By Bethanie Deeney Murguia
A short and sweet picture book that reflects on moving forward in life. It is a gentle book reflecting on peace and mindfulness as you walk your own path. The mostly black and white images are soft with pink shoes on every page showing how one can be curious, kind and thoughtful with every step on makes. This book would be a great extra purchase for any socio-emotional school curriculum.
By Kristina Forest
This romance bounces between the past, present, and perspective. Kai and Zyla fell in love, broke up, and then fell in love again….maybe. Kai is a romantic and serial monogamist while Zyla has long ago sworn off love. Their twisty relationship, heart-wrenching-back-stories, and likable personalities will be appealing to most readers. It’s nice to have a romance featuring students of Color where race and culture are treated as a natural element of the story instead of the focus. This novel is great at the build-up but sputters to an underwhelming conclusion.
Nina lives in San Francisco and visits her Nana in England and her Nenek in Malaysia. The similarities and differences between the two visits give us a peek into the places that her grandmas live. She wears different clothes, eats different foods and plays different games, but she loves her grandmas and they love her. The side-by-side colorful illustrations show the similarities and differences between the places Nana and Nenek live.
The text spans across both pages when it is talking about both Nana and Nenek. This can be confusing for readers as sometimes you read the text on one side and others you have to read across the gutter. Without reading the book jacket or the dedication the readers would not know where Nana or Nenek live since it is not mentioned in the story.
The story would be good for reflecting on families, identity and different cultures that make us who we are.
Written and Illustrated by Tomie dePaola
Pascual was touched by God at a very young age. Initially, he was a shepherd but as a young adult he felt the desire to feed the poor and thus he decided to become a friar. He traveled to a Franciscan monastery where the friars asked him to become their cook. Not knowing anything about a kitchen, he prayed to God and angels came to the kitchen where they made incredible meals. Pascual never did learn to cook but by the gift of God he provided food to the friars as well as the poor. An author’s note at the end of the book explains that Pascual is the patron saint of cooks and the kitchen. The illustrations are beautiful and the story is light. I would recommend this book as an extra purchase for an elementary library.
Plunger does not want to be a plunger anymore, it wants to be a vase. Soon other household items want to be different things. The vacuum is so adamant that they have to be what they already are that he makes a mess, spraying dust everywhere. Vacuum realizes that nothing bad would happen if others got to be what they wanted.
The artwork is vibrant and jumps off the page. While I feel that the idea of the story, that we can be whatever we want, is important, I am not sure that it is effective with some of the items chosen. I think kids will be attracted to the vibrant colors and will find the book funny, but may miss the idea that you can be whatever you want.
It’s not bad, I guess, but I was a bit disappointed. It didn’t live up to what I expect from my Click Clack friends. Students will pick it up because they will recognize the characters. It does use lots of repetition, which is good for beginning readers. The pictures do support the text, to help students with more challenging words, and are silly enough to keep kids going. But I thought the repetition was stilted, and I would have forgiven it that if the story line led to something a bit more clever or fun, like I usually expect from this team. Basically it’s a rainy day, and no one on the farm likes the rain and mud except the cows, but the others keep bringing umbrellas and boots and sweaters to protect the cows, but then the wind blows those things away and in the end everyone is wet and suddenly everybody decides they love the rain after all. Maybe it’s my prejudice as someone who has lived most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, where we get a lot of rain, but I didn’t see anything in the story to change the minds of the folks who don’t like rain to suddenly loving it. It just felt like a convenient way to end it, rather than what the story was leading to.
If one reads the title too quickly you might think it’s about wandering around, and in a way it is, but really it’s about seeking wonder in one’s wandering. It’s written in a rather poetical style, and has a beauty to it, both in text and illustrations. The illustrations are soft and rather muted, and almost seem to have a vintage look to them. It might appeal more to adults who appreciate the wonder of childhood than to the children it’s targeting.
It’s a republication of a book from the 80s. The illustrations are classic dePaola, and the story is very much in line with other familiar dePaola books: it takes place in the Italian countryside and offers subtle ties to the Christian Christmas story. It tells of a boy who visits a poor island as a child and is so impressed with the generosity and joy of music that he experiences there, that when he grows up to become a famous composer, he returned to the island with a full orchestra to share a Christmas concert he’d composed just for them. It’s a nice story, but not sure it’s going to resonate with a wide audience of children.
It’s cute. It’s about a boy who’s not excited about the first day of school, but then when he gets on the bus, he realizes he got on the wrong bus. All the other passengers are puppies, and he finds himself at puppy school. Though he doesn’t speak Bark, he goes along with things and finds himself having a rather good day, learning how to play fetch and dig and howl. The next day he’s all excited to return, but this time finds himself on a bus filled with kitties.
Rachel Kim knows what success feels like. She’s been in a famous K-pop group, Girls Forever, for several years, establishing herself as one of its stars. Rachel has traveled the world and given everything to the group but is intrigued when approached with a few independent job opportunities. With the entertainment group’s blessing, Rachel embarks publically into the fashion design of purses while also privately dating a very connected young gentleman. But not all group members are happy with Rachel’s success. Girl drama mixed with suppressed passion and a little bit of paparazzi scandal propels this semi-autobiographical story. Rachel will learn that sometimes being on a new path is scary, with the unknown around the corner, but you have to try something new to get new results. Anyone who follows K-Pop will enjoy this Bright romp.