A yellow bus is a familiar sight parked outside the Truro Public Library — and a fond one, to be sure. Besides taking them to school, a yellow schoolbus delivers groups of students to the library every other month for play and reading time. And on Jan. 25, the library announced that The Yellow Bus, written and illustrated by Loren Long (Macmillan, 2024) and already on many lists of “best children’s books,” was the winner of this year’s annual Outer Cape Mock Caldecott award.
The actual Caldecott Medal is an award for illustration that annually honors “the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children,” according to the Association for Library Services to Children (part of the American Library Association), which bestows the award. The local version of the contest is a collaboration of the Provincetown and Truro public libraries and involves the community and students from the schools.
Library staff narrow down the contenders to six illustrated children’s books before students and other readers get a look at them. Their picks this year spanned themes of art, science, history, poetry, purpose, and finding oneself at home.
Abby Roderick, the librarian at the Truro Central School, describes the way students study the books before making any judgments. Working with a book a week, “we start with a silent ‘picture walk,’ where students look at the illustrations and try to deduce the story,” she says. “Then, we read the book aloud and analyze the illustrations again.”
The students follow some of the criteria used by real-life Caldecott committees. That’s because the local version of the prize was first organized in 2014 by then-Provincetown Library Trustee Barbara Klipper, who had at one time served on the Caldecott committee. The students notice how the pictures add to the mood and reveal details not in the words. They also consider the relationship between the art and the emotions conveyed in the story. When the students of different ages and reading levels finally rate the books, giving them from one to five stars, they’re ready to explain their reasoning, Roderick says.
“Every year, I read the same book six times to the classes,” Roderick says, “but with each reading, the kids notice something new. It’s amazing what they see.” The lead-up to the award has become a favorite part of her teaching.
The illustrations in The Yellow Bus are mostly drawn in black-and-white charcoal, but a few elements — the bus and those who come to occupy it — are painted in bright acrylics. The story is about the long life of a school bus that goes from carrying students to navigating new routes and different drivers, to being abandoned. It’s a bittersweet story, Roderick says. The bus ends up underwater at one point, but the fish love it, for example. “The kids really connected with that message,” she says. “The book was by far their favorite.”
Nora Valero, who is in the fifth grade at Truro Central School, felt the story’s melancholy deeply enough to say it was hard to simply love the book. But she appreciated the artist’s way of using color to shift that mood.
Nora’s favorite illustration is one where goats jump around the old bus — they remind her of the two goats her family keeps, she says.
“I really like how the author made everything gray except for the bus and the people inside,” says Nora. “Every time someone enters the bus, they’re colorful.” In The Yellow Bus, the goats, too, are painted in color.
