My Family Four Floors Up by Caroline Stutson and Celia Krampien

Photos courtesy of Gigi Pagliarulo

This week's contributor is Gigi Pagliarulo, a librarian for the Denver Public Library. Gigi is especially interested in youth services, early literacy, and issues of diversity and multiculturalism within children's literature and programming, has served on the steering committee of Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy, and the CLEL Bell Picture Book Award Selection Committee.

 Comfort and familiarity resonate in this joyful, posthumously published picture by book Caroline Stutson, in the theme and plot as well as the accessible language used in the text and in Celia Krampien’s bright, clear and fabulously detailed illustrations. In My Family Four Floors Up, realistic urban scenes portray a dark haired, tan-skinned father-daughter pair (and their pup) going about their daily routine in a busy, diverse urban environment, recognizable and cozy for many young readers. From breakfast “four floors up,” down to the city streets and playground, to getting caught in a summer storm, home and bath, dinner and bed, readers will see their own days mirrored in the pleasant story, while enjoying the depth of detail to explore in the illustrations.

 

This cleverly written, illustrated and designed book is packed with excellent, challenging word choices that are scaffolded by the author’s use of rhyme and rhythm, repetition, conversational vocabulary word selection and a storyline full of familiar events and contexts for beginning readers. Likewise the illustrator’s use of crisp, cartoon-inspired artwork in double-page spreads full of context clues that clearly reflect the text and deliciously fun details to discover and discuss. For an extra bit of fun, color words are included throughout the book and are correspondingly colored in the text, adding another level of discovery and context cueing for new readers.

The Geisel Award criteria seeks books that add new words “slowly enough to make learning them a positive experience. This picture book is not a traditional beginning reader but the text mostly includes vocabulary simple enough be a successful independent reading experience for more advanced early readers. The words choices are quite varied as the lively, rhyming text bounces along at a chipper pace, but this is nicely tempered by the expansive double page spread illustrations, the use of no more than 12 words per page/stanza of text, and the surrounding of more advanced words like “snuggled ” with familiar words like “goodbye,” “bite” and “story.”

A truly lovely, diversely portrayed title with smart, supportive text and illustrations to help beginning readers move through the sometimes challenging vocabulary, My Family Four Floors up is certainly a picture book that fulfills many Geisel Award criteria. There is an avid picture-book-devourer and pre-reader in my house who has very much enjoyed having this book read aloud several times while interestedly discussing the illustrations, but I have not had the opportunity to share this book with an early reader. Any experiences are welcome in the comments!