Caldecott Winners through the Years

The following reviews explore Caldecott winners from three distinct eras, examining what endures, what gets shabby, and how authors approach the strange and beautiful minds of children. I hope you learn something new. I know I did!

1938-1959:

Milhous, K. (1950). The egg tree. Charles Scribner's Sons. 

This title from 1951 does feel quite dated to a modern eye. The art is rudimentary, with a limited and somewhat muted color palette that does not hold the eye or attention of th reader. The text is not formatted, and simply runs from page to page, often breaking off mid-sentence. The prose itself is, in lay terms, boring. Even as an adult accustomed to various styles of prose, I struggled to focus on what I was reading. 

It is unclear whom the audience of this book is intended to be. The author thanks the Pennsylvania Dutch in her foreword, and the characters are dressed in the traditional attire of that group, but this ethnicity and culture is not referenced in the body text of the book. Features of rural life like shutters, butter churns, and beaver hats that, even by 1951, would have been out of the mainstream, are referenced but not explored or explained. Perhaps awareness of this sector of the population was greater in the mid-twentieth century, but today, it would be difficult for most children to understand without a great deal of provided context. It would likely be a fine book, then or now, for children in the Pennsylvania Dutch community. 

The narrative of the book itself is meandering, using a high word count to describe relatively little action. There are some positive lessons about family relationships, and a vague notion that one should not compare oneself to others to find self esteem. Overall, the concepts and action are simplistic and do not indicate a high level of trust for the child audience. 

1960-1989:

Ness, E. (1966). Sam, Bangs & moonshine. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

In this picture book by Evaline Ness, Samantha (Sam, for short) lives with her father and her trusted cat, Bangs. Sam has a powerful imagination and uses stories to cope with difficult issues, like the death of her mother before the book begins. Sometimes, though, Sam’s stories, which the characters in the book refer to as “moonshines,” can cause trouble for her and the people around her. The book is written in propulsive and clear prose, with some simple language play, as when Bangs remarks to Sam that “moonshine is flumdiddle.” The art, too, is figurative but stylized, using an ethereal but sometimes scary watercolor style.

Clearly, Ness is confident that her youth audience is capable of interpreting lightly abstracted art and language as elements of a simple narrative. She also shows a confidence in the children reading the book to confront emotional topics - she plainly states in the early pages that Sam’s mother is dead. While the author trusts her audience with blunt statements like these, she also assumes that young readers can interpret context clues to get to a deeper truth. When Sam realizes that one of her “moonshines” has put her friends in danger, Ness writes that she has “a lump in her throat,” allowing the audience to infer the emotions she is experiencing without explicitly stating them. The moral of the book exists in a morally complex gray area, explaining to children that “good moonshines” can be fun, and it is the individual’s responsibility to distinguish between those and “bad moonshines,” which can cause harm. The ambiguous ending demonstrates respect for young readers, and a belief that they can tackle sophisticated ideas.

2020-present:

Salati, D. (2022). Hot dog. Knopf Books for Young Readers. 

Doug Salati’s Hot Dog uses pencil and gouache illustrations to create a simple narrative about some complicated feelings. The book uses a strikingly sparse, poetic writing style, seeming to run a ticker of the titular dog’s thoughts in real time. This assumes that a young audience has (a) the flexibility to approach a style of writing that does not fall into more familiar, narrative prose patterns and (b) the ability to conceptualize that they are meant to be putting themselves in the main character’s place and experiencing his thoughts without being explicitly instructed as such. The first words are not, “I think..” or “The dog thinks…”, they are, “city summer/steamy sidewalks.” 

The actions of the characters are fairly straightforward: they get too hot in the city, go to the beach for an afternoon, and then come home to eat dinner. The emotional arc that takes place within these actions, however, is more nuanced. Salati assumes that young readers will recognize and empathize with feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, relief, and, the most complex an interesting to me, the renewed love for home that a trip away gives us. Beyond this, he also assumes that a youth audience will be able to identify these emotional states not by being told about them in writing, but by interpreting the facial expressions and body language of both human and non-human characters. Speaking of non-human characters, Salati also employs the assumption that young readers will be drawn to and identify with animal characters, in this case, the wiener dog. 

Although this book was published just a few years ago, I believe it will stand the test of time. The illustration is skillful, charming, dynamic, and emotionally evocative, appealing to both children and adults (Roz Chast fans should read this with their kids!). The story is fairly universal - it will certainly appeal to any child who has lived through summer in the city, and it has enough generality to make sense to kids with different life experiences, too. Most of all, the emotions are palpable. I was really moved while reading this book!