Welcome to Your World by Smriti Prasadam-Halls
(March 2020, Candlewick Press)
Disclosure: I received this book free from Candlewick Press in exchange for a review.
©2020 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
Mermaids on a Mission to Save the Oceans by Janet Balletta
Marlene is one o
f seven Mermaids chosen by the Council for the Mermaid Mission to save the oceans from mankind’s pollution. Each Mermaid is assigned to one of the seven continents and responsible for protecting the oceans around their assigned continent. Marlene was assigned to North America. As a result of her work with her sister mermaid, Fina, who protects the oceans around South America, Marlene and Fina were receiving a medal. They worked together to protect the Gulf of Mexico from chemical dumping. They joined their sisters at the Merfolk reunion in Asia where the Council for the Mermaid Mission honored them.
My thoughts: The author explores each of the seven continents and the environmental needs of the oceans surrounding each continent in a fun and engaging way. The illustrations are bright and colorful. I think children in early elementary grades would find this text engaging to identify the seven continents as well as learn bits of environmental science content as well.
I received a copy of this book to review for Multicultural Children’s Book Day from the author, Janet Balletta. Learn more about Janet and her books on her website.
Multicultural Children’s Book Day 2020 (1/31/20) is in its 7th year! This non-profit children’s literacy initiative was founded by Valarie Budayr and Mia Wenjen; two diverse book-loving moms who saw a need to shine the spotlight on all of the multicultural books and authors on the market while also working to get those book into the hands of young readers and educators.
Seven years in, MCBD’s mission is to raise awareness of the ongoing need to include kids’ books that celebrate diversity in homes and school bookshelves continues.
Super Platinum
Make A Way Media/ Deirdre “DeeDee” Cummings,
Platinum
Language Lizard, Pack-N-Go Girls,
Gold
Audrey Press, Lerner Publishing Group, KidLit TV, ABDO BOOKS : A Family of Educational Publishers, PragmaticMom & Sumo Jo, Candlewick Press,
Silver
Author Charlotte Riggle, Capstone Publishing, Guba Publishing, Melissa Munro Boyd & B is for Breathe,
Bronze
Author Carole P. Roman, Snowflake Stories/Jill Barletti, Vivian Kirkfield & Making Their Voices Heard. Barnes Brothers Books, TimTimTom, Wisdom Tales Press, Lee & Low Books, Charlesbridge Publishing, Barefoot Books Talegari Tales
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Jerry Craft, A.R. Bey and Adventures in Boogieland, Eugina Chu & Brandon goes to Beijing, Kenneth Braswell & Fathers Incorporated, Maritza M. Mejia & Luz del mes_Mejia, Kathleen Burkinshaw & The Last Cherry Blossom, SISSY GOES TINY by Rebecca Flansburg and B.A. Norrgard, Josh Funk and HOW TO CODE A ROLLERCOASTER, Maya/Neel Adventures with Culture Groove, Lauren Ranalli, The Little Green Monster: Cancer Magic! By Dr. Sharon Chappell, Phe Lang and Me On The Page, Afsaneh Moradian and Jamie is Jamie, Valerie Williams-Sanchez and Valorena Publishing, TUMBLE CREEK PRESS, Nancy Tupper Ling, Author Gwen Jackson, Angeliki Pedersen & The Secrets Hidden Beneath the Palm Tree, Author Kimberly Gordon Biddle, BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 by Mia Wenjen, Susan Schaefer Bernardo & Illustrator Courtenay Fletcher (Founders of Inner Flower Child Books), Ann Morris & Do It Again!/¡Otra Vez!, Janet Balletta and Mermaids on a Mission to Save the Ocean, Evelyn Sanchez-Toledo & Bruna Bailando por el Mundo\ Dancing Around the World, Shoumi Sen & From The Toddler Diaries, Sarah Jamila Stevenson, Tonya Duncan and the Sophie Washington Book Series, Teresa Robeson & The Queen of Physics, Nadishka Aloysius and Roo The Little Red TukTuk, Girlfriends Book Club Baltimore & Stories by the Girlfriends Book Club, Finding My Way Books, Diana Huang & Intrepids, Five Enchanted Mermaids, Elizabeth Godley and Ribbon’s Traveling Castle, Anna Olswanger and Greenhorn, Danielle Wallace & My Big Brother Troy, Jocelyn Francisco and Little Yellow Jeepney, Mariana Llanos & Kutu, the Tiny Inca Princess/La Ñusta Diminuta, Sara Arnold & The Big Buna Bash, Roddie Simmons & Race 2 Rio, DuEwa Frazier & Alice’s Musical Debut, Veronica Appleton & the Journey to Appleville book series Green Kids Club, Inc.
