Material appropriate for primary age groups
Traveling Butterflies indulges the awe these creatures inspire by taking a poetic, meditative look at the monarch’s life cycle. In a lyrical voice that seamlessly blends fact and storytelling, the book zooms in to show a monarch’s progression from an egg the size of a dewdrop through growth, metamorphosis, and preparation for their journey south.
Mummy Cat prowls his pyramid home, longing for his beloved owner. As he roams the tomb, lavish murals above his head display scenes of the cat with his young Egyptian queen. Hidden hieroglyphs deepen the tale and are explained in an informative author’s note.
The future is often foretold in stories of the past. As families flee the Debaltseve in Eastern Ukraine in 2015, Ken Goodman’s The Smart One: A Grandfather’s Tale takes us back to families fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It is a compelling story of Jewish migration to America, which begins in Smorgon, now in Belarus, a former Soviet Republic, but at the time Smorgon was in Vilnius, a district of Lithuania, and a part of the Russian Empire.
Mia’s abuela has left her sunny house with parrots and palm trees to live with Mia and her parents in the city. The night she arrives, Mia tries to share her favorite book with Abuela before they go to sleep and discovers that Abuela can’t read the words inside. So while they cook, Mia helps Abuela learn English (“Dough. Masa”), and Mia learns some Spanish too, but it’s still hard for Abuela to learn the words she needs to tell Mia all her stories.
They travel mostly on the roof of a train known as The Beast, but the little girl doesn’t know where they are going. She counts the animals by the road, the clouds in the sky, the stars. Sometimes she sees soldiers. She sleeps, dreaming that she is always on the move, although sometimes they are forced to stop and her father has to earn more money before they can continue their journey.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 3
A collection of stories each of which portrays a different family in a neighborhood in England. Throughout stories, the delicious, delightful ordinariness of side-by-side day-to-day life is introduced.
old in rhyme, this story follows Susan through a series of familiar activities. She swims with her father, works hard in school, plays with her friends, and even rides a horse. Lively, thoughtfully drawn illustrations reveal a portrait of a busy, happy little girl with whom younger readers will identify. Not until the end of the story is it revealed that Susan uses a wheelchair.
From oozing grobes to slimy slugs, this extraordinary collection is bursting with Dahl’s poems, verses, and songs. And with full-color original illustrations from a distinguished group of more than twenty artists, this lavish volume is a must-have for any Dahl fan’s library.
When Sally pulls a limpet off a rock at the beach, it sticks to her finger – and nothing she, her family or her friends do can unstick it. Sally’s teacher says that limpets live on the same rock for twenty years. So will Sally ever get the limpet off her finger?
Three hilarious stories are told in graphic style in this book destined for multiple readings. The first episode finds the charismatic Boots without a place to nap on his usual wall. A bit of ingenuity and some fish biscuits are all he needs to get some room, though his scheme is certain to backfire. The second chapter has Boots enlisting the duck Madam Quark for swimming and flying lessons, with dubious results. And the pièce de résistance comes last in probably the most hilarious game of charades ever played by cats.