Based on the true story of Rafael and Candice Lopez’s idea to bring beauty and art to their San Diego East Village neighborhood, this is a story of transformation. It’s about how a small idea can grow to become something big and beautiful, a work of art!
From the author’s note: “Maybe Something Beautiful, illustrated by the artist who inspired it,… is an invitation to transform not only the walls and street of our cities but also the minds and hearts of communities.”
Learn more about the book and the Urban Art Trail HERE.
NATIONAL AMERICAN INDIAN HERITAGE MONTH and THUNDER BOY JR. by Sherman Alexie
Celebrate National Native American Indian Heritage Month – all November – by celebrating Native American literature. Ask your library or bookstore for books written by Native Americans. See through their eyes. Listen to their voices. Here is a new picture book to enjoy and share with young readers.
THUNDER BOY JR. (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2016) written by Sherman Alexie and illustrated by Yuyi Morales is a charming picture book that speaks to what all children feel – “I want to be me.” Little Thunder was named after his father, Big Thunder – both are officially Thunder Boy Smith. But the nickname of Little Thunder has become a “storm filling up the sky,” because the nickname feels like being called a burp or a fart.
Thunder Boy laments, “Don’t get me wrong. My dad is awesome. But I don’t want to have the same name as him. I want a name that sounds like me. I want a name that celebrates something cool that I’ve done.” Thunder Boy thinks about several exciting possibilities. “Not Afraid of Ten Thousand Teeth” is a name that tells how he touched a real orca on the nose. “Touch the Clouds” reflects how he once climbed to the very top of a mountain. “Full of Wonder” hints of how he dreams of traveling the whole wide world.
Thunder Boy’s father is indeed an awesome dad. Together father and son create a new name – a name that shouts like thunder and lights up the sky.
One of Sherman Alexie’s inspirations for THUNDER BOY JR. was “The Snowy Day,” by Ezra Jack Keats, published in 1962, the first picture book that focused on an African American child. “I so strongly identified with that,” Alexie says. “I wanted to replicate that experience, because in literature in general, there aren’t many Native American children.”
Also read Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This autobiographical story about Alexie’s boyhood on the Spokane Indian Reservation won a National Book Award in 2007. Frequently it is on the list of most-banned books. Fortunately, Alexie Jr. keeps thundering on!
Less than 1% of books for children are written by or about Native Americans. Read them. You will be glad you did. Support diversity in literature. Ask your library or bookstore for books that reflect the diversity in our country.
Maps have been part of Heard’s life for a long time. She grew up in a home with an antique world map hanging on the wall and her older sister and two cousins actually became mapmakers. It’s not surprising, then, that Heard became, in her words, “a cartographer of the heart: mapping out inner territories with words – and helping others do the same.”
The book provides 20 types of heart maps, from “Small Moment” maps to “Last Time” maps, to “Be the Change that You Wish to See in the World” maps. Doesn’t that sound perfect? In an interview, Georgia says, “I want students to know that words have the power to make something happen. Whether it’s personal change or change in the world.” Wise words for these days.
Each map includes an Introduction, a Try This section with tips and suggestions to get you started, a Template (with a link to a downloadable master), Writing Ideasfor digging deeper, Student Examples, and Mentor Textsuggestions in multiple genres.
Check out this short Heinemann PODCAST in which Heard talks about how to use heart maps to inspire students as they dig deeper into the stories they need and want to tell.
“Heart maps are a concrete, visual tool to help writers, no matter what age, discover and ultimately write about what they’ve stored in their hearts. People they love, memories, meaningful experiences. But it’s not just a topic list… that they then check off as they write. It’s the experience of and process of heart mapping that’s really kind of magical and a little mysterious.”
– – Georgia Heard
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
Real people doing real things. Picture Book biographies provide readers with engaging opportunities to learn about the small and large steps ordinary people have taken to accomplish extraordinary things. Beginning as early as second grade, students are expected to “describe the connection between a series of historical events… in a text.” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.2.3) What better way to introduce readers to informational books than with one of the many beautiful biographies being published today. Here are two that work especially well.
“Inside an enormous city in a house on a very small street, there once lived a poet I would like you to meet.” enormous smallness: A story E.E. Cummings (Enchanted Lion Books, 2015) by Matthew Burgess, illustrations by Kris Di Giacomo is the gorgeously written and illustrated story of Edward Estlin Cummings. From the first page, readers are immersed in e.e.’s world – from the lively house on 104 Irving Street (where e.e. recited his first poem, at the age of three: “Oh, my little/ birdie, Oh/with his little/toe, toe, toe!”), to the home at 4 Patching Place where he lived for almost forty years.
With snippets of some of e.e. cummings’s poems seamlessly woven into the visual narrative which is represented on thick pages, rich in a palette of muted colors – blues, grays, browns, and greens – the book is a magnificently produced collage of the words, heart, and voice of e.e.
Jen Bryant has written numerous celebrated picture book biographies. Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016) with illustrations by Boris Kulikov is her newest. In fact, what makes this book especially fascinating is that it is Bryant’s second book about Louis Braille. (The first was a young adult biography published as part of a series.) Why was Bryant compelled to write a second book for younger readers? She says it was because she’d never read (or written) an account about Braille that let her experience this child inventor’s emotions. “What was it like to BE Louis Braille? This story is my attempt to answer that question.”
