Siblings

Again, Essie? (Storytelling Math)

Rafael tries to save his toys from his baby sister, Essie, by building a wall from shoeboxes, toilet paper rolls, and other household objects in this playful exploration of spatial sense and geometry.

Stop The Clock!

When Mr. Khan asks the children to paint what they saw on their way to school, Joe notices his baby sister is crying in the picture. He stops the clocks and goes back to the street to find out why… This sweet story reminds us to slow down, take a breath and notice the small details in our busy everyday life.

Lia And Luís

Brazilian American twin siblings, Lia and Luís, are always competing, even when it comes to their favorite Brazilian snacks from their family’s store; they want to know which of them has more, and they use various mathematical techniques to pick a winner–and then share the delicious results.

The Homework

Bhattu and Kittu completely forgot that they had homework to do, faced with the task of researching a big mammal, they decide to take a shortcut and pester their studious sister for information. In this uproariously funny story by Ashwin Guha, accompanied by Vaibhav Kumaresh’s cheeky art, you soon learn that when you mix distracted tutoring with an overactive imagination, the result is a homework assignment that is very hard to grade.

Butterfly Yellow

The day after Hằng arrives in Texas from a refugee camp, she goes in search of her younger brother who was mistakenly taken from her arms to a plane during the fall of Saigon six years earlier. She has carried the heavy guilt of his separation ever since. When she finally finds him, her brother wants nothing to do with her, insisting he does not remember Vietnam. Hằng takes a job on a nearby ranch, determined to find a way into her brother’s memories and life. LeeRoy, an aspiring cowboy, becomes entangled in Hằng’s search for redemption and in the gradual revelation of her deep and painful secret.

Butterfly Yellow is a WOW Recommends: Book of the Month for October 2020.

Featured in WOW Review Volume XIII, Issue 2.

Sona Sharma, Very Best Big Sister?

Sona Sharma’s house is full of three generations of people who joke often and argue sometimes. Relatives come over unannounced, the phone rings frequently, and friends drop by all the time. Then one day Amma tells Sona that she is going to have a baby. Is that good? Sona isn’t so sure. She doesn’t want to share her room or her things with a new baby, not to mention the attention of Amma, Appa, Thatha, and Paatti. And despite Amma’s assurance that the sky always has room for new stars, Sona doesn’t feel stretchy or bighearted like the sky. But when she learns there will be a baby-naming ceremony, she’s determined to find the best name for her new brother or sister—one as nice as her own, a Hindi word for “gold.”

Peter Lee’s Notes From The Field

Eleven year-old Peter Lee has one goal in life: to become a paleontologist. Okay, maybe two: to get his genius kid-sister, L.B., to leave him alone. But his summer falls apart when his real-life dinosaur expedition turns out to be a bust, and he watches his dreams go up in a cloud of asthma-inducing dust. Even worse, his grandmother, Hammy, is sick, and no one will talk to Peter or L.B. about it. Perhaps his days as a scientist aren’t quite behind him yet. Armed with notebooks and pens, Peter puts his observation and experimental skills to the test to see what he can do for Hammy. If only he can get his sister to be quiet for once — he needs time to sketch out a plan.

Vial Of Tears

Teenage sisters Samira and Rima aren’t exactly living the dream. Instead, they live with their maddeningly unreliable mother in a rundown trailer in Michigan. Dad’s dead, money’s tight, and Mom disappears for days at a time. So when Sam’s grandfather wills her the family valuables–a cache of Lebanese antiquities–she’s desperate enough to try pawning them before Mom can.
But she shouldn’t. Because one is cursed, forbidden, the burial coin of a forgotten god. Disturbing it condemns her and Rima to the Phoenician underworld, a place of wicked cities, burning cedar forests, poisoned feasts of milk and lemons, and an endless, windless ocean.
Nothing is what it seems. No one is who they say. And down here, the night never ends.
To get home–and keep her sister safe–Sam will have to outwit beautiful shapeshifters, pose as a royal bride, sail the darkest sea… and maybe kill the god of death himself.