, wanders into an exhibition of international children's books with her younger brother, Peter. The two return the next day and listen, with other children, while a lady reads The Story of Ferdinand, translating it into German as she goes. The lady tells them about other books she hopes will be available in German some day: “Pinocchio from Italy, Heidi from Switzerland, Babar from France.” And Pippi from Sweden. That night, when Peter asks her for a bedtime story, Anneliese obliges. She herself eventually goes to sleep, “like Ferdinand in his field of flowers, and she would dream.” Stinson's story, beautifully illustrated by Montreal's Marie Lafrance, is followed by five pages of information about the real lady of the books — a Jewish woman named Jella Lepman who fled Germany in 1936 with her two children. When Germany lost the war, Lepman returned and was given the task of helping German children; she decided they needed books as much as food. The exhibition she mounted in 1946 was a precursor to the conference Lepman organized in 1951, which led to the formation of the International Board on Books for Young People.
Girl on a Motorcycle
Amy Novesky
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
Viking
Ages 6 to 9
An international flavour also permeates Girl on a Motorcycle, written by Amy Novesky and brilliantly illustrated by Vancouver's Julie Morstad. In these pandemic times, when travel is on hold for most of us, reading about a young Parisian woman who “dreams of wandering the world” in 1973 and gets on a motorcycle, helps us all take flight, so to speak. After “miles and miles of open road” and encounters with all kinds of people, the young woman “wears the world like a beautifully embroidered scarf, / all the places she's been, the things she's seen.” The world, she has decided, is beautiful — and the people are good. An author's note at the end of the book explains that this story is based on and inspired by Anne-france Dautheville, “the first woman to ride a motorcycle around the world alone.”
Emmy Noether
Helaine Becker
Illustrated by Kari Rust
Kids Can Press
Ages 6 to 12
Emmy Noether is another woman who achieved something spectacular but isn't generally known; in fact, the book's subtitle describes her as The Most Important Mathematician You've Never Heard Of. Born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1882, she became the mathematician “who solved the mystery of why some laws of physics, such as the law of gravity, never change,” writes Toronto author Helaine Becker. But for much of her life Noether was subjected to what we now call a sexist attitude in a field dominated by men. Becker's text is illustrated in a lighthearted style by Vancouver's Kari
Rust. In the U.S., Noether was helped by many people — including Albert Einstein. She found a job at a women's college and fate intervened in a spectacular career. Noether grew ill and died in April 1935, at of 53.