Thunder Boy Jr. is named after his dad, but he wants a name that’s all his own. Just because people call his dad Big Thunder doesn’t mean he wants to be Little Thunder. He wants a name that celebrates something cool he’s done, like Touch the Clouds, Not Afraid of Ten Thousand Teeth, or Full of Wonder. But just when Thunder Boy Jr. thinks all hope is lost, he and his dad pick the perfect name…a name that is sure to light up the sky.
Antonio Sacre weaves the Spanish language, Cuban and Mexican customs, and Irish humor into a book of humor, inspiration, tradition, and family.
This wondrous and beautiful volume pairs expressionistic poems with surreal illustrations to create a series of meditations on family relationships that explore isolation, fear, uncertainty and friendship.
Stepping Stones tells the story of Rama and her family, who are forced to flee their once-peaceful village to escape the ravages of the civil war raging ever closer to their home. With only what they can carry on their backs, Rama and her mother, father, grandfather and brother, Sami, set out to walk to freedom in Europe.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 3.
Stepping Stones is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for July 2017.
Thirteen-year-old Angelo knows that his father’s job is in jeopardy. Only one thing can save it: inventing a car the world has never seen before. On vacation in the French countryside, Angelo gets an idea. So far, cars have only been made for the rich. Someone should create a car for everyday working people. Angelo thinks he’ss up to the challenge!
Colt Jenson and his younger brother, Bastian, have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts toys, bikes, all that glitters most and makes them the envy of the neighborhood. To the local kids, the Jensons are a family out of a movie, and Rex a hero successful, attentive, attractive, always there to lend a hand. But to Colt he’s an impossible figure: unbearable, suffocating.
After escaping the Germans in Nazi-occupied France, Gustave and his family have made it to America at last. But life is not easy in New York. Gustave’s clothes are all wrong, he can barely speak English, and he is worried about his best friend, Marcel, who is in danger back in France.
The mushroom folk are waking up from their winter sleep and emerging into the sunshine. Each family has its own characteristics and we get to know them well in these charming little tales.
Somewhere in the Badlands, embedded deep in centuries-buried rock and sand, lies the skeleton of a massive dinosaur, larger than anything the late nineteenth century world has ever seen. Some legends call it the Black Beauty, with its bones as black as ebony, but to seventeen-year-old Samuel Bolt it’s the “rex”, the king dinosaur that could put him and his struggling, temperamental archaeologist father in the history books (and conveniently make his father forget he’s been kicked out of school), if they can just quarry it out.
Phoebe half Jamaican, half French-Canadian hates her school nickname of “French Toast.” So she is mortified when, out on a walk with her Jamaican grandmother, she hears a classmate shout it out at her. To make things worse, Nan-Ma, who is blind, wants an explanation of the name.