An unexpected and delightful calm eased over me after reading Planting the Wild Garden, so much so that I read it a few times for the addictive hit. (I had just seen the documentary If a Tree Falls, about the…
Category: Environment
Needed — Books for Young Women for Change!
This inspiring appeal came to me via the Rutgers library school listserve: Hello, I am Adelah Sohail, a freshman from Afghanistan. I am a Rutgers student and I live in Douglass Residential College. I have a request from all of…
Listen to the silence
The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan with illustrations by Peter Sis, Scholastic Press, 2011. $17.99 An unrelenting silence surrounds many sickly children. It is the silence of rest and books, broken only by the muffled echoes of other children…
FOLLOWING MY PAINT BRUSH, a child’s story from washing dishes to creating images
FOLLOWING MY PAINT BRUSH by Dulari Devi What a gift for any age reader. The story is inspiring. The illustrations are stunning. If you would enjoy being transported to India, open this book: “To earn more money, we worked in…
Picture book spotlights independent women at war
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 40 pages 16.99 The title Independent Dames might make you think Laurie Halse Anderson’s latest nonfiction picture book tells a contemporary feminist tale. But images by Matt Falkner make it readily…
The Green Book
RUTH AND THE GREEN BOOK by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, illustrations by Floyd Cooper This picture book is about a family road trip in their fancy new car. What could be more fun or exciting? Eating at cafés and roadside…
Monika Schröder, author of Saraswati’s Way, speaks of poverty and education
Monika Schröder grew up in Germany. She studied history at the Ruhr University in Bochumand worked in the German parliament before becoming an elementary school teacher. She has taught in international schools in Egypt, Chile, and the Sultanate of…
The Listeners
The Listeners is a picture book that gave me a picture of a culture I perhaps had not heretofore wanted to think about, that of slave families in the antebellum South. It is ultimately about hope because it is…
Red Bird Sings: The Story of Zitkala-Sa
RED BIRD SINGS: The Story of Zitkala-Sa, Native American Author, Musician, and Activist, Adapted by Gina Capaldi & Q.L. Pearce, illustrations by Gina Capaldi Imagine being eight years old and leaving home. Not running away but leaving in order to…
Youme Landowne: Creating a Safe Place to Talk About Hard Things
Youme Landowne is the author and illustrator of the picture book Selavi (That is Life): A Haitian Story of Hope (Cinco Puntos Press), which tells the true story of how street children came together in Haiti to create their own…