Robert F. Sibert Award

My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal by Sophie Webb

2001 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book

Webb, S. (2000). My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

A wonderful introduction into "how to journal" effectively, Webb's chronology of her extensive and fascinating trip to Antarctic will instantly hook the reader. This picture book would work phenomenally within a science or social studies class. The book encompasses geography, the study of animals, writing, the components of weather, survival techniques, picture captions, the study of the human body and how we burn calories, etc. Every class, no matter the subject, can find reward and usage with this vivid account of an extraordinary experience.Through her own journal, the audience also discovers the step-by-step life process of the Adéline Penguins, from how they're incubated as baby chics in a brooding pouch of vascularized skin to how they toboggan on their bellies, as though they're competing in a Winter Olympics! What will truly amaze readers is not the fact that Webb willing campaigned this expedition as a scientist, but it's her drawings, depicting not just the life of the Adélie penguins, but the landscape that is the Antarctic. The dynamic duo or artist and scientist makes My Season with Penguins: An Antarctic Journal a captivating learning book for all. Who knew the Antarctic still had active volcanoes?

Walt Whitman: Words for America written by Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Brian Selznick

2005 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book

Kerley, B. (2004). Walt Whitman: Words for America. New York, NY: Scholastic Press.

America knows the poet, Walt Whitman; many have recited "Oh Captain, my Captain" standing in a chair, as a youth did in the movie Dead Poet's Society, but what will amaze you is Mr. Whitman's passion for the common American, whether President or slave. Kerley has rejuvenated a love for Mr. Whitman through a wonderfully researched recollection of his personal plight for wounded and broken Civil War soldiers. As he watched and wondered the land he loved so much, he gave of himself hours of accompaniment to dying brothers, whose family was beyond affordable travel. Unbeknownst to most Americans, Mr. Whitman shared intimately the sorrows of President Abraham Lincoln in just a morning bow. Often crossing paths with the President in his morning walk to work, Mr. Whitman, a psuedo-civilian Vice President, shouldered the burden of the President's, noting how Lincoln's face was "inexpressibly sweet" and how he "love[d] the President personally." Brian Selznick's illustrations captured the horror, grief and despair through pencil drawings so vivid, that the hearts of Americans, now and then, thumps to the beat of those military drums left on the battlefields so long ago. Finding a natural use in a Language Arts class, teacher should draw attention not so much to the poetry but to the metaphor of Mr. Whitman, the unlisted soldier, that battled both sides of the Civil War and carried the wounds of every soldier's injury through pen, paper and plight.