Although Pan De Sal feels like an outsider because of her name, appearance and lack of fancy possessions, when she is unexpectedly forced into the limelight, her talent and resourcefulness help her win the admiration of her classmates.
Azadeh is anxiously waiting for the time when she can go to school and play with the other children. Her father says that soon she can go, when the clock strikes seven. It seems to Azadeh that the two pigeons in the clock make the hands move by pulling on the bar they’re connected to. The pigeons look tired, but Azadeh wishes for the pigeons to move faster so she can go to school. She discovers that one of the pigeons has a broken wing and it cannot work properly.
A humorous story, wonderfully delivered through text and images. Samira is shaken when she learns at school that everyone has a skeleton inside them. She begins to see everyone as walking bones and even asks her mom to help her escape her own skeleton.
Featured in WOW Review Volume IX, Issue 3.
A child who has not yet learned how to read looks out at the world and sees language as such a child would: as lines and squiggles that don’t exactly make pictures but don’t seem to make anything else either.
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.
The day he starts school, a young boy falls in love for the very first time. Sylvia sits in front of him at school, and he’s so in love with her, she’s all he can see. But sadly, Sylvia doesn’t see him. In fact, it seems the only thing Sylvia has eyes for is birds.
Noah Keller has a pretty normal life, until one wild afternoon when his parents pick him up from school and head straight for the airport, telling him on the ride that his name isn’t really Noah and he didn’t really just turn eleven in March. And he can’t even ask them why not because of his Astonishing Stutter, but because asking questions is against the newly instated rules.
“In this novel in verse, a resilient American boy deals with bullying and the challenges of being an outsider that come with living in a Japanese fishing village”–
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 8, Issue 3
Striking red, white, and black illustrations mirror the emotions created by an innocuous comment that escalates into bullying within a school community. The students’ choices when confronted with their behavior create a sensitive and hopeful narrative.
School has started, and Binny can’t stand it. She has a horrid hand-me-down uniform and the kids make fun of her “posh” city accent.
Then a storm damages the roof of their home, and Binny, her sensible older sister Clem, and her rambunctious brother James (and chickens) must move to a rental home out in the country.