Materials from the Americas
Evelyn is both aghast and fascinated when a new boy comes to grade five and tells everyone his name is Queen. Queen wears shiny gym shorts and wants to organize a chess/environment club. His father plays weird loud music and has tattoos.
In May 1942, German U-boats torpedoed two unarmed Mexican oil tankers off the Gulf Coast, forcing Mexico to enter World War II. With the help of United States President Roosevelt, Mexican President Camacho arranged to send one Air Force squadron to fight in the war. Thirty-eight of Mexico’s top pilots, and about two hundred sixty additional military crew were carefully selected to form the 201st Air Force Squadron, also known as the Aztec Eagles.
When I was three years old, Mom plucked a curly white feather out of my neck. If I get scared or the loneliness comes over me, I run my fingertip over the tiny scar and dream about the day the rest of my feathers will grow in. That’s the day I’ll fly away from here. For eleven-year-old Finch, there couldn’t be a better time to fly away from her life.
On a beautiful Arctic morning, Kumak looks out the window of his house at the sun rising over the frozen river. “Ahhh, spring,” says Kumak to his family. “The days are long, the nights are short, and the ice is still hard. Good day for fish.” Eager to give Uncle Aglu’s amazing hooking stick a try, Kumak packs up his family and heads out to go ice fishing. “Good day for fish!” they all agree. Hapless Kumac is the only one in his family without fish until the tug at the other end of his line incites a mighty battle. A clever ending reveals that the whale-sized fish that Kumak imagined was actually a line of small fish in tug o’ war position. Kumak reigns, and there’s plenty for everybody. Authentic details throughout the playful art and text, as well as endnotes on Inupiat fishing, provide young readers with a fascinating window into another culture in this follow up to KUMAK’S HOUSE a 2003 Children’s Book Council Notable Trade Book in Social Studies.
Boo’s favorite chair is little and blue. He sits in it, reads in it and makes a tent around it until the day he grows too big for it. His mother puts the little blue chair out on the lawn where a truck driver picks it up. The truck driver sells it to a lady in a junk store where it sits for many years until it’s sold and put to use as a plant stand. In the years that follow, the little blue chair is used in many other ways until the day it flies away, borne aloft by balloons, and lands in a garden of daffodils where a familiar face finds it.
Having arrived in Candeia, Brazil, starving and footsore, after walking sixteen days to fulfill his dying mother’s last wishes, young Samuel takes up residence in an enormous, broken statue of Saint Anthony and finds that he can hear the prayers of the townspeople, despite his lack of faith.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 3.
It’s the first day of the summer holidays and Pistachio Shoelace has big plans. Plans that involve a compass, a cave, and a buried treasure. Plans that do not involve a troublemaking little sister wearing bunny ears and a Superman cape.
Boats of all shapes and sizes travel on the river, through the seasons, toward the sea. Who will you meet on the river?
Anne has spent most of her thirteen years dreaming of the day she and her best friend Penelope will finally leave Saint Lupin’s Institute for Perpetually Wicked and Hideously Unattractive Children.
What do cats really see? What do trees talk about? Should you make funny faces on a windy day? Do worms rule the world? Do mothers always tell the truth? Do snails have nightmares?