Material appropriate for primary age groups
Bee-bim bop is a traditional Korean dish of rice mixed with meat and vegetables. In bouncy rhyming text, a hungry child tells about helping her mother make bee-bim bop: shopping, preparing ingredients, setting the table, and finally sitting down with her family to enjoy a favorite meal. The energy and enthusiasm of the young narrator are conveyed in the whimsical illustrations, which bring details from the artist’s childhood in Korea to his depiction of a modern Korean American family.
Whenever Sophie’s parents go out, Sophie gets to visit her grandmother. But tonight her parents are going to the big dance that only happens once a year, and Sophie desperately wants to go. Grandma explains that children are too young to stay out so late, and grandmothers are too old. Sophie convinces Grandma that dressing up in their finest and going to the dance is too important to skip. And when they get there, perhaps they’ll meet someone special who makes the trip worth the trouble.
Snipp, Snapp and Snurr were three little boys who lived in Sweden. They had blue eyes and yellow hair, and they looked very much alike.One summer, the boys went to the seashore with their nanny. Although they didn’t know how to swim, Snipp and Snapp decided to go ‘sailing’ in Nanny’s washtub. Luckily, Snurr ran and got help from their friend Nick. One thing was certain after that–it was time for the boys to learn to swim! It took many lessons and a lot of practice, but in time Snipp, Snapp, and Snurr proudly showed their parents their new skills–and then they even won a swimming contest!
When the monarch butterflies return to the Mexican countryside where Lupita lives, she knows that it means that Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is near. She and her favorite uncle watch the butterflies as they flutter in the trees. When a butterfly lands on Lupita’s hand, her uncle reminds her that she should never capture or hurt a monarch because they are believed to be the souls of the departed.
When Pequena is feeling ordinary and inadequate, a wise friend reminds her that being a burro is a gift. He recalls the strength, the steadfastness, the capacity for work that were the burro’s important contributions to the building of Mexico.
A young girl describes the life that she and her brother share with their grandmother in her Caribbean island home, until their mother comes to take them away.
A little Haitian girl describes how her parents’ house fills up with babies as relatives drop off their children on their way to work.
Dora learns to overcome her fears of a mentally ill woman who lives in her community in this gentle and compassionate story set in contemporary Jamaica, West Indies.
A man in a hot-air ballon is thrown off course in a violent storm, landing him in the city of his youth. He finds the way to his old home, but the house is dark, with three rusty padlocks on the door. A black cat with eyes of fire appears and leads him through Prague’s silent streets and monuments in seach of the three golden keys that will open the door of his boyhood home and restore the city to life.
Anne Isaacs and Mark Teague transform Helen Bannerman’s classic story, Little Black Sambo, into an American tall tale set in the backwoods of New England. In the backwoods of New England, a young girl cleverly fends off the threats of wild animals by trading her clothes for her safety.