Black and White

Author: David Macaulay

Title: Black and White

Illustrator: David Macaulay

Genre: Picture Book

Subgenre: Sequencing of events.

Theme: Different stories can go together and make up one complete story.

Primary and secondary characters: The Children, their parents, the people waiting at the bus station, and the Holstein cows.

Award(s) date of publication: Caldecott, 1990

Publishing Company: Houghton Mifflin Company

Brief Summary and how I would use this book with students: Black and White is a book that is broken up into four different stories. All four stories can be put together to make on complete story. Overall the book is about a boy and girl who think their parents are “problem parents” as they call them until one day their parents come home acting strange. The parents begin cutting up newspapers and making clothes and hats out of them, while this is taking place a bunch of people are waiting for a train at a train station while reading newspapers. The train has been delayed because a herd of cows were let loose from the Holstein farm. In the end the cows return back to the farm and the train approaches the train station. The two children’s parents return to their normal “problem parent” selves by asking the children if they have finished their homework. I found this book very confusing and I personally think it would be hard for young students to comprehend and follow. Therefore I would most likely not use this book in my classroom. Yet, this book could be used in the classroom to teach children about sequencing since the book follows a sequence of events that all tie together in some way or another.