Materials from the Americas
Bill just wanted someone to pass him the potatoes. Unfortunately, no one even noticed, not his mother, a very busy woman with an important job, not his father,a very important man with a busy job, not his very intelligent older brother, not even his very athletic little sister. If someone had noticed, the wonderful, terrible thing that happened might never have happened. But it did.
Mr. Postmouse has loaded up his wagon and is ready to deliver the mail. From the lofty heights of the Birds’ tree houses to the inky depths of Mrs. Octopus’s ship, the intrepid letter carrier lets nothing stand in the way of his deliveries. This is an introduction to the postal system and an imaginative survey of different types of homes.
Loula panics when she overhears Mama saying that she can’t live with that MONSTER anymore! She knows Mama must be talking about Mister, Loula’s beloved dog, who can be a little too messy, a little too clumsy and a little too hungry. A lot of the time, Loula tells Mister if he doesn’t stop with the bad manners, Mama will throw him out, like an old pair of shoes! And what would Loula do without Mister? She’s just going to have to find a way to transform Mister the monster into the most perfect little dog no mama can resist.
In this gently told picture book, a young girl is unhappy about having to leave the city for a family vacation on the Pacific Ocean (which she used to call the Specific Ocean). As the days pass, however, she is drawn to spend more time in and near the water, feeling moved by its beauty and rhythms. By the end of the vacation, the girl has grown to love the ocean and now feels reluctant to leave it behind. But as she soon realizes, it doesn’t ever have to leave her.
In 1770, the slave Esperança Garcia bravely penned a letter to the governor of Piauí state, in Brazil, describing how she and her children were being mistreated and requesting permission to return to the farm where the rest of her family was living. Before she wrote her letter, Esperança Garcia lived on a cotton farm run by Jesuit priests, where she learned to read and write — a rare opportunity for a woman, especially a slave. But one day, she was separated from her husband and older children and taken with her two little ones to be a cook in the home of Captain Antonio Vieira de Couto, where she and the other slaves were beaten.
Every night when his parents turn off the light, strange creatures descend from the black space where the ceiling used to be . . . First comes one, then another, and then more and more. They stand all around him, staring, not saying a word. And then, worst of all, comes the dark, shapeless one that tells him, “I am what’s there before there is anything there . . .”
A young boy and his sister gather the ingredients and grind them up in a molcajete, just like their ancestors used to do, singing and dancing all the while. The children imagine that their ingredients are different parts of an orchestra, the tomatoes are bongos and kettledrums, the onion, a maraca, the cloves of garlic, trumpets and the cilantro, the conductor. They chop and then grind these ingredients in the molcajete, along with red chili peppers for the “hotness” that is so delicious, finally adding a squeeze of lime and a sprinkle of salt. When they are finished, their mother warms tortillas and their father lays out plates, as the whole family, including the cat and dog, dance salsa in mouth-watering anticipation.
A little hedgehog is fast asleep when all of a sudden, the light clicks on. He is not happy about being woken. “Turn off that light!” he demands. The light switches off. And then on again. And off. And on. “Who keeps doing that?!” The hedgehog bumbles around, exasperated, in a flurry of onomatopoeia — GRRR!! OW! CRUNCH. BANG! — as his room mysteriously goes from dark to light over and over and over again.
In the wild winter wood, two hungry ravens fly in search of their next meal. A pack of wolves is on the hunt, too. Food is scarce, but, if they team up, the ravens and wolves just might be able to help each other. The ravens follow a pack of starving wolves on the hunt. The wolves come up empty handed – and even lose one of their own in the chase – but the ravens have better luck. The wolves hear the ravens cawing and investigate only to find an injured deer, the perfect meal! The wolves make the kill; the opportunistic ravens benefit, feasting alongside and after the wolves.
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.