Today is author/illustrator Suzanne McGuinness' birthday. I learned this courtesy of Eric at the Happy Birthday Author blog. It was fortuitous as I am planning my term's reading and one of the books on our Book Week shortlist is Meg McKinlay and Leila Rudge's beautiful book No Bears. I wanted to read this to my classes but also wanted to look at a book with a bear in it, that was published recently too. I chose My Bear Griz by Suzanne McGuinness because while it has a similar warmth for young children and an obvious point of view and storyteller, it has a very different style of illustration and is not Australian. I love the bear and despite knowing grizzly bears are dangerous, as someone who lives in a country without bears I do want to hug Griz. I am really looking forward to sharing these two books, identifying visual jokes and talking about similarities and differences with the students. I learned from Eric that this is Suzanne's first picture book so I will now stop looking for more as I have been doing. I thought she was English, but have learned that she is American. Now Suzanne we need more of your beautiful illustrations. You can see some on her website and blog.
I like the idea of comparing two similar but dissimilar books. I am a great fan of No Bears too, in fact of all the McKinlay books I've read so far!
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