Ages 5-11
Blog Post
Kids Bits - Add Salsa
by ryanikoglu
Manana Iguana is a Latin birthday nod to the Little Red Hen story "Who will help Me?" Soy Una Pizza provides plenty of songs to party in Spanish. Putumayo's Latin Playground will put mood into the next reading of the book before the return to the Library.
Blog Post
Kid Bits - Penguin March
by ryanikoglu
March of the Penguins is a hit at the box office. Why not read more true stories of penguins with your children? Three new titles at the Library are And Tango Makes Three, A Mother’s Journey, and My Season With Penguins.
Blog Post
Kid Bits - Bottle Houses
by ryanikoglu
Grandma Prisbrey raised 7 kids in a trailer home until she finally settled on a scrap of dirt in California. She built her own house out of colorful bottles from the dump, and hand-mixed cement. Enter a true fantasy through the book Bottle Houses and Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village.
Blog Post
Blackberry Stew by Isabell Monk
by Tahira
Hope's Grandpa Jack has passed away. She does not want to go to the funeral for fear that she will never see him again. Aunt Poogee reminds Hope that the people we love are always with us as long as there a memories to share. Blackberry Stew is a soothing read for a child dealing with the loss of a loved one.
Blog Post
History Bits - Confucius: The Golden Rule
by ryanikoglu
Confucius: the Golden Rule is a biography of the ancient philosopher, Confucius. Although Confucius never wrote down his thoughts, followers recorded his teachings which are still relayed today. The French artist Clément’s elegant paintings of towns, temples and the bucktoothed Confucius himself have an ancient feel that perfectly sets the story.
Blog Post
Girls Hold Up This World by Jada Pinkett Smith
by Tahira
Jada Pinkett Smith's poem Girls Hold Up This World comes alive with photographs of women and girls from all walks of life. The tender poem highlights the balance of feminine strength and compassion.
Blog Post
Song of the Water Boatman & Other Pond Poems
by Blanche
"Listen for me on a spring night, on a wet night, on a rainy night.…Listen for me tonight, tonight, and I'll sing you to sleep." So begins Song of the Water Boatman and other Pond Poems by Joyce Sidman. Poetry forms from Haiku to sea shanties highlight the food chain of a pond, cattails in all seasons, or late fall when a painted turtle settles into the mud. Each poem is accompanied by a paragraph that provides scientific information about a specific creature, plant, or aspect of pond life. Becky Prange's woodcuts are a natural accompaniment to Sidman’s poems. My favorite is the title poem about a Water Boatman; “Down through the jolly waters green, I stroke with legs both long and lean, like a streamlined class-A submarine…on a sunny summer’s morning.” Delightful!!
For ages 6 and up.
Blog Post
History Bits - Old Man River
by ryanikoglu
Mississippi is an Ojibwe word meaning “Great River.” Monday on the Mississippi makes you feel you're in a boat flowing down the river through the states from the Minnesota source to the Louisiana mouth. Steamboat! the Story of Captain Blanche Leathers is a biography of the first female steamboat captain. Blanche married Bowling Leathers, captain of the Natchez, the fastest and grandest steamboat on the Mississippi. Blanche joined her husband in the pilot house and was taught everything he knew. In 1894 she passed the difficult exam and became a “Steamboatman”.
Blog Post
History Bits - Librarian of Basra
by ryanikoglu
The value of a library is the ideas it holds and shares. It is Banned Books Week season, and The Librarian Of Basra is the true story, told in a picture book, of a brave Librarian in Iraq, Alia Muhammad Baker, who saved the contents of her library during war.