Picture Book Monday: Last Stop on Market Street

[osprey_archer]

Last Stop on Market Street is the picture book that won the 2016 Newbery Medal. The fact that it's a picture book gave me some pause - nothing against picture books, but you really can't pack the same complexity into a few hundred odd words as you could into a novel - but once I read it, I quite liked it, and it certainly deserves awards even if it seems like a somewhat odd fit for this particular award.

It's sweet without being cloying, which is an achievement with such a small word-count, and there's some nice images in here, too, a sense that the book is almost free-verse poetry (with occasional dips into rhyme). It starts out, for instance:

CJ pushed through the church doors, skipped down the steps.

The outside air smelled like freedom,
but it also smelled like rain,
which freckled CJ's shirt and dripped down his nose.

A vivid scene in just a few lines, and I particularly like the use of the word freckled here - the image is clear, but the word usage is unusual enough to give pleasure in itself.

Comments

[inspirethoughts.livejournal.com]

I have been reading your posts about "Picture Book" for quite some time. So Picture book is a book with all pictures? Almost like a graphic novel?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

A picture book is usually a book with one big picture on every page - so it's not divided up into panels like a graphic novel. There's usually some accompanying text, although it can range from just a line or two (or even just a word; baby books will often have just one or two words on a page) to whole paragraphs of text.