February is Black American History Month. Your local library may feature a collection of books, a display of old photographs, historic documents, lectures, creative workshops, and/or performances for the occasion. Check your local library’s website and online calendar to find out what it is doing for Black American History Month. Also, your library’s website may… Read More »
Two kids and I went to the library a few weeks ago to get a book about how planes fly. The library was a small branch. It was difficult to find a children’s book about airplanes. Several children’s books about flight and aircraft had too much text for a five-year-old child to understand. The plan… Read More »
The five-year-old boy, whom I read to, chose The Berenstain Bears and A Job Well Done by Jan and Mike Berenstain at the library for me to borrow and to read to him. This paperback book is very thin with approximately 32 pages. There are colorful illustrations on every page and plenty of text. This… Read More »
The five-year-old boy, whom I read to, picked up The Deadly Double in the library for me to borrow for him. The Deadly Double is a children’s book by David Seidman and illustrated by Erik Doescher, Mike DeCarlo, and Lee Loughridge. It has few colored pictures across five chapters. This is not a children’s picture… Read More »
Have you ever heard the quote, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers?” If so, do you know where it comes from? Good for you if you do. The quote has been repeated and parodied in movies, television shows, and cartoons. I have heard it for years in entertainment media and have never… Read More »
The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, was originally published in 1922. For this book review, I listened to an e-audiobook version. When I realized that the e-audiobook was an incomplete version of the original printed story, I borrowed an e-book to read. The Velveteen Rabbit is a classic children’s book. The story is about a… Read More »
Goodnight Moon, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, is a classic children’s picture book. This is a bedtime story. Your local library may have multiple copies of it. In Goodnight Moon, the little bunny child in bed is looking around at all of the inanimate and animate objects, it can see… Read More »
Little Mouse’s Sweet Treat, by Shana Hollowell, is a children’s picture book about Little Mouse’s quest to find a sweet treat to eat. This is also a rhyming book. It is illustrated by Jennifer Finch, who hand painted the illustrations in watercolor. The author’s love of animals and nature shows through in this story’s plot… Read More »
The Lesser Blessed is a movie about a Native American teenage boy, Larry Sole, in a small Canadian town, who is lonely, depressed, and bullied. He is raised by a single mother and her boyfriend is his hero. Larry Sole laments the loss of his traditional heritage; yet, he has a crush on a non-native… Read More »
Small Wolf, by Nathaniel Benchley, is both children’s literature and historical fiction. The story is about a first contact between Native Americans and Europeans on the island of Manhattan. The story does not go far enough in detail to describe the harm to Native Americans caused by immigrants. An e-audiobook version of this story on… Read More »