We’d like to also give a shout-out to MCBD’s impressive CoHost Team who not only hosts the book review link-up on celebration day, but who also works tirelessly to spread the word of this event. View our CoHosts HERE.
Co-Hosts and Global Co-Hosts
FREE RESOURCES from Multicultural Children’s Book Day
TWITTER PARTY! Register here!
Hashtag: Don’t forget to connect with us on social media and be sure and look for/use our official hashtag #ReadYourWorld.
©2020 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
My ten year old recently read two books by Megan Shull that she would love to recommend to you for the middle grade readers in your life.
BOUNCE is the ideal gift for the holiday season – full of fantastic adventures but woven with a heartfelt message that will stick with readers.
After she read BOUNCE, she had an opportunity to host a Q&A with Megan:
My goal always as I write is for my readers to want to keep the book close, or tuck it under their pillow because the protagonist’s journey somehow helps them (the reader) feel seen, safe, soothed, and—as with my new novel, Bounce—more resilient, and more capable of bouncing back after falling. So, I am always super honored if a reader tells me that one of my books just made them “feel good”—that’s for sure what I’m hoping for.
Hmmmm. I haven’t wished for a body swap! To me Bounce is more about Frannie really needing to connect with people who can help her navigate her own quite reasonable painful emotions. Through the power of care and connection (from the bounces and the people she meets along the way) and feeling seen and soothed and safe in her body and her mind, she’s able to learn to take care of herself and feel a little bit less afraid and more capable of handling her life—which hasn’t really changed . . . but as you know, Chloe . . . she has! The Swap and Bounce both have that piece in common which is really learning how to be more yourself by being—for just a little while—someone else.
I did not. I wouldn’t have guessed it at all! On that note: I love this sweet, wise sentiment by the poet Mary Oliver—“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
I started writing my first book after earning my doctorate at Cornell.
I love being outside. The town I grew up in (and still live in today) is stunningly beautiful and teeming with waterfalls, gorges, and secret swimming holes. I had the privilege of having a very outdoorsy childhood and that joy and freedom of exploring independently and being inspired by the sheer physical beauty that surrounds you that (in Bounce) Frannie experiences as Sky, well, I know that feeling and I love that feeling too.
Megan Shull is the award-winning author of five books for kids, including The Swap, now a Disney Channel Original Movie and, Bounce. Megan holds a doctorate in educational psychology from Cornell University, where she also earned her undergraduate degree. Born and raised in Ithaca, New York, Megan lives and writes in her hometown—a small college town surrounded by waterfalls, quiet, rolling hills, and secret swimming holes.
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
March of the Suffragettes: Rosalie Gardiner Jones and the March for Voting Rights
Author: Zachary Michael Jack
Publisher: Zest Books
Date: September 27, 2016
March of the Suffragettes tells the forgotten, real-life story of “General” Rosalie Gardiner Jones, who in the waning days of 1912 mustered and marched an all-women army nearly 175 miles to help win support for votes for women. Most of us know about Susan B. Anthony and her fight for women’s right to vote, but few of us know about Rosalie Gardiner Jones. The author of March of the Suffragettes, Zachary Michael Jack, tells us a little bit about how he learned about Rosalie Gardiner Jones.
