Materials from Europe
Ever wonder what your cat is watching through the window? Or how having eyes on the sides of its head changes the world for a horse? And what would life be like seeing in 5 colors instead of only 3? After a whirlwind tour of how eyes work, children will lift the flaps to find out how animals as different as dogs, owls, and chameleons see the same scene.
In Night Shift, Debi Gliori has used her own personal experience with depression to create moving pieces of art that really capture how depression can feel, the way it isolates you from the world and makes even simple everyday tasks seem impossible. But, more importantly, she also shows that the feelings don’t last forever and that you can come out on the other side.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XI, Issue 2.
A powerful and necessary picture book – the journey of a child forced to become a refugee when war destroys everything she has ever known. Imagine if, on an ordinary day, war came. Imagine it turned your town to rubble. Imagine going on a long and difficult journey – all alone. Imagine finding no welcome at the end of it. Then imagine a child who gives you something small but very, very precious … When the government refused to allow 3000 child refugees to enter this country in 2016, Nicola Davies was so angry she wrote a poem. It started a campaign for which artists contributed drawings of chairs, symbolising a seat in a classroom, education, kindness, the hope of a future. The poem has become this book, movingly illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, which should prove a powerful aid for explaining the ongoing refugee crisis to younger readers.
Featured in WOW Review Volume XII, Issue 2 and Volume XI, Issue 2.
“Saying goodbye to Scotland is the hardest thing Jenna MacDuff has had to do– until she met Lord Pembroke. Jenna’s small clan has risked their lives traveling the countryside as masons, secretly drumming up support and arms for the exiled King James Stuart to retake the British throne. But their next job brings them into enemy territory: England. Jenna’s father repeatedly warns her to trust no one, but when the Duke of Keswick hires the clan to build a garrison on his family estate, it seems she cannot hide her capable mind from the duke’s inquisitive son, Lord Alex Pembroke. Nor her growing attraction to him. When he begins to return those forbidden feelings, she finds that she’s thrust into a precarious position– keeping her newfound friendship to the duke’s son a secret from her father, while concealing her father’s treason from an increasingly attendant Lord Pembroke. But there’s a covert plan behind the building of the garrison. Will Jenna decide to keep her family’s mutinous secrets and assist her clan’s cause? Or protect the you man she’s falling for and keep him safe? No matter which she chooses, someone will pay a deadly price”–Jacket.
Wolf can’t tell which emotion he is feeling sometimes; happy, sad, excited, jealous, there are far too many. When his moods begin to change without warning, Wolf’s friends begin to worry, and aren’t sure how to handle the confused whirlwind of their companion’s feelings. Finally, Wolf decides that enough is enough, and sets out to tame his ever-changing emotions, a feat more easily said than done. How exactly does he intend to manage his moods?
While dogsledding to a Christmas party, Anja and her cousin Erik are rescued from a blizzard by several wild animals, and help a lost polar bear cub find its mother.
Caro is too shy to make friends in her new neighborhood until she meets a mysterious Snow Lion, who plays with her and encourages her to meet other children.
Told by the bookstore itself, Sylvia’s Bookshop tells the story of the legendary Shakespeare and Company, its owner Sylvia Beach, and the many great writers who gathered there to meet, read, and remind us that books are more than the words on the page.
On the day that Stanley’s mom takes a work trip overnight, Stanley decides to leave planet Earth. But when his spaceship touches down again in the backyard, a young martian crawls out, proclaiming to Stanley’s dad that residents of Mars don’t wash before dinner, eat their vegetables, or brush their teeth. It just so happens that martians tend to act out in school, too. . . . With whimsy and sympathy for a familiar dilemma, Simon James ushers us into the coping fantasies of an imaginative, sensitive kid — and shares the pleasure of his sheepish reunion with a most accepting family.
Julia was a happy girl, until one day everything went away, leaving her a big “vacío.” Her “vacío” was huge; cold came through it, and monsters emerged from it. She tried to fill it with food, social media and medicine, but nothing helped. In a moment of extreme frustration and tiredness, Julia collapsed and cried without comfort until falling asleep. Suddenly, a voice coming from the ground told her to look through her “vacío.” When she did, she saw and felt colors, melodies and magic worlds that gave her a sense of connection to herself, to others and to nature. She began approaching people differently and noticed that they also had their own “vacíos” and wonderful worlds. Julia’s “vacío” started to shrink, but rather than disappearing, it remained as a window into Julia’s magical worlds; a reminder of the importance of feeling connected to the world.
Featured in WOW Review Volume X, Issue 4.