The Great Children's Book Hunt

[katekintailbc]

Once upon a time, there was an library volunteer who was also an artist (no, it's not me). He painted several paintings of different styles and subjects for display inside the Kings Park Library in Burke, VA. He also painted four or five large murals for the children's area of the library. Only one such mural can be displayed at a time, so that honor rotates throughout the year.

I had expected to come in this month to see the spooky halloween one (that is Washington Irving themed, as we've got Washington Irving Middle School down the road). However, instead, it was my Mural Nemesis!



Of all the scenes on this mural, there are two I could not for the life of me identify. I've asked friends. I've asked local BookCrossers. I've asked librarians. But no one knew!

So this month I took a photo of the mystery images and posted it on the BookCrossing Forum. They've been a great resource to me before, during my investigation of the mystery YA Saves magnet/button imagery. And this time, I'm 1 for 2 with the unknown images, thanks to them!


Now known! The wonderful Hyphen8 recognized this as In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord

Still unknown!
I have been told it's Pocahontas or Sacagawea or Hiawatha. But no one has shown me an image from any of those books that match this one. To me, it looks like the illustrator who does E. B. White's book covers... or maybe that's just because of a certain cover of Stuart Little where the mouse and boat are in this configuration among the weeds. I spoke with the librarians on Tuesday about my hunt. One suggested a particular author/illustrator of Native American folk tales. The illustrations are similar in style, but not quite similar enough for me, and none that involve canoes. One volunteer swears she read it when she was six but has no idea what the title is or what the book was about.

So the hunt continues. I did find a service online where you pay and a bookstore professional will track the book down for you. I took a better photo of it on Tuesday, just in case I needed to resort to that method. For now... I'm going to just start asking everyone I know. "Hi, my name is Kate. Do you recognize this children's book illustration?"