Beth Krommes

The House in the Night

Susan Marie Swanson, Beth Krommes

• 2009 Caldecott winner
• Score: 10.59

A spare, patterned text and glowing pictures explore the origins of light that make a house a home in this bedtime book for young children. Naming nighttime things that are both comforting and intriguing to preschoolers—a key, a bed, the moon—this timeless book illuminates a reassuring order to the universe.

The Lamp, the Ice, and the Boat Called Fish

Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Beth Krommes

• 2001 Golden Kite-picturebook illustration winner
• Score: 10.51

In 1913, a boat named Karluk, Aleutian for “fish,” part of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, became stuck in the Arctic ice. On board were a captain and crew, scientists and explorers, a cat, forty sled dogs, Iñupiaq hunters, and an Iñupiaq family with two small girls. Even with the Iñupiaq and their skills of hunting and sewing, even with the family’s care and wisdom, even with the compassion and courage of their captain, odds for survival in the cold, dark Arctic seem against the passengers of the Karluk.

Here is a riveting, unforgettable story, poetically told and exquisitely illustrated with rounded scratchboard art that captures the strength and grace of Iñupiaq culture. Details of centuries-old crafts and skills—of sewing boots from caribou legs and ugruk skin, of quickly cutting snow houses, of wearing wooden goggles to ward off snowblindness — will enrich modern imaginations. And by the story’s end, listeners will know something of the way of life in the high north, something of the song of the place, the wide sky, the sound of the wind, the ptarmigan.