Materials from Europe
All around the world in the sea, in the soil, in the air, and in your body, there are living things so tiny that millions could fit on an ant’s antenna. They’re busy doing all sorts of things, from giving you a cold and making yogurt to eroding mountains and helping to make the air we breathe. If you could see them with your eye, you’d find that they all look different, and that they’re really good at changing things into something else and at making many more microbes like themselves!
Olive’s best friend, Joe, has bought her a special hat. The only problem is that it’s hideously, cringe-inducingly embarrassing! Their whole gang of friends is giggling about it. She tries all kinds of excuses to avoid wearing the hat, then all kinds of ways to get rid of it, until Joe catches her stuffing it into the trash. He’s totally heartbroken.
What if you noticed a door in your bedroom that wasn’t there before? And what if it led to a passage to the zoo? You might want to take just one little bear back to your room with you, or maybe just all the smaller animals. But how could you resist the penguins and the tigers and the birds? In this classic child’s fantasy featuring John Burningham’s delightfully expressive artwork, an unlocked door leads to pandemonium — and one little girl’s formidable voice reins in an entire menagerie.
After Lola reads a book of garden poems, she wants to plant some flowers. She gets books from the library and chooses her plants. Then Lola and her mommy buy the seeds, make the garden, and mark the rows. Now it’s time to wait. . . .
When Small Blue wakes up in the middle of the night, she thinks of hungry things and warty things and hairy things! But are they really as scary as they seem? With the help and comfort of Big Brown, Small Blue slowly begins to imagine fun things in the dark instead of scary ones.
One bear is facing his first winter alone. Just as his parents taught him, he gathers leaves for his cave and fishes for food in the river. Then, across the babbling water, he meets a mate, and they weather the winter together in a big bear hug. When spring arrives, so does a new bear cub, and the proud parents begin to teach him what they have learned.
When a dog and a rat come upon a rabbit flattened on the road in their neighborhood, they contemplate her situation, wondering what they should do to help her. They decide it can’t be much fun to lie there; she should be moved. But how? And to where?
Frances Dean loves to dance. She feels the wind and she dances. She hears singing birds and she dances. In her every waking moment, she is inspired to move. But as soon as anyone is around, Frances Dean’s knees begin to tremble, butterflies start to flutter in her tummy, and she forgets how to dance.
Dragons and kings, frogs and spells, witches and mermaids — all the hallmark characters of traditional Polish fairy tales are found in this magical collection. Jan Pienkowski draws on a distinctive cut-paper technique learned as a child in Poland to produce dramatic and vibrant illustrations for eight time-honored stories. Celebrating honesty, loyalty, and creativity, stories such as “The Krakow Dragon” and “The Warsaw Mermaid” will captivate today’s child as much as they did young Jan during his childhood.
The Book of Olga Thunder “Sugar baby” recorded it with the words of Stella Nudolskoy, whose childhood coincided with the end of the 30’s – early 40’s in the Soviet Union. This is a very personal and poignant story of how five-year-Ale, happily growing up in a loving family, suddenly finds her daughter “an enemy of the people” and gets into a terrible, incomprehensible situation: after the arrest of their father and his mother is sent to a camp in Kyrgyzstan as CHSIR (family members traitor to the motherland) and ESR (socially dangerous elements).
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 7, Issue 1