Monday Reading - Nature Teaches Us

              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.  Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!
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         We all hope that we can practice the best ways to care for ourselves and for each other. It's been another week of worries, especially closings, here in our state and beyond. Wishing all of you will remain well and manage the challenges ahead for yourselves and your communities.


           Thanks to Candlewick Press for all the books shared in this post. I am grateful to have the copies. I already had purchased The Nest That Wren Built, so will pass a copy on to my granddaughter's school! Each one published on March 10th!

I have not finished Gold Rush Girl by Avi and it is exciting. I'll share it next week.
           This week was challenging, as I imagine it was for many of you. I am thinking of all of you who have to create different ways to teach and/or do your other work because of the Coronavirus Pandemic. Best of my wishes to you for continuing good health.

          In a cumulative tale, the author, and here in a picture book, the illustrator, must repeat and repeat. This time, in Randi Sonenshine's spring story, clever and subtle changes in that same rhyme swing us readers through the story wonderfully. Papa Wren begins the construction with "These are the twigs, dried in the sun,/that Papa collected one by one/to cradle the nest that Wren built." I admire Randi's ability to keep that favorite rhyme, yet build the nest part by part, just as wrens out in our own world do. Included are "leaves of ruby and gold"; "moss, softer than suede"; and later, "the hatchlings scratching within".  Images feel new and perfect for this life story, filled with anticipation for "what's next?", like "spidery rootlets" and "tuft of rabbity fur" that's "plucked from a sharp, persnickety burr". 
             Just as Randi adds to her telling, Anne Hunter creates her own cumulative illustrations in ink and pencil on colored papers. Page by page, she lets us see the work as the nest becomes, a NEST, and one that becomes the beautiful dwelling for eggs, and then, those lovely little hatchlings. There is a sweet surprise at the end which readers will adore. 
             Randi adds the science of wrens in a glossary and "Wren Facts" in the back matter.

          Mary Murphy is from Dublin, Ireland, wrote this lovely text which needs to be read aloud and seen! She states that she used brush and ink rendered digitally to illustrate. The book throughout is gleeful, celebrating trees, fish, dogs, the earth, and each of us, the only ones who truly know how to be themselves. In the part about dogs, they "flick water into their mouth to drink./I can't do that, but then/only a dog knows/how to be a dog."  Endpapers are filled with all kinds of people and trees, water, too in a swirl of a crowd of those things, Being Them! I'd love to read this aloud to discover what readers would create with other things, knowing what a particular thing knows how to be. What a fun book that emphasizes individuality! 

            Maribeth Boelts lets Kaia tell her story who proclaims she's "hottest-hot-pepper brave" yet we then learn, except for bees! A story about a little girl whose father keeps bees on the roofs shares a universal lesson, to try and try again to face the scary, and then face it again. An early "try" up to the roof with her dad finds Kaia with a sting! After some time, she's ready to visit again with her dad. She finds the courage, this time, to gather the reward, honey. Bright, colorful cartoon-like illustrations by Angela Dominguez show the ups and downs of feelings in a diverse family and with Kaia and her friends, too. For those afraid of bees, and perhaps other things, this might help make a change.

     

Still Reading: The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson