In this picture book, graphic artist Paul Thurlby presents a stunning alphabet that helps to make the shape of each letter memorable. From an awesome A to a zippy Z, this is the perfect ABC book for the young and hip.
Picture Book
Peter Rabbit: The Tale of a Naughty Little Rabbit
This is the story of Peter Rabbit, a naughty rabbit who doesn’t listen to his mother and sneaks into a nearby garden. In the garden, Peter stumbles across a grumpy farmer and loses his shiny shoes and his new blue coat. He escapes – but not without a few hair-raising moments of danger. This picture book retelling retains all the excitement of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit, but with more accessible language.
The General
After falling off his horse, General Jodpur discovers the beauty of flowers and nature and vows to change the world around him by bringing peace.
¡a Bailar!
A young girl and her mother put on their red dresses and dance their way through the barrio, collecting friends and neighbors along the way as they go to the park to hear her father’s salsa band play. Let’s Dance!
Adelita and the Veggie Cousins
On her first day at a new school, Adelita makes new friends through a lesson on vegetables, including how some vegetables are “cousins” because they share certain characteristics.
Clara and the Curandera
Clara’s grumpiness leads her mother to take her to a neighbor who is a curandera, or healer, and although she is puzzled by her “treatment,” Clara dutifully helps her neighbors, is kind to her siblings, and reads more books for a week.
Gleam And Glow
Inspired by real events, master storyteller Eve Bunting recounts the harrowing yet hopeful story of a family, a war–and a dazzling discovery.
This book has been included in WOW’s Kids Taking Action Booklist. For our current list, visit our Boolist page under Resources in the green navigation bar.
Going Home, Coming Home/Ve Nha, Tham Que Huong
A young girl visits her grandmother in Vietnam where her parents were born and learns that she can call two places home.
How I Learned Geography
A 2009 Caldecott Honor Book. Having fled from war in their troubled homeland, a boy and his family are living in poverty in a strange country. Food is scarce, so when the boy’s father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could. Based on the artist’s childhood memories of World War II.
The Island
Poignant and chilling, this allegory is an astonishing, powerful, and timely story about refugees, xenophobia, racism, multiculturalism, social politics, and human rights. When the people of an island find a man sitting on their shore, they immediately reject him because he is different. Fearful to the point of delusional paranoia, the islanders lock him in a goat pen, refuse him work, and feed him scraps they would normally feed a pig. As their fears progress into hatred, they force him into the sea.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 4, Issue 2