Noah Webster and His Words

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Written by Jeri Chase Ferris
Illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch

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SCBWI Golden Kite award for best NF book of 2012

The second most popular book printed in English ever? Webster’s Dictionary! Jeri Chase Ferris provides a clever biography for third grade readers and tells the details of Webster’s prolific writing without being too heady or verbose. Ferris highlights the most important and interesting facts of this key American figure. Readers will immediately recognize Webster’s name from the dictionary that nearly everyone owns, but Noah Webster and His Words highlights details that most have never learned. Students will delight to learn that Webster started out as a teacher, and was driven to write books because there were no American books for his students. His search for knowledge and correct information drove him to travel and speak broadly, and he played a key role politically in the early years of the United States. Noah Webster is an American Hero!

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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, Nonfiction

My First Day

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Written and Illustrated by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

Steve Jenkins and Robin Page won New York Time’s Best Illustrated Book of the Year in 2006 for Move! and the 2004 Caldecott Honor for What Do You Do with a Tail Like This?

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We all know what human babies do on their first days: sleep, cry, eat, and fill their diapers!Buy on Amazon But what does a blue wildebeest, emperor penguin, or a golden snub-nosed monkey do on its first day? For succinct answers to those questions and more, My First Day is a must-read. Steven Jenkins and Robin Page do it again! For My First Day, they deliver a charmingly illustrated book packed with plenty of information to whet a young reader’s appetite for more information. The illustrations are filled with detail and texture. This book is a read aloud for a third grade class, and it would be amusing to have students read the text that accompanies each illustration and wait for the rest of the class to guess what kind of animal is described. Afterall, who would guess that any frog would be in his father’s mouth from tadpole to baby frog, even with the hint, “On my first day, I hopped out of my father’s mouth.”
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Posted in 2013, Contemporary, Nature

Desmond and the Very Mean Word

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Written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Carlton Abrams

Illustrated by A.G. Ford

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Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words truly torture the soul. Bullying can be as overt as a mean word shouted across the playground, or as subtle as exclusion from a game. The setting for Desmond and the Very Mean Word is South Africa in the mid-1900s, but it may as well be America in the twenty-first century. The themes of racism, bullying, forgiveness, and friendship are challenging and inspiring, and great points for beginning discussion in a third grade class. Any young pupil can relate to Desmond, hearing ugly things and wanting to retaliate. Through the help of Father Trevor, Desmond learns the valuable lesson that retaliation does not satisfy the soul nearly as much as forgiveness and peace.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, Nonfiction

Easy Desserts From Around The World

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Written by Heather Alexander

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Easy Desserts from Around the World is a super fun cookbook aimed at third grade readers and up. What is unique about this cookbook is the assortment of recipes collected from around the world. Through this cookbook kids are exposed to eleven different desserts, such as Russian Strawberries Romanoff and Mexican Celebration Cookies to German Lebkuchen and Italian Lemon Granita to name just a few. Yum!

Each recipe features a photo of the dessert along with a picture of the country from where the dessert originates, as well as colorfully presented fun to know information relevant to the country and/or dessert. Kids will not only be motivated to make something sweet to eat, they will also experience another culture first-hand and see the world a little differently because of it.
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Posted in 2011, Contemporary, Nonfiction

Infinity Ring: A Mutiny In Time

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Written by James Dashner

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Oh what a swashbuckling tale of time travel, adventure and mutiny on the high seas.A smidgen of danger is thrown in: storms and volcanic eruptions, increasing crime, and earthquakes, and all of it because of the things that went wrong in the past. Time itself has gone wrong. The only way to set things right, then, is to travel to the past to correct those mistakes.

“What mistakes?”, the reader may ask. And the author tells us. This is the first book in a seven-book series and James Dashner creates the scaffolding on which this story, and all subsequent stories, will hang. He digs a deep foundation, taking us back to Aristotle’s time. Events back then took a turn they should not have when Alexander is assassinated. This leads to Aristotle seeing this as a mistake, a tear in the fabric of reality, and plans to make it right. He creates a secret society called the Hystorians, whose job is to track and document the Great Breaks through the ages, in the hope that someday time travel will enable the Hystorians to return to the past and mend the tears in the fabric.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Science Fiction

