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Caldecott Medal Contender: Preaching to the Chickens
by Sam Juliano Chickens are far more intelligent and cognitively sophisticated than previously believed. Recent studies have resulted in findings that assert they are able to recognize faces and...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Airport Book
by Sam Juliano Lisa Brown’s The Airport Book is a study in words, pictures and voice bubbles of the unique experience of traveling on a plane. Specifically it chronicles the fast and furious pace...
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Nocturnal Animals and book events on Monday Morning Diary (November 28)
by Sam Juliano With Turkey Day 2016 now part of history we move on to the Christmas season and a month of year-end awards and lists in all the arts. Concurrently this is for most the busiest time of...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Jazz Day
by Sam Juliano An iconic photograph titled “Harlem 1958” is the inspiration for a vigorous, high-octane picture book, Jazz Day: The Making of a Famous Photograph, by Roxane Orgill, with illustrations...
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J.D. Lafrance on Joe Dante’s Matinee
by J.D. Lafrance “Going to the movies is sort of like going to church for me. When the lights went down I would be as likely to stay for a double feature as I would be to just go home.” – Joe Dante...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Snow White
by Sam Juliano The Brothers Grimm meet film noir and the silent cinema’s German Expressionism in a dazzling graphic novel and gender bender titled Snow White by Matt Phelan. Show business, the...
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JIM JARMUSCH’S ‘THE LIMITS OF CONTROL’“I’m among no one…”
© 2016 by James Clark Broken Flowers, the Jarmusch film from 2005, has introduced, quite startlingly for a project concerning crushing problematics, a figure who is not hopelessly lost....
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Thunder Boy Jr.
by Sam Juliano Thunder Boy Jr. has a problem. He has been saddled with the most unconventional name since that imp like creature, who possessed the skill to turn straw into gold disappeared after...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Can one balloon make an elephant fly?
by Sam Juliano When I first set eyes on Dan Richards’s and Jeff Newman’s Can One Balloon Make an Elephant Fly? I immediately decided that there was no way it could ever be part of my annual Caldecott...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Lost and Found – Adele & Simon in China
by Sam Juliano For sheer breathtaking scenic beauty Barbara McClintock’s painstaking Lost and Found: Adele & Simon in China is as ravishing a picture book as any released in 2016, but as is...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Cat Nap
by Sam Juliano Less is More – Robert Browning, “Andrea del Sarto”, 1855 Of all the picture books being reviewed this year for the Caldecott Medal Contender series, there are none that aims lower...
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J.D. Lafrance on Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish
By J.D. Lafrance History remembers Francis Ford Coppola’s, Rumble Fish (1983) as a film that was booed by its audience when it debuted at the New York Film Festival and in turn was viciously crucified...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Charles Darwin’s Around-the-World Adventure
by Sam Juliano The most celebrated trip around the world by ship judiciously remains the first official one on record. In August of 1519 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan left the Spanish...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Looking for Bongo
by Sam Juliano Eric Velasquez, the author and illustrator of Looking for Bongo, provides an untitled afterward at the end of the book that defines “Bongo” on two fronts. First, the word in solo terms...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Snappsy the Alligator
by Sam Juliano There is a prompt disclaimer on the dust jacket cover of the delightfully irreverent Snappsy the Alligator, spoken by the title character via a voice bubble to a rooster, duck and...
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100 Television Programs from around the World
by Adam Ferenz This post is the first in what will become an occasional series of posts as I work on a long-term project. What I am posting today is the first 100 of a list of 300 Television programs...
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La La Land, Jackie, Sing Street and Aquarius on Monday Morning Diary...
by Sam Juliano Is is that time of the year again. Everything is hectic, too much on the schedule and not enough time to negotiate all the plans. On this end it has been school transportation, a...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: The Dead Bird
by Sam Juliano And we buried you/In the ground/With ferns and flowers Some of the most beloved and acclaimed works of children’s literature have handled the theme of death with grace and...
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J.D. Lafrance on Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff
By J.D. Lafrance When The Right Stuff came out in 1983, pundits were anticipating it to make a big splash at the box office. Based on Tom Wolfe’s book of the same name, Philip Kaufman’s film depicted...
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Caldecott Medal Contender: Cricket Song
by Sam Juliano The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence....
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