Cave Paintings

Buitrago, Jairo. Cave Paintings. Toronto: Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2020.
A young boy – on summer vacation – travels across the universe to visit his grandmother on Earth. Stunningly beautiful full-page coloured pencil illustrations by Rafael Yockteng help tell this brilliantly imaginative story highly recommended for readers 7 to 12 years old. Translated from the Spanish by Elisa Amado.
P.S. A great introduction to a unit on space travel or the history of technology or a genre study of science fiction.
P.P.S. A lovely addition to a unit on stories from countries around the world. The author lives in Mexico and the illustrator in Columbia.

More stories about space and time travel

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More picture books using coloured pencils

 

A book that goes back in time…

Schertle, Alice. We. New York: Lee & Low Books Inc., 2007.
The text –  describing how civilization developed over time and how we all are still interdependent on this earth – is vividly illustrated with collages by Kenneth Addison. A picture book highly recommended for readers 10 years old and up.

Counting on Katherine

Becker, Helaine. Counting on Katherine: How Katherine Johnson Saved Apollo 13. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2018.

Katherine was a child who loved numbers. But in the 1920s and ’30s, girls did not grow up to become mathematicians. So Katherine became a school teacher. Until in the 1950s, she finally got a chance to work for America’s National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics. For 35 years, her calculations of flight-paths helped to safely send astronauts around the world, to the moon, and back again to Earth. She died on February 24, 2020 at 101 years of age. This picture book illustrated by Dow Phumiruk is highly recommended for curious readers 9 years old and up.

More biographies

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