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Posts by Tracy
Find all the joy of the Bright Brown Baby board books in this beautiful picture book treasury! Bright Brown Baby: A Treasury by Andrea David Pinkney and Brian Pinkney is bursting with warmth & bounce. These mini stories about peek-a-boo, counting-to-love, and baby stars all shine so bright. They read like mini love songs to little ones.
Step into this wonderland of words! Marshmallow Clouds: Two Poets at Play among Figures of Speech by Ted Kooser & Connie Wanek, illustrated by Richard Jones, definitely feels playful, fun – and so delightful! Poems are grouped into four sections featuring the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth). They offer unique spins on everyday objects like trees, marshmallows, and flyswatters. Some poem titles include “Butterfly Luck,” “Why Pets Don’t Write,” and “Winter Ponies.” Softly painted illustrations add a dreamy feel to the collection.
For someone with two young children, I can relate to the – sometimes! – grumpy mornings of little ones. In this book, Grumpy Pants by Claire Messer, Penguin is in “a very bad mood.” The rain is falling on Penguin’s yellow hat and jacket. Penguin stomps all the way home and takes off his grumpy coat, grumpy boots, and grumpy socks. He’s still grumpy! In the midst of all his grumpiness, he pauses to take a deep breath and counts – 1, 2, 3. Then he dives into a splashy bathtub.
Mila Has Two Beds shares a story familiar to many children – going between two houses and two parents. Mila says goodbye to “Sweet Daddy” and her dog, Pepper, and returns to the “Mommy-house” and “smiling Mommy”. The illustrations are drenched in color and show happy and cozy scenes and each parent’s house. Mila has a different bed, a different toothbrush, and a different bedtime routine at each house. Even the goodnight wishes are different: “Good night, my darling,” says her Mommy, and “Nighty-night, little princess,” says her Daddy.
Me and Mama by Cozbi Cabrera, centers on the special relationship between a young girl and her mother. Starting with the morning “when the house smells like cinnamon” and the papa and little brother are still asleep, a little girl wants to be “everywhere mama is”. “Good morning to you” – her mama sings, as the little girl walks down the stairs.
Bowwow Powwow by Brenda Child (Red Lake Ojibwe), is about imaginative Windy Girl, and her dream of an amazing powwow. Her dream melds stories from Uncle with her own powwow memories. Under the beat of the drum, Windy Girl dreams about traditional dancers “dancing their style” and grass dancers “treading the northern earth”. She also dreams about swirling colorful costumes and powwow fast food stands – selling things like blueberry sno-cones, fry bread, and popped maize. Her dog friend, Itchy Boy, wakes her from the dream so she can enjoy the real powwow right in front of her.
Read through the seasons - and emotions - in Birdsong by Julie Flett. A young Cree girl, Katherena, moves to a new home with her mother. She misses her “friends and cousins and aunties and uncles”. The new home is over the mountains and near a field “covered in snowdrops”. She feels lonely and does not feel like getting out her pencils and paper for drawing. “My hands are cold.” But soon, she meets their nearest neighbor, an older woman named Agnes – who loves gardening and making things out of clay.
This YA Rom-Com with a nod to Bollywood is both sweet and addicting! When Dimple Met Rishi is told in two voices, alternating often. The reader feels the giddiness of new love – as well as the push and pull of culture, family expectations, and being true to oneself. I was a fan of both Dimple and Rishi from the very start – and I truly, achingly, wanted everything to work out! It is a warm and cozy read – and definitely a big win for first-time writer Sandhya Menon.
Looking for a way to help your child find their own quiet place in a busy, noisy, clambering world? Charlotte and the Quiet Place by Deborah Sosin takes a gentle look at how to find quiet and peacefulness inside your own self. Charlotte, the young protagonist in the story, lives in a noisy house, a noisy neighborhood, and a noisy school. She has trouble finding one spot that’s quiet and peaceful. Then, one day while she’s walking her dog, she finds a place in nature – that’s quieter than quiet.
Ready for some rollicking and roaring word play? Check out Forget-Me-Nots: Poems to Learn by Heart by Mary Ann Hoberman for some unforgettable poems. This is a wonderful treasury for elementary school kids. The poems are joyful and include bright and colorful illustrations by Michael Emberley. The book has 123 poems by 57 authors (ranging from A.A. Milne to Shel Silverstein to Valerie Worth, and many more phenomenal poets). It is also a great book for reading aloud as the days get shorter and the nights a bit longer.
