Jan­u­ary brought a whole slew of new non­fic­tion pic­ture books. Per­fect tim­ing to give me a big head­start on the non­fic­tion pic­ture book chal­lenge before read­ing will have to take a back­seat in February. A cou­ple, The Boy Who Har­nessed the Wind and The Worst of Friends I’ve taken time to review indi­vid­u­ally. Here’s a quick roundup of oth­ers I had  a chance to read.

A Boy Called Dick­ens by Deb­o­rah Hop­kin­son and illus­trated by John Hen­drix focuses on the dif­fi­cult time that Charles Dick­ens worked in a black­ing fac­tory and lived alone while his fam­ily was in the debtor’s prison Mar­shallsea. John Hen­drix  The soot of Lon­don per­me­ates the art­work and despair Dick­ens felt dur­ing this period of his life. Hop­kin­son weaves char­ac­ters from Dick­ens’ sto­ries into the nar­ra­tive mak­ing con­nec­tions between his expe­ri­ences dur­ing this period to his later writing.

Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Fred­er­ick Dou­glass by Lesa Cline-Ransome and illus­trated by James E. Ran­some is a great con­nec­tion for lit­er­acy pro­grams dur­ing African Amer­i­can His­tory Month. While detail­ing Dou­glass’ early life, the focus is on how he learned to read and write (and was pre­vented from doing so) and how he shared this knowl­edge with others.

Free­dom Song: The Story of Henry “Box” Brown by Sally M. Walker and illus­trated by Sean Qualls imag­ines the role that songs may have played in this famous escape from slav­ery. It  was hard to read this with­out com­par­ing to the supe­rior Henry’s Free­dom Box by Ellen Levine and illus­trated by Kadir Nelson.

Levi Strauss Gets a Bright Idea: A Fairly Fab­ri­cated Story of a Pair of Pants by Tony John­ston and illus­trated by Stacy Innerst is a tall tale take on the inven­tion of blue jeans.  Innerst’s illus­tra­tions on denim are fab­u­lous and lend this book to accom­pa­ny­ing art projects. John­ston has writ­ten a rous­ing tale of the Gold Rush that is great fun as long as adults make clear that this is a tall tale based loosely on facts.

Two titles to con­sider with President’s Day com­ing up are George: George Wash­ing­ton, Our Found­ing Father by Frank Keat­ing and illus­trated by Mike Wim­mer and Those Rebels, John & Tom by Bar­bara Ker­ley and illus­trated by Edwin Fother­ing­ham. George is a seri­ous first-person view of George Washington’s char­ac­ter devel­op­ment with each page anchored by one of the “Rules of Civil­ity” Wash­ing­ton wrote dur­ing his life. On the other hand, Those Rebels brings whimsy to the influ­ence of John Adams and Thomas Jef­fer­son on the found­ing of the United States. Fotheringham’s illus­tra­tions com­ple­ment this really engag­ing look at their friend­ship and accomplishments.