When my grandson Ryan was 6, he announced, “I’m going to write a non-fiction book!” His Papa and I brought him, outfitted with one of our point-and shoot cameras, to Ravenswood Park, a woodsy conservation area in Gloucester, where he photographed everything he found that was of interest to a kindergartener: a tree stump, a pine cone, his footprint in the snow, trail signs, the boulders of Cape Ann. When he was done, we downloaded the digital photos and then helped with his dictated captions. The book Ryan made from his words and pictures is now a family treasure.

Your library and mine, and your local bookstore, are filled with good books for children that are illustrated with bright photographs that tell the story of real people and places. Here are a few new titles that might inspire kids to borrow a camera and start shooting.

A photo is worth 1,000 words, or in this case, the 17 syllables of haiku that Kwame Alexander has paired with the incredible wild animal photographs of Joel Sartore. Photo Ark: Celebrating Our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures contains photos of nearly 30 vulnerable and endangered species, with a poem for each, many of them on gorgeous double-paged spreads. I especially liked the Ploughshare Tortoises of Madagascar, and the very up-close (and almost too personal) Asian Centipede.
Photo Ark: Celebrating Our Wild World in Poetry and Pictures by Kwame Alexander, photographs by Joel Sartore (National Geographic, 2020) Ages 3 – 8.

The Bluest of Blues: Anna Atkins and the First Book of Photographs is a book about photographs and cyanotypes, with lovely illustrations by the author, Fiona Robinson, all in shades of sky blue. Anna Atkins was the protégé of her scientist father, and on their outings to the English shore and countryside in the early nineteenth century, she studied, collected and illustrated thousands of shell and plant specimens. Making a book of her sketched illustrations was a daunting task—until her father gifted her with one of the first wooden box cameras, so she could share her work with the world. Children can experiment with making their own cyanotypes, or sun prints, with parental help and instructions in the book.

The Bluest of Blues: Anna Atkins and the First Book of Photographs by Fiona Robinson (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019) Ages 6 – 10.

Jennifer Best is a kindergarten teacher in Los Angeles, and she and her class are featured in a couple of wonderful books by Caroline Arnold that each tell a story of new life. The most recent, Butterflies in Room 6, shows the excited 5- and 6-year-olds tending tiny Painted Lady butterfly eggs, making observations about their transformation and, finally, setting the butterflies free in the school garden. Along the way, they (and we) learn a great deal about butterflies.

Butterflies in Room 6 by Caroline Arnold (Charlesbridge, 2019) Ages 5 – 8.

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Run, Sea Turtle, Run: A Hatchling’s Journey must have been a challenge and a joy to photograph! A family of leatherback sea turtles peck their way out of a nest, taking two days to climb out of the sand. Then, they are ready for their race across the beach to the safety of the ocean. It is a fascinating story of birth and survival of this endangered species, where only one in 1,000 hatchlings will live to adulthood.

Run, Sea Turtle, Run: A Hatchling’s Journey by Stephen R. Swinburne, photographs by Guillaume Feuillet (Millbrook Press, 2020) Ages 3 – 8.

Birds may not always display what we humans call socially acceptable behavior, but they are just birds being birds, trying to survive. The house wren unapologetically pokes holes in other birds’ eggs, and we who live near the shore know to hold on to our French fries lest a great black-backed gull helps herself! My nephew, Jack Wilcox, wrote and illustrated Bad Birds of North America in colorful linocut prints based on photos taken during birdwatching walks with his two young children. Kids will enjoy scolding the “bad birds” and finding items in the scavenger hunt in this funny and informative read-aloud.

Bad Birds of North America by Jack Wilcox (Published independently, 2020) Ages 3 – 8.