Imagine, then, being the young Louis Braille, a clever boy who loses his sight at the age of five. Even though he’s given a chance to attend a very special school in Paris, the Royal School for the Blind didn’t feel so special to Louis. The other boys teased him and he missed his maman. Still, he persisted because somewhere in that school was a library with books. He longed to read, but these books were large and cumbersome, with waxy letters and words as large as his hand.
Louis was determined to find a better way and, at the young age of fifteen, inspired by a secret code invented by a French army captain, he devised an easier code that used just six dots. Many kids will know about Braille, but I’m guessing most will not know Louis’s amazing story of determination and grit.
Fall comes as a gentle breeze that jiggles an oak tree full of leaves in various shades of green. Acorns fall from the tree: Plink. Plunk. Plop. “Peacefall.”
The days grow longer, the colorful oak more beautiful, with bright pops of orange, red, and the changing colors of the season. “Beautifall.”
Digitally-rendered shapes, reminiscent of cut-paper, are sure to catch the eye of young readers. I imagine teachers will use the book as a springboard for “Wonderfall” displays of poems and student art.
A look at the cover and you know this book is going to be delicious. Open, and the end pages are splashes of yellow that exude a bright warmth, immediately making the reader happy and ready to dive into the poetic text that follows. Here’s a snippet from early on :
“Just before yellow time,
the air smells different.
Like wet mud and dry grass
with a sprinkle of sugar.”
Yellow Time swells with movement and the joy of all that yellow dropping from trees and catching in hair and sweaters, pooling in gutters, and decorating sidewalks. The book is a glorious song of praise to the world turned yellow when the ash trees lose their leaves. Don’t miss this beautiful book.
I’m in love with Alice Schertle’s poetry, and even through this post goes up on Halloween, too late for some to be interested in Schertle’s newest Little Blue Truck book for *this* year’s holiday, I can’t let it go by without at least urging readers to track down the book for next year’s preschool or Kindergarten class.
Like all the Little Blue books, Schertle’s rhyme is impeccable and this book – a lift-the-flap – makes use of that rhyme to encourage readers to anticipate which animal will be hiding under the flap.
Schertle has many wonderful poetry collections for older readers, but this series is the perfect marriage of poetry and picture book in the hands of a pro.
What are some of your favorite books for FALL? Share them in the comments.
ONE NORTH STAR is so much more than a counting book, it is visual and poetic trip through Minnesota’s “bog and marsh, along river and lake, across prairie and into woods.” The images and words compliment each other as we count our way through several ecosystems and seasons – their plants, animals, earth and star formations. High up in the sky the one North Star is our starting point and our guide. Then pull on your boots, take along backpack and binoculars, and get ready to hike, fly, swim, perch, and even take root! Onward to FIVE:
Five walleyes fin near wild rice
four blue flag irises flower
three mudpuppies wriggle
two loons call
one porcupine sleeps in a jack pine tree
all along a lake
under one north star.
The pages are filled with accurate illustrations and the book is brimming with facts and details about these Midwestern ecosystems highlighting the plants and animals that make their homes there.
This picture book is the creation of three talented women: Phyllis Root is the author of more than forty books including Plant a Pocket of Prairie and One Duck Stuck. Beckie Prange is a biologist and printmaker and illustrator of the Caldecott Honor winner, Song of the Water Boatman. Betsy Bowen has authored and illustrated a number of books including Phyllis Root’s Big Belching Bog. The University of Minnesota Press, publisher, has given children and adults another engaging, beautiful book to learn from and enjoy.
I wonder if young readers have ever considered how hard it might be for a child from another country to learn English. Very hard, if you believe Juana, the young, feisty heroine of this charming chapter book. Written and illustrated by Colombian-born Juana Medina,Juana & Lucas (Candlewick Press 2016) is chock full of the kinds of details any child will identify with. Juana loves drawing and Astroman and Brussels sprouts, but she “strongly dislikes” the itchy uniform she has to wear to school. Playing futbol while wearing it is the worst. She loves Lucas, “the most amazing perro ever born.” He walks her to and from the bus and he’s great at the game of spies – no matter where Juana hides, Lucas finds her. He listens to all of Juana’s stories, too, even if they’re long, and he eats math homework “like a pro.” She also loves her Mami, who is very brave and strong and smells “fresh as mint and warm as cinnamon.” But most of all, she loves Bogotá, Colombia, the city in South America where she lives. “I love Bogotá. LOVE. IT.” No wonder. It’s a city of parks and bike trails and beautiful weather and trees. Best of all, according to Juana, “Everyone speaks ESPAÑOL!” That’s Spanish, which is what Juana speaks.
So imagine how Juana feels when her teacher tells the class on the first day of school, “Today we are going to begin learning the English!”
The English?? Juana wants nothing to do with the English. It’s too hard! Her tongue tickles with all the Th sounds. Words like read and read are spelled the same but pronounced differently. It’s hard to remember LEFT and RIGHT. UP and DOWN. And what about left hand and left the room? Rarely has watching a child grapple with a tough subject been as much fun as following Juana in her struggle. But learn the English she must, if she wants her grandparents to take her to Spaceland in Florida to meet the real Astroman!
By the end of this funny, lively story, Juana has learned a healthy amount of English and discovered that knowing how to speak it – or knowing how to speak any language used around the world – will open doors to her that would otherwise remain shut. Young readers who have come to appreciate that children who live in other countries and speak other languages are exactly the same as they are, might discover they’ve learned a healthy amount of Spanish, too.
Mission Statement
To provide teachers, librarians, and parents with the resources and inspiration to foster a love of reading in kids, K-5.
