It's Monday - More Fun Reading

        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! Happy Reading! 

       Well, we had the big snow from last Friday to today! In the Denver area, 20 inches plus, Boulder and further north got more. It is wet and heavy and a lot!

 

          Yes, finished, and I enjoyed it very much. You can read my response here on Goodreads.

            Nancy Bo Flood tells this story of a young girl with Cerebral Palsy who longs to dance. There seems to be no one who knows how it would look for her, wheelchair-bound, only able to move her head, arms, and fingers. Then Eva learns about a place with a class for ALL abilities. Julianna Swaney's endearing illustrations show ALL kinds of children, first doing what you can imagine, jumping rope, kicking soccer balls, hugging. Eva tries to imagine what it must be like to BE like them and in a swirling two-page spread, she is dancing! In the class, shy and nervous, Eva enters this new class and this time ALL kinds of children, including wheelchairs, cane, crutches, and those who do not have at least a recognizable challenge. I love the part when shy Eva is invited to join the others. Nancy writes: "Join us. We are many dancers, one circle. We each pass the touch." They partner up and they dance and they move and it is wonderful for us readers to see, to imagine.

          In the Author's Note, Nancy writes that "like every child, Eva was born with dreams, Let me try. With longings, Let me belong." There is a place like this, named Young Dance where dancers of seven to eighteen come to participate in dance. Find more about it here at youngdance.org. 

        Thanks to Candlewick Press for the following marvelous books!

         I loved this book so much that I made a collage of some parts of the drawings. First, the cover: the outside spread (without the cover) of people waiting, waiting, part of the inside cover - small things noticed, and two pages of what was sketched in different places. 

        Resisting the wish to not see what was going on in our world, artist George Butler, over the course of a decade created pen-and-ink and watercolor portraits in war zones, refugee camps, and on the move. There are brief explanations of where he is, some background of the place and the people, most always a focus and small sketch of one person. The twelve places include Myanmar, Kenya, Iraq, and Serbia. It's a poignant capture of these most recent years, but none of it is over as I hope everyone knows.