Post: Picture book set in KansasPosted by Andy Tyler on 11/01/07
This is a very powerful picturebook about a small boy
building a snow-capped mountain in Kansas.
Review
Inspired by the quest for the impossible dream as written in
the literary classic Don Quixote, Billy's Mountain is a
picturebook about a young boy whose passion is the idea of
creating a vast, snow-capped mountain amid Kansas' seemingly
endless flat plains. At first he tries to build a mountain
with dirt and rocks; he persists long after his friends tell
him to give up, and a reporter puts his story in the paper.
Amazingly, a wealthy and determined old African-American man
named Jim learns of Billy's dream and decides to help make
it come true. It takes bulldozers, railroad cars, and an
immense amount of labor to create the mountain - but once
risen the mountain blends with the landscape as the seasons
pass and even attracts wildlife to its slopes. Utterly
captivating, full-color illustrations done in a somewhat
impressionistic style bring this beautiful and heartfelt
picturebook to life. The final page of "Billy's Mountain"
offers a simple lesson plan for teachers to use, offering
questions to ask students such as, "Building a mountain is
an almost impossible task. What are some things from the
past that people thought were impossible but turned out not
to be impossible?"
Posts on this thread, including this one
Picture book set in Kansas, 11/01/07, by Andy Tyler.
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