Over the past week, as I’ve taken my new book, March of the Suffragettes: Rosalie Gardiner Jones and the March for Voting Rights into schools and bookstores, readers keep wanting to know: how on earth did you discover Ms. Rosalie Gardiner Jones?! Rosalie, it seems, has surprised and delighted them as much as she did me, hiding out in right there in plain sight in the pages of history.
I only wish I could tell them in the fifth grade—when I was taught the remarkable story of “General” Rosalie Jones and the all-woman suffrage army she mustered and marched 175 miles, through the dead of a New York winter, when she was still in her twenties. I wish I could tell them that a well-meaning high school teacher, sensing my love for the revolutionary and the brave, tipped me off, almost conspiratorially with a nod and a wink and a go-forth-my-child, to research the amazing story of Rosalie and Ida Craft and Lavinia Dock and Jessie Hardy Stubbs for an upcoming research paper.
Instead, I’m left to confess the sad truth—that beyond Susan B. Anthony no one in my excellent public schooling taught me the noble truth of the votes-for-women movement and its amazingly contemporary advocates and their advocacies. That, I suppose, is part of the amnesia we suffer as a country where our foremothers are concerned.
The real story of how I came to learn about Rosalie Gardiner Jones and her remarkable march (at the time, probably the longest sustained women’s rights march in all of American history) is far more prosaic then that: I virtually stumbled into her in the dusky dustbin of history while researching female farmers and agrarians for a previous book: The Midwest Farmer’s Daughter: In Search of an American Icon. It turns out that a number of leading early feminists had rural backgrounds or rural interests, including the likes of Jane Addams and Frances Willard. So, as the saying goes, way led on to way—down, down, down and back up the research rabbit hole again—and suddenly, standing on the shoulders of these great women agrarians, I could see the distant figure of General Jones and her heroic army marching toward me…at least metaphorically.
As a writer and researcher, I believe in walking through the looking glass with both your notepad and your mind open, moving laterally, joyously, from one research find to another—something the Internet (the smart-as-a-whip “Aunt Google,” as I sometimes call her in classes) makes not only enlightening but enjoyable. While my otherwise fine fifth grade history class failed to introduce me to the proud, fightin’ spirit of my suffrage foremothers, it did, in my epic research paper on Maine, at least show me the vertigo-inducing, chutes-and-ladders feeling of historical research at its finest and most life-giving. That’s the breathless feeling I hope I’ve at least partly bottled in March of the Suffragettes: Rosalie Gardiner Jones and the March for Voting Rights. May it march on to the most unexpected places.
Disclosure: I received a copy of the book from the publisher for review.
Zachary Michael Jack is an award-winning author and editor of over twenty books, a former youth and bookmobile librarian, and the lead instructor for a popular writers’ workshop for tweens and teens, the Master Class for Young Writers. An associate professor of English at North Central College, he teaches courses in Leadership, Ethics and Values, and Writing for Social Change. His latest book, March of the Suffragettes, was recently selected by the American Booksellers Association (ABA) for its Best Books for Young Readers 2016 catalog.
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Publisher: Scholastic Press (September 27, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0545425581
Using first-person accounts, archival materials, official Naval documents, and photographs, award-winning author Deborah Hopkinson details the deadly submarine battles that raged in the Pacific during World War II.
DIVE! World War II Stories of Sailors & Submarines in the Pacific is a teacher’s dream resource. Weaving first-person accounts, such as,
“We heard noise over to our starboard side. . . You could see a bunch of planes coming in; nobody’s paying attention to it. Then you could hear what seemed like thundering in the background, which actually were bombs starting to drop at that time,” Martin said.
Hopkinson expertly takes the reader back to WWII from the first bombs dropping on Pearl Harbor, to the cease fire and peace treaty in three hundred pages of exciting, informational, and all too real stories of WWII.
