Skip to main content

From Story Time: Summer Week 4

 
Stories in the Park
Written by Przemysław Wechterowicz
Illustrated by Emilia Dzuibak
Lake Forest, CA: words & pictures, 2017. Picture Book.

At night, Tiger's strange and heartwarming hobbies come to light. --Editor

Stories in the Park
By Guilherme Karsten
Berkeley, CA: Owlkids Books, 2022. Picture Book.

Run! is an easy-to-follow yet joyfully tricky story for preschool to grade-two readers, with language arts, reading, counting, and character education curriculum tie-ins. It offers ample opportunity for interaction in spotting visual cues in a light and humorous mystery and in naming animals and their wacky hiding technics throughout a jungle game of hide-and-seek--all the while subverting expectations and imparting the valuable lesson that things are not always what they seem. In the dark depths of the jungle, something is on the hunt and all of the animals have to RUN! One by one, as fast as they can, they look high and low among the vines and trees--and even under the jungle floor--for a place to hide. But will they find one before the count down stops? And just WHO are they running from? In this suspenseful and hilarious game of jungle hide-and-seek, kids will wait with baited breath to find out why everyone is on the run, all the while laughing at the ridiculous hiding spots each animal comes up with. The most delightfully ridiculous surprise of all comes when the scary hunter is revealed to be the smallest and cutest animal in the jungle--a mouse! Ready or not, here he comes! With plenty to discover on every page, Run! offers a source of endless entertainment that will thrill kids on their first read, and continue to induce giggles as they seek out each page's hidden delights for many reads to come. --Publisher

Canopy Capers and Summer Story Time
I Am a Dragon!
By Sabina Hahn
New York: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2023. Picture Book.

A squad of frogs is excited when they spot a Very Big Frog in their pond. But when the creature says that he isn't a frog, the frogs insist that he's the one who is wrong. What happens when the creature has had enough of the frogs' quibbling? Find out in this pitch-perfect, hilarious read-aloud about misunderstandings, imagination, forgiveness, and friendship! --Editor

Canopy Capers and Summer Story Time
Written by David LaRochelle
Illustrated by Lian Cho
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2023. Picture Book.

High on a mountain live 100 mighty dragons all named Broccoli. When a tremendous wind blows half the dragons away, ten others sail off to become professional surfers in Hawaii. The oldest and youngest dragons take a train to New York City to start their own heavy metal band. And a mysterious wizard turns four more into a unicorn, a werewolf, a zombie, and a tiny pink poodle. Now how many dragons are left? Young readers will delight in following each and every dragon as they leave their home for marvelous adventures, until there is but one dragon remaining. That's when this final dragon named Broccoli retreats to a cave for the winter and reappears in the spring with a surprise that will thrill and delight. Prepare to read again! --Editor

Book Babies
Written by Sam McBratney
Illustrated by Anita Jeram
Somerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2023. Board Book.

Little Nutbrown Hare is out exploring on his own. Off he hops along the path and through the grass until he reaches Cloudy Mountain, where something extraordinary happens: he discovers a new friend! Now the fun can really begin.Twenty-five years after we met the Nutbrown Hares, this enchanting new tale about friendship is bound to capture the hearts of Guess How Much I Love You fans--and everyone else--the world over. --Editor

Cuentos
Written by Tammi Sauer
Illustrated by Goro Fujita
New York: Union Square Kids, 2024. Libro illustrado.

Cuando un niño conoce a un pequeño extraterrestre perdido, los dos de inmediato entablan una amistad fantástica. Van a la escuela, exploran el vecindario y se divierten mucho. Pero de pronto, a la hora de dormir el extraterrestre se siente muy, muy triste. ¿Podrá el niño descubrir qué necesita su nuevo compañero más que nada en el mundo? Esta graciosa y conmovedora historia es la prueba de que las amistades y la familia son lo más importante del universo, sin importar quién seas. --Publisher

Cuentitos
By Juana Martinez-Neal
Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2023. Libro de cartón. 

La adorada estrella de Alma y cómo obtuvo su nombre ahora aprece en una divertida serie de libros de cartón bilingües, con palabras sencillas y frases simples en inglés y español -- ideal para compartir con niños que están aprendiendo ambos idiomas."--Provided by publisher.
"Alma is known for her iconic stripes--but there's more she'd like to show you! She has arms, hands, and fingers for patting a pet bird--as well as legs, feet, toes, and one adorable belly, below her ever-present heart. --Publisher


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review: The Factory

The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...

Review: Blood in the Water

Blood in the Water By Tiffany D. Jackson New York: Scholastic, 2025. Fiction. 255 pages. 12-year-old Kaylani McKinnon can't help but feel like a fish out of water. She's a Brooklyn girl spending her summer on Martha's Vineyard surrounded by wealthy family friends in their mansion. All she really wants is to stay home all summer where she her incarcerated father can easily reach her, and she can keep working to find ways to prove him innocent of fraud and embezzlement. Despite her protests, she finds herself on the island with the snooty granddaughters of her host. Soon after Kaylani's arrival, a popular teen boy is found murdered and she decides to conduct her own investigation. As she tries to discover what happened to Chadwick Cooper, Kaylani finds that not everything on Martha's Vineyard is as perfect as it appears. Thrillers for middle grade readers can be hard to find, but Tiffany D. Jackson succeeds in her first middle grade novel. A quick moving plot, tight d...

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry

National Geographic Book of Animal Poetry Edited by J. Patrick Lewis National Geographic, 2012, 183 p. Poetry In this beautiful poetry collection, the National Children's Poet Laureate, J. Patrick Lewis, has teamed up with the amazing photographers at National Geographic. The result is 200 poems about animals, all illustrated with stunning nature photography.  The poems are well chosen and include rhyming, free verse, and shape poetry. Some of the poems are funny, many are contemplative and all are nicely typeset on top of the full color photographs. One of my favorites is a shape poem about flamingos, with a photograph of a flock of flamingos which seem to be standing the the shape of a flamingo (how did they do that?).  Lewis ends the collection with a brief but interesting section about writing animal poetry.  This selection is sure to turn any animal lover into a poetry lover.