Spit and Sticks

Succinct and factual text follows chimney swifts as they arrive on a Texas farm, build their nest, lay eggs, ready for fledglings to take flight, and eventually prepare to migrate back to South America. In a parallel, wordless story, a mom, dad, and young girl on the farm watch the chimney swifts throughout the summer and fall, even as they build a new crib and ready for the new baby they’re expecting.

Kyle Goes Alone

Kyle has to go. There’s just one problem: as a young three-toed sloth, he lives high in the rain forest canopy with his mom, and it’s a LONG way down to the forest floor. Like other sloths, Kyle only goes down to the ground once a week when he has to do his “business.” And he’s never made the journey by himself before.

Very Last First Time

Eva lives in an Inuit village in northern Canada. In the winter, people search along the bottom of the seabed beneath a thick shelf of ice for mussels to eat. Eva usually helps her mother, but for the first time, shes going to go by herself. She soon gathers a pan full of mussels. But then, her candle goes out, and the tide threatens to return! When she is finally safe with her mother, Eva proclaims, that was my very last first time walking alone on the bottom of the sea.

The Girl And The Bicycle

A little girl sees a shiny new bicycle in the shop window. She hurries home to see if she has enough money in her piggy bank, but when she comes up short, she knocks on the doors of her neighbors, hoping to do their yardwork. They all turn her away except for a kindly old woman.

Join the discussion of The Girl And The Bicycle as well as other books centered around relocation on our My Take/Your Take page.

The New Small Person

Elmore Green starts life as an only child, as many children do. He has a room to himself, where he can line up his precious things and nobody will move them one inch. But one day everything changes. When the new small person comes along, it seems that everybody might like it a bit more than they like Elmore Green. And when the small person knocks over Elmore’s things and even licks his jelly-bean collection, Elmore’s parents say that he can’t be angry because the small person is only small. Elmore wants the small person to go back to wherever it came from. Then, one night, everything changes.

Soon

The sun is not yet up when a small elephant named Raju embarks with his mother on a special outing. As they meet a slithering snake in the forest, snapping crocodiles in the river, even a tiger in the tall grass, Raju’s mother shoos the scary creatures away and keeps her little one safe. Holding tight to his mother’s tail, Raju follows her up a high mountain and what they find at the top takes his breath away.