Not only is DIVE! an excellent resource for the content within, but also for writer’s craft. Hopkinson takes a piece of U.S. history (which is often times very dry within text books) and transforms it into an informational text that is engaging, full of interesting language techniques.
Thanks again to Deborah Hopkinson for appearing. For other stops on the Dive Blog Tour please check deborahhopkinson.com.
September 11 was a week ago yesterday and like most people around the country, I remembered that day, fifteen years ago. Where I was. How I felt. But, see, that day is remembered every day by those first responders, families, and children who were directly affected by it. While I wanted to share this on the 15th anniversary of September 11th, or perhaps even leading up to the anniversary, I did not. Partly, because I didn’t get my act together in time, and partly because I think we should remember every day. So, I share today.
Over the summer, I read Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story by Nora Raleigh Baskin and I was brought back to that day. I posted a note to Nora on Facebook and mentioned that the characters in her story were “my kids.” Between our exchange and her exchange with other teachers around the country, Nora realized that we, teachers in the classroom on September 11th, had an enormous challenge in front of us that day. In many cases, we had to carry on as “normal,” for our kids. We had to put aside our personal concerns or contact with family members in order to put on a brave face for the good of our students. This is what teaching is every day. We are the caring and kindness that students look for when they walk into the classroom. We are their safe haven. We are their security and comfort for 7 hours a day. And so, that is what we do. We set aside whatever we need to in order to to be that emotional stability for our children.
My own children were not born yet in 2001. They have no understanding of the events of that day. They have no idea what a pre-September 11th world was like. But, it’s books like Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story that can help this generation of children begin to understand. Nora Raleigh Baskin weaves the stories of four middle school students together with the backdrop of September 11, 2001. Through this book, children will learn kindness and empathy, while building their background knowledge about the day that our world changed forever.
To help teachers share their stories, and to offer a bit of catharsis, Nora created a blog on her website for teachers to share. Here is my story:
It began as any other fall day; that gorgeous blue sky and beautiful temperatures. In Montgomery County, MD, just outside the nation’s capital, we were already into our third week of school in my 5th grade class. It was my student Shannon’s birthday, so as students filed in right around 9 am, we wished her a happy birthday and got started on our morning routines. . . Continue reading
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
I finally read it this past summer and am so glad that I finally did! In Crenshaw, Katherine Applegate masterfully touches on the emotional topic of homelessness. Crenshaw is a wonderful book to read aloud to students to build empathy.
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication Date: April 12, 2016
I fell in the love with the character of Raymie. She is sweet, determined, and just a little bit broken (reminding me a little of me when I was her age). Her unlikely friendship with Lousiana Elefante and Beverly Tapinski develops over time, and through unusual and semi-traumatic situations. In the end, the Three Rancheros come to each other’s rescue in the most unexpected ways.
Here is a video of Kate explaining how Raymie came to be:
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication Date: April 12, 2016
I am a huge fan of using picture books to help young children understand sensitive topics. While Grandad’s Island
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
April is Poetry Month. Take some time to celebrate with your students with a few of these titles.
Publisher: Harper Collins
Honey, I Love
This is the picture book version of a poem that was originally published in a collection of poems, Honey, I Love and Other Love Poems
In the Land of Words: New and Selected Poems
“The words can come from a memory, or a dream, or something I see or hear or wonder about or imagine. . . ” states Greenfield in her author’s note. In this collection of poems, she celebrates the written word and invites readers to look within themselves and discover what inspires them. A wonderful mentor to help students develop their own ideas through the written word and specifically through the genre of poetry.
My Chinatown: One Year in Poems
This Is the Earth
This Is the Earth
Disclaimer: I received these books from the publisher for review.
©2016 by Dawn Little for My Learning Life. All Amazon links are affiliate links and may result in my receiving a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you.
My Learning Life 