Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites. I have a second post today, highlighting a new middle-grade book, number three in a series. Please take a look here!Thanks to Candlewick Press for these next two books.
This book, out last summer, is a compilation from an exhibit that features postcards sent by more than 50 children's book illustrators from around the world to show solidarity with today's migrants. It is both inspiring and gorgeous to see the profoundly emotional art.
From Satoko Watanabe in Japan:
A little bird flies in the sky.
A little bird is damaged.
A Little bird needs a place to rest.
He shows a sweet-welcoming bear with a "little bird" perched on its nose.
From Shaun Tan, Australia
Where there is change
there is hope.
Where there is hope
there is life.
He shows a postcard with paper ripped from it that has turned into an origami bird.
Brief bios of each artist are given at the back with one final poem, an acrostic using the word, "peregrine" by Robert McFarlane and Jackie Morris, UK. The art is a peregrine falcon.
I'm guessing that children have no idea of the many intriguing wonders beneath us. Out in October, this book's journey shows those amazing sites all over the world in a "lift the flap" bonanza! For instance, on the double-page about prairie-dog towns, eight flaps lift to divulge secrets of this underground place, sometimes in poetry and sometimes in prose, readers learn what the "dogs" do, like females with their pups, who to beware of, who might take over the town, like ferrets. Sam Brewster takes us readers to the underground subway neighborhoods in Montreal, London, and Tokyo. "Poland's glistening salt-rock mines,/carved with care throughout the years,/A maze of caves and passageways,/ statues, sculptures, chandeliers." can be found in a marvelous vertical double-page. Graphic art includes so many details that it's hard not to miss some. Then, it's time to look more carefully or return to read again and again. I imagine readers of all ages will adore this book and learning something new!
A family is woven together in these heart-stopping illustrations by Weshoyot Alvitree as Traci Sorell tells a story of what binds the family. In poetic style, Traci first shows us the mountain's base where grows a hickory tree. Beneath sits a cabin, and in that cabin, a wood stove gives warmth as a family watches a grandma's weaving, all close together while they wait, wait, for the one member missing. She is a pilot off to serve, like many others from the Cherokee Nation. Our own groups, whatever and wherever they may be, hold us up as we hope that they will soon be home safely. In an author's note, Traci tells a little more of those Native women who have served in wars "while receiving strong support from their families."