First Mothers

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Written by Beverly Gherman

Illustrated by Julie Downing

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Who knew Andrew Jackson loved to run off and find mischief, or George W. Bush visited the principal’s office frequently, or Barack Obama’s spent many years in Jakarta with his globe-trotting mother? First Mothers offers entertaining, weird, and sad details about the lives of the United States’ 44 Presidents. It gives a unique look at the backgrounds of the presidents’ upbringing, shining light on the so-called backstage life of our nation’s Presidents. This book is much too long to read in one sitting, of course, but one can imagine a second or third grade teacher reading information about a different First Mother every few days. Beverly Gherman’s and Julie Downing’s research has paid off in dividends; First Mothers actually inspires students to do their own research to further understand our country’s leaders’ lives. Some of the facts are funny, such as Nancy Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln’s mother) used to be a wrestler in her hometown: “She wrestled many of the men in her town.” Other facts are sobering, like the First Mothers and Fathers who died when the presidents were young. This book humanizes the great leaders we tend to de-humanize with our criticism and awe.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, History, Nonfiction, Social Studies

Ivy and Bean Make the Rules

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Written by Annie Barrow

Illustrated by Sophie Blackall

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Hooray for Ivy and Bean!  The latest book in the series has Bean feeling left out as her sister Nancy goes to camp.  At Girl Power 4-ever, she gets to do so many cool things.  Bean has to sit at home.  Mom tells her she can go to the park by herself, if that helps.  It doesn’t.  But when Ivy comes over, Bean sees that they can make their own camp, a better camp, because they can do anything they want.  Ivy’s mom got new curtains so they use the old ones to make a tent (with the help of duct tape).  They make up a great name: Camp Flaming Arrow.  They set about doing camp things – like crafts.  A friendship bracelet craft turns into an escape trick as the strings get wrapped around both arms of both girls.  They have so much fun that some kids visiting their grandmother join them.  The nature study has them searching for the dangerous Komodo dragon which attracts another boy who is bored of soccer camp.  At the end of the week, Bean had way more fun than Nancy.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, Fiction, Humor, Novels

Infinity and Me

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Written by Kate Hosford
Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

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Infinity is a big subject to tackle in a picture book. In the author’s note, she points out that as soon as kids learn what infinity is, they use it all the time. So a picture book seemed like a logical way to explore some of the ideas kids have about infinity. Uma, the young narrator, begins her musing about infinity after she sees the starry night. Certainly there seems to be an infinite number of stars and it makes her feel very small. She asks her friends about infinity. Charlie says it is a number that goes on forever. Samantha said the infinity symbol on its side is like a racetrack she can drive on forever. Everyone uses the word ‘forever’ and that becomes difficult for Uma to deal with. Then Grandma snuggles with Uma under the stars and her love stretches to infinity.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary

The Knight, the Princess, and the Rock: A Classic Persian Tale

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Written by Sara Azizi

Illustrated by Alireza Sadeghian

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As an ancient civilization with a rich heritage of storytelling, Persia is a wonderful place to find material for children’s books. This beautiful little tale proves it. The story itself is certainly simple enough for third graders to understand and embrace. This may be a candidate to read aloud in a classroom, though. The concepts of kings, knights, and magic may need a little discussion.

When a knight is sent on a mission to rid farmlands of destructive wild boars, he finds himself in enemy territory. This does not prevent him from falling in love with the princess of the land he’s in. The enemy king discovers the knight’s presence and imprisons him in a deep hole covered by a magic rock. The princess is also banished. She is able to keep the knight alive with food passed through a hole. Finally, help arrives from the knight’s home. Through love and prayer, the help frees the knight. The knight and princess return to his home, where they are married and live a happy life.
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Posted in 2012, Contemporary, Fiction

Going Home: The Mystery of Animal Migration

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Written by Marianne Berkes
Illustrated by Jennifer DiRubbio

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Stories surface from time to time about pets traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles to find their way back home. Even humans have an uncanny ability to find their way home. But what if you had more than one home? Your home could even be someplace you’d never seen before.

Going Home is told in pleasing rhyme. Readers may want to read aloud each page to get the full effect. This is listed as “A Share Nature With Children Book.” Berkes includes information about animals from loggerhead turtles to monarch butterflies to manatees. Other animals discussed are ruby-throated hummingbirds, Pacific salmon, Canada geese, California gray whales, caribou, the Arctic tern, and emperor penguins.
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Posted in 2010, Contemporary, Nature, Nonfiction
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