It's Monday - Time to Share More Books!

  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! 

          

       Carlie Sorosiak also wrote I, Cosmo, which I loved, showing her beautifully imagined affinity with dogs, and this time, Leonard, the cat tells his tale. Only there's a catch! Leonard is no ordinary cat but a misplaced alien who goofed when entering the data on his beam of light. From where he comes, those who wish may take the identity of one life on earth, but only for a month. Leonard, as a cat (instead of the Yellowstone Park Ranger he planned), ends up stranded in a rainstorm in a tree on a beach in South Carolina. Luckily for him, he is rescued by a young girl named Olive. His adventure begins, full of love for Olive and her summer family, Grandmother Norma, a friend called Q who, with Norma, runs the local aquarium, and a dog named Stanley. It may be called a science-fiction story, but it's also a sweet family story, what Leonard learns makes a family, even as they rush madly to make his rendezvous in order to travel back to his "other" home. Olive is with her grandmother for the summer, anxious about a move to California where her mother and boyfriend, maybe-to-be step-father are planning to settle. Olive struggles because he, and others, have called her weird with no social skills. Within this time with Leonard, Gran, and Q, she learns that "who she is" is who she is pleased to be. And Leonard, experiencing bowling and cheese sandwiches among other special wishes, learns so much more. It's a story adventure filled with love. Sad to write that it's not eligible for a Newbery award!

           First published in the UK, now this year in the US, thanks to Candlewick Press and Walker Books US for the advanced copy.

         David Almond gives readers beautiful, complex characters. I'm rarely sure they are real but perhaps are meant mostly as metaphors? Annie Lumsden, at thirteen, is perfectly content to live in a shack with her mother by the sea, listening to her mother's tales, telling us her own tale. She has not gone to school for a while, was asked to leave because she could not grasp the letters and numbers. There is a brief mention of other children mocking. Occasionally things happen like her legs weakening, collapsing. A kind doctor cannot discover why though he is supportive every time she comes to him? Her mother is loving, an artist who sells painted rocks and tells stories at the school. Things are rather normal until a man from America shows up and seems to know who Annie really is, how special she is. Is it about growing up? Is Annie's tale complex because all growing up is complex? I imagine every reader will have something different to answer. Beatrice Alemagna's illustrations help us see more of the tale, yet enhance the mystery, too.

           Thanks to Candlewick Press for this copy, first published by Walker Books Ltd Uk.

          In every family, it seems that children can be embarrassed for something or other by their parents. When one is an immigrant, their ways can be part of bigger things that are "different". This time, in a brief story, Andrea Wang draws on her own experiences of stopping by a stream to pick watercress. The girl in the story is muddy, cold, and clearly disgusted. At home, creating a dish her parents clearly love, she refuses to eat it, saying she'll only eat "store-bought" food. She knows she hates their ways of picking up "roadside trash-heap furniture and "dinner from a ditch". Her mother brings out a picture of her family, mother, father, herself, and a little brother. That brother is no longer alive and Mom tells about China's great famine. There was just not enough food. 

        In an author's note, she shares about parents, not only immigrants, who don't tell their children stories of their childhoods, and they must. With beautiful watercolor paintings by Jason Chin, whose work seems always to highlight beloved stories, it's a book that not only shares a memory but may offer a chance for parents to let their stories be told! It's sad but so very hopeful.

      All through the day a "thing" like sunshine "is", while clouds move in and sunshine "was". Deborah Freedman's story of a day shows the waves of change, from bees to birds, rain to starlight, a celebration that "is", then "was" a day in nature. 

            I remember this day. Parents rushed to my school after rumors that other buildings would be targeted. It was a day, even so far away, that touched every one of us. Sadly, there have been so many other tragedies since 1995. Chris Barton focuses a little on the day itself, but more than that, he shows the good that those closely affected have done and continue to do for others, in memory of those lost and injured. One focus is the elm by the Murrah building that survived. They didn't know that it would, but it did! People collected its seeds and began growing seedlings. Now, many years later, those seedlings grown into trees give more seedlings, planted in many places for remembrance. Nicole Xu's illustrations carry the mood from dark to light as Chris tells the story of the tree, the memorial built, then the museum. For those who want to read that tragedy can turn to goodness, this is a book that shows such caring. There is added information at the back, with resources and a few biographies of those intimately connected to that day. 

        For younger readers yet also for many others (like me) who would like to know about mosques and what happens inside them, this lovely book by M.O. Yuksel shares quite a lot in the brief text, the serious religious part, and the friendliness and kindness inside, from grandmothers to children, from those in prayer and those in community gatherings, the intent shows that here in this holy place, all are welcome. Illustrator of The Proudest Blue, Hatem Aly illustrates this book, too, with the brightest of colors and various scenes inside a mosque. The back matter gives an author’s note, a glossary, and more information about many historical and significant mosques around the world.


What's Next: A #MustReadin2021, Elizabeth Acevedo's Clap When You Land and a new ARC, Sunshine by Marion Dane Bauer!