It's Monday - New Books to Share!

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!

     Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR 

  

            Still wishing all of you educators good days and having fun and staying safe! 

              It's a companion book to the beautiful story A Wolf Called Wander. This time, Rosanne Parry takes us on a journey with a pod of orcas, centering on the story of Vega, learning to be a wayfinder (for salmon). Someday in the future, she will become the family's matriarch. One can read this book and project oneself into this frightening adventure when, searching for the so-needed salmon, Vega ventures into the wider ocean with her young and smaller brother, Deneb. They are separated from the pod, run into a larger stranger whom Deneb rescues, and who travels with them for a while. They also connect with a larger pod of orcas who do not endanger them, but speak a different language and soon leave them behind. 
            Both are starving and the only knowledge Vega finally follows is that their way back is with the rising sun. Each supports the other with encouraging words. Parry is creating the language so that we humans can understand, but whales do communicate and do help each other and help other humans. Filled with ocean tales of survival, threats to the ecosystem, and knowledge of many other creatures, this is a tale that one doesn't want to stop reading. Lindsay Moore's black and white illustrations fill out the story with breaks of beautiful action. There is a map that shows the setting of this adventure and extra notes about orcas.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy!

          For ages 12 and up. Inspired by the #SayHerName campaign launched by the African American Policy Forum, these poems pay tribute to victims of police brutality as well as the activists insisting that Black Lives Matter. Elliott engages poets from the past two centuries to create a chorus of voices celebrating the creativity, resilience, and courage of Black women and girls. 

            This collection features 49 powerful poems, four of which are tribute poems inspired by the works of Lucille Clifton, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, and Phillis Wheatley. It aims to move every listener to reflect, respond—and act. 

           Oh my, Lindsay Currie has written a book that will make you cringe, worry, perhaps even start counting, "One...two...three..." to relieve the stress of a very scary moment or more! She's also able to make you smile at the learning that happens to Claire, who tells her story of the seventh-grade year she never imagined. With a brother a couple of years older (and a jerk), a mom busy with an online baking business, and a dad who writes books about scary Chicago history, she doesn't believe her life could get any worse. Also, her all-time best friend Casley seems to have a new best friend, Emily. However, yes, it does get worse. Her father has recently quit his job to start a tour bus service, a "ghost" tour bus service. And this particular Friday night, Claire has to be the helper because the usual one cannot be there. 

            After that tour, which holds its own weird happenings, finally they arrive home, Casley goes to bed. In the wall behind her head, she awakens with the sounds of "Scritch scratch, Scritch scratch, Scritch scratch." They get louder, she says it must be a mouse, but no, "Mice can't rattle doorknobs." Keeping it all a secret because she does not want to be teased at school, nor want her father getting more interested in some ghost in her room makes Claire's life simply awful, until her brother and Casley figure out she really needs help. And Claire learns that asking for help is a good thing. There's a lot of scary stuff in the story, but even more, there are many good places where everyone can learn about telling the truth about what you need and trusting others, too. I enjoyed it very much, believe it would make a super read-aloud for a young middle-school class or just for parents to read with their children together. 

             I won't give them away, but there are some intriguing surprises within this story, too. I think it will spark further interest in the past.

         Thanks to Scholastic, I received this book a few months ago and wanted to wait until it's close to coming out, publishing in October! It wasn't easy to wait! Tami Charles has written a love story to this young boy. Out of the history that came before, she writes "you were dreamed of, like a knapsack of wishes, carried on the backs of your ancestors" and Bryan Collier creates the art, shares he started with a single petal to build an image. Faces appear on those petals, representing the voices of ancestors chanting "you matter". From before birth, to a boy of about middle-school age, Tami shows this boy growing up, facing some struggles, like when his name is made fun of, but also in awe of seeing himself in a first book, "like sweet jam on toast. . .all because you matter." It's a book that is not easy to describe, one that needs readers to "hear" and "see" the poetry of All Because You Matter!

Thanks to Candlewick Press for the following two books!

           I didn't attend the women's march, but stayed at my daughter's house and took care of all the very young children who did not go. Heather Dean Brewer tells this story of her young friend Mari who, with her mother, did join the march of thousands in New York City. She and her mother made the sign, "Love is Powerful" that her mom explains is a message for the world. Mari questions if anyone would even see it! But they did and as Mari shouted those words, a few shouted back, then a few more and more! Indeed many saw and said her words. LeUyen Pham illustrates a city filled with excited people, marching for women, for respect, and most of all showing that "Love is Powerful"! At the back, there is a note from Heather Dean Brewer and a picture of the real Mari on her mother's shoulders at the parade. 

            After this past Friday's sad news of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's passing, this book feels good to read, a paean to her legacy, her fight for women's rights.

          If you've read Jabari Jumps, you know that he has some experience with courage, yet in this story, Jabari figures out that a few other attributes are needed. Persistence and asking for help are two. He decides he wants to create a flying machine and unfortunately the first attempt is a bust! Little sister Nika keeps saying "me", wanting to help, but Jabari says no, he doesn't need help. After an attempt when he has spent a lot of time designing and creating a longer launch machine and it, too, fails, it's "Zip, flip, swoosh around, up, Smash!" His dad suggests that Nika really wants to help, that great inventors often have partners. 

           There is more to Jabari's (and Nika's) tries, with Gaia Cornwell's color-filled collaged pages showing all the complicated inventions, a page of past inventors who, Jabari remembers, use creativity to solve problems, and a sweet moment when Nika squeezes Jabari's hand, hopeful for this "next" take-off. It's a story of kids creating, wanting to make things work, and needing a loving nudge from an adult, this time Dad, also some support from a little sister!

What's next: Still reading Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of Covid-19. Starting the adult This Tender Land by William Kent Kruger and The Sisters of Straygarden Place by Hayley Chewins from Candlewick Press!