Monday Reading - Much to Love Here

     

    Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! 

        It's a beautiful story by Cori Doerrfeld (The Rabbit Listened) about young Finn who's feeling very low, so low her grandfather found her in bed covered up with her quilt. He persuades her to go walking and begins to talk softly about all the things in the forest that lie "Beneath": there are tree roots, small animals tunneling, a bird on a nest, with eggs beneath, and stating it's the same beneath when people look different. Doerrfeld's illustrations fill the pages with trees, plants, animals, and people as the thoughtful grandpa walks along looking, imagining what is hidden "Beneath". It includes something important personally, too, inside one's heart. It would be so nice to read this with family or young students to discover a list of what they might imagine "Beneath". The endpapers are covered with that quilt!

 

         The chapter book by James Howe was a favorite of my daughter in early grade school. Now Howe has collaborated with Andrew Donkin and illustrator Stephen Gilpin to tell it again. It is a hilarious story as long as you're ready to meet a late-night reading cat, Chester; a rather skeptical dog, Harold; and the newest pet, a rabbit, who sleeps all day but makes vegetables white at night. He's been named "Bunnicula"! The Monroe family, Mr. and Mrs., Toby and Pete, have their parts in the story but they never really know what's going on behind their backs or when they sleep. Harold knows nearly all or can guess what Chester, a very determined cat, is up to. Harold tells this fantastic and silly story. I hope kids will meet them all and love the story as my daughter did years ago.

        I do know the heartbreak of Emmett Till's end of life but I did not know about his mother and her life from before Emmett's death and then after, especially after. I didn't know she had moved north for a better life, away from Jim Crow laws. And I didn't know that Emmett loved open spaces so moved south to be with family members in the rural south. One week and one day after he left, he went missing. The book by Angela Joy tells all that of Emmett's life, and his death, which became the next time his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley showed courage. Earlier she did not stop studying in spite of teasing by boys and sometimes teachers and became the first African American to graduate at the top of her class. Emmett's death pushed her to become a force in the Civil Rights Movement, working with the NAACP, she traveled to rallies, speaking out, for her people and for Emmett. Illustrations are of cut paper in various somber tones.  In the final spread lies a representation of the National Museum of African American History with twenty names of others who have been victims of race hatred in times most recently like Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. And since that page was finalized, there have been more! 

        Added information in the back adds to the detail of the Mamie Till-Mobley's story, too. All this book adds to our history with somber clarity. 

           It is not easy to describe this new book by Marla Frazee except to write "One must see and read and savor every word that is illustrated with wonder and joy! Don't miss this one and don't miss gifting it for all kinds of celebrations, from birth to a "birth-day" for someone older-from 10 to 100, graduation and wedding wishes, too!