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Topic: Picturebooks Upper KS2

In the morning the people of the island found a man sitting on the shore, where fate and the ocean currents had set him and his frail raft in the night. When he saw them coming towards him, he rose to his feet.

He was not like them.

Picturebook

If Mum has gone, how do you carry on? Missing her feels like a dark cloud that follows you around,or like swimming to a shore that never comes any nearer. But memories are like a jumper that you can cuddle and wear. And Mum’s jumper might be a way to keep her close.

A simple, heartfelt and ultimately uplifting bookfor anyone coping with loss.

Picturebook

A rhinoceros remembers his life before grey captivity, one full of colour, with familiar smells and sights. He thinks of his mother being slain by poachers. He has searched the zoo but cannot find another like him. He fears he is the last. He describes a joyless life for all the animals with him, before being rescued and brought back home. The colour is brought back into his life when he realis-es he is not the last.

Last evokes a longing for home from the reader and a sense of hope for the future upon its ending.

In her debut as an illustrator, Nicole Davies effectively and beautifully portrays the differences in mood and surroundings between the rhinoceros’ life before and during captivity through her effective use of colour.

Picturebook

A breathtaking new picture book by children’s author Nicola Davies, illustrated by Laura Carlin, winner of the Bratislava Illustration Biennale and the Bologna Ragazzi Prize for Illustration. Starting a new life in a new country, a young boy feels lost and alone – until he meets an old man who keeps racing pigeons. Together they pin their hopes on a race across Europe and the special bird they believe can win it: King of the Sky. Nicola Davies’ beautiful story – an immigrant’s tale with a powerful resonance in our troubled times – is illustrated by an artist who makes the world anew with every picture. A musical adaptation of King of the Sky has already met with success on the stage, shown two years running at the Hay Festival and due to tour Welsh theatres next spring.

Picturebook

This award-winning true story of Black Olympic runner Wilma Rudolph, who overcame childhood polio and eventually went on to win three gold medals, is illustrated by Caldecott medal-winning artist David Diaz.

Before Wilma Rudolph was five years old, polio had paralyzed her left leg. Everyone said she would never walk again. But Wilma refused to believe it. Not only would she walk again, she vowed, she’d run. And she did run–all the way to the Olympics, where she became the first American woman to earn three gold medals in a single Olympiad. This dramatic and inspiring true story is illustrated in bold watercolor and acrylic paintings.

Picturebook

What drives so many to leave everything behind and journey alone to a mysterious country, a place without family or friends, where everything is nameless and the future is unknown? This silent graphic novel is the story of every migrant, every refugee, every displaced person, and a tribute to all those who have made the journey.

THE ARRIVAL has become one of the most critically acclaimed books of recent years, a wordless masterpiece that describes a world beyond any familiar time or place.

Picturebook

A powerful account of the reclamation of an urban landscape told wordlessly through fascinating, detailed collage artwork.

Observed through the window of a house, a city street gradually becomes a place to call home as the inhabitants begin to rescue their street by planting grass and trees in the empty spaces. Year by year, everything begins to blossom… Told wordlessly and with stunning collage illustrations, Belonging explores the re-greening of the city and the role of community, the empowerment of people and the significance of children, family and neighbourhood in changing the urban environment for the better.

Picturebook

A bright, science-minded boy goes to the beach equipped to collect and examine flotsam-anything floating that has been washed ashore. Bottles, lost toys, small objects of every description are among his usual finds. But there’s no way he could have prepared for one particular discovery: a barnacle-encrusted underwater camera, with its own secrets to share . . . and to keep.

Picturebook

With intensely coloured, gorgeous artwork, Alvaro F. Villa depicts the effects of a devastating flood on a family and their home in this wordless – and startlingly beautiful – picture book.

Picturebook

Jean-Michel Basquiat and his unique, collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. However, before that, he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games, in the words that we speak and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Now, award-winning illustrator Javaka Steptoe’s vivid text and bold artwork echoing Basquiat’s own style introduces young readers to the powerful message that art doesn’t always have to be neat or clean – and definitely not inside the lines – to be beautiful.

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Stone Girl Bone Girl

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