Skip to main content

From Story Time: Summer Week 9

Stories in the Park 
Written by Stephen W. Martin
Illustrated by Cornelia Li
Toronto, ON: Owlkids Books, 2019. Picture Book.

Max and her dog Boomer accidentally break a vase, a treasured family heirloom-the only thing that Max's great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother managed to save when her houseboat sank. Instead of coming clean, they decide to do the next most logical thing: Build a time machine, travel back to her great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother's home, and smash the vase then so that they can't smash it later! What could possibly go wrong? Building the time machine is surprisingly easy, but controlling the thing proves difficult. After mucking up the time-space continuum, Max and Boomer end up crashing into the family houseboat-and sinking it. Lacking the heart to break anything else, Max and Boomer return to the near-present to warn their near-past selves not to build a time machine... --Publisher

Stories in the Park 
Written by Darren Farrell
Illustrated by Maya Tatsukawa
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2021. Picture Book.

With the help of a magic dandelion, Jonah heads off on a grand pirate adventure, but he will need the reader's assistance to navigate choppy waters and defeat ferocious monsters. --Editor

Summer Story Time and Canopy Capers
By David Covell
New York: Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2024. Picture Book.

 In this gorgeous picture book, a girl and her father build a campfire together to keep the cold at bay. But as they welcome passing travelers--from musicians to animals--they create a community, fostered by a crackling fire and its comforting warmth. --Editor

Summer Story Time and Canopy Capers
Written by Sean Taylor
Illustrated by Jean Jullien
Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2017. Picture Book.

Monster may think he wants to be in a scary story, but then again... A hilarious return by the team that brought us Hoot Owl, Master of Disguise. Our author would like to write a funny story, but his main character -- Monster -- has a different idea. He wants to be the star of a chilling, petrifying, utterly terrifying SCARY story. But scary stories... well, they can be very scary -- especially for their characters! Particularly when they involve dark forests and creepy witches and spooky houses... Oh yikes and crikes, this is definitely not the scary story Monster had in mind! Maybe he wants to be in a funny story after all! --Editor

Book Babies
Written by Rachel Matson
Illustrated by Joey Chou
New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021. Board Book.

The Teeny Tiny Farmer says good bye to her cow, sheep, and pig and heads to market in her teeny tiny truck. All is well until her teeny tiny truck gets a tiny bit ... STUCK! What will she do? Can she get unstuck all on her own, or does she need a little bit of help from a friend or two? --Editor

Cuentos
Written by José Carlos Andrés
Illustrated by Lucía Serrano
Madrid: NubeOcho, 2022. Libro illustrado.

A Ainhoa sus padres nunca la regąan, pero ella quiere que la traten como a sus hermanos: --Yo no soy diferente!--grita. A lo mejor si que lo es, porque Ainhoa es... ¡la más revoltosa de los tres! --Publisher

Cuentitos
Written by Verónica Uribe
Illustrated by Scarlet Narciso
Caracas, Venezuela: Ediciones Ekaré, 2017. Libro de cartón.

Hay animales de todos los colores. Pero, por muy distintos que sean, todos se parecen en algo: a todos les gusta jugar y a todos les llega, de vez en cuando, ¡la hora de bañarse. --Publisher


 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Tall by Joan Bauer

Stand Tall By Siena Siegel by Joan Bauer Putnam, 2002, 182 pgs Realistic Fiction Tree is 12 years old and over 6 feet tall. That would be great if he were a basketball player, but he is not. Dealing with his unusual size is not Tree's only challenge. Tree's parents have recently gone through a divorce, and his grandfather has had his leg amputated as the result of an old Vietnam War injury. The strength of this book is the characterizations. All of the main characters are dimensional and sympathetic. Bauer sets the characters in real and often funny family situations. Best of all is the character of Tree. He is boy with a heart to match his stature. This is a great book for boys or girls ages 9-12, as a read aloud or for individual reading. This book could also be a good Rx book for children whose families are going through divorce, or for anyone who feels like they don't fit in.

Review: Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker

  Cincinnati Lee, Curse Breaker By Heidi Heilig New York: Greenwillow Books, 2025. Fiction. 291 pages. Thanks to Cincinnati Lee's no good, dirty rotten, artifact stealing great great great grandfather, Cincinnati's family is now cursed and Cincinnati feels like it's up to her to break the curse. Which involves trying to steal the artifacts back from museums that her grandfather robbed from graves and archeological sites around the world and return them to their countries of origin. But when Cincinnati's first artifact stealing mission goes awry, she decides it might be more effective to steal an all-powerful artifact herself that she can use to break the curse - The Spear of Destiny. Unfortunately her race for the spear will pit her against art smugglers and thieves intent on finding the ancient artifact themselves. If you are looking for an Indiana Jones read-alike, this is the perfect for you! Heavy on the adventure with similar levels of mysticism to those seen in th...

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...