CYBILS Nominees: Cityscape and All the Way to the Top

Cityscape: Where Science and Art Meet

By April Pulley Sayre

CYBILS Category: Elementary Nonfiction

This is an interesting nonfiction book for me as I love photography and I especially love photographing details of places we visit. Bright, visually appealing photos engaging viewers into this book as simple texts walk you through how the photos across the page (and sometimes spread) are linked together. At the end of the book, there is additional back matter including how information on exploring cities and how students can look further when they are next out and about. I also appreciated the Question to Ponder as You Wander as it is quite extensive. 

As far as age appeal goes, this one of those challenging books. It is visually stunning and I would not hesitate to pull this out if I was talking about different shapes and how they appear in our every day lives. It would not necessarily engage students to sit down and flip through unless they are necessarily drawn to realistic images of our world around us. Some students are some are not. It just depends on what type of unit or what type of students you are doing with them at any given moment. 

All the Way to the Top

By Annette Bay Pimentel

CYBILS Category: Elementary Nonfiction

This picture book biography tells the story of young girl's fight to be treated like the rest of her classmates as an activist for the Americans with Disabilities Act passage. Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins is in a wheelchair due to having cerebral palsy and as with any child, she just wants to be treated the same. This book centers on the Crawl-In Protest thousands of Americans staged while fighting with Congress to take the ADA's passage seriously.  

The book opens with a note from Jennifer herself then it moves into brief memoir of her becoming an activist to the passing of the ADA in 1990. As with most nonfiction, it ends with backmatter about the subject including explaining some of the concepts such as disability, cerebral palsy, more about the Capital Crawl, a timeline of the ADA's passage, life before and after the ADA, and a bibliography for further reading. Along with the content, the pictures done by Nabi H. Ali is engaging, drawing eyes towards the pictures helping to tell the story too. Overall this is a brief but effective introduction to disability rights' activism for younger readers.