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book list, social-emotional, summer

List: Summer Vacation

Seth Harris

And Then Comes Summer (Candlewick)
Written by Tom Brenner
Illustrated by Jaime Kim

For ages: 4-8
Few days are as bubbling over with the potential for fun & adventure as the first day of summer break. This book, part of the “And Then Comes…” series, starts with a little boy’s final day of class. That’s followed by games of hide-and-seek, fireworks, parades, camping, and swimming in the lake. The boy and his friends leap from one activity to the next, allowing that free-wheeling summer feeling to exude from these pages. Jaime Kim does an excellent job of making those joyful emotions contagious through her beautiful illustrations.

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author spotlight, illustration, nature, read-aloud

Author Spotlight: Chuck Groenink

Seth Harris

Chuck Groenink grew up in The Netherlands. Like all Dutch children, he experienced one of the best childhoods in the Western world, a time spent exploring & playing & learning through experience. Books and drawing were, of course, a big part of his life. Groenink graduated from the Artez Institute in Kampen, east of Amsterdam. He moved to the United States in 2010 and now resides in Portland, Oregon. He lives there with his wife, dog, cats, and chickens.

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book list, humor, illustration

List: More Silly Books

Seth Harris

The Panda Problem (Dial Books)
Written by Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by Hannah Marks

For ages: 3-7
Oh, this is a great one, taking a chance to parody the strict way children are taught about fictional narratives. The narrator tells us the panda has a big problem, but the character on the page responds that they are okay. But the narrator insists that every main character in a story has to have a problem for there to be a story. The panda decides to become the problem and does several things to irritate and drive the narrator crazy. I’m always a sucker for good metafiction, and this one is perfect in that regard. It does an excellent job of showing the skill of voice in writing.

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fairy tales, indigenous, spotlight

Spotlight: Berry Song/Endlessly Ever After

Seth Harris

Berry Song (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Written & Illustrated by Michaela Goade

For ages: 4-8
The Earth is a generous planet full of food for all the life that lives on it. In Berry Song, we follow a grandmother and her granddaughter foraging on an island near their home in Alaska. Nature is also dangerous, so grandmother teaches her little one the Berry Song, which is meant to alert any bears nearby and scare them off. It also introduces the girl to the names of the berries they pick: “Salmonberry, Cloudberry, Blueberry, Nagoonberry. Huckleberry, Soapberry, Strawberry, Crowberry.” The lesson from grandmother is one of communication and balance with the planet. The pair take in every detail they can: the sound of insect wings, the feel of moss on the branches, the scent of the cedar trees.

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food, history

Nonfiction Corner: Blips on a Screen/Pizza!

Seth Harris

Blips on a Screen: How Ralph Baer Invented TV Video Gaming and Launched a Worldwide Obsession (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
Written by Kate Hannigan
Illustrated by Zachariah Ohora

For ages: 4-8
As much as we play video games in contemporary culture, we don’t know the names of many people who laid the foundations for this form of entertainment. Blips on a Screen attempts to remedy this by telling the story of Ralph Baer. Born Rolf Baer in Germany, his family was Jewish and fled the Nazis in 1938, just before the borders were closed, and the horrors of the Holocaust ratcheted up. After a name change to try and assimilate, Ralph grew up with a love of inventing things. Radios were his passion, which led to using those skills as a soldier for the States in World War II. After coming home, Ralph wondered if there was a way to create electronic games, and the growing popularity of television had him thinking. Ralph would eventually make and release the Odyssey, the first home video game console, in 1972. 

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fantasy, humor, middle grade

Middle Grade Must-Read – This Was Our Pact

Seth Harris

This Was Our Pact (First Second)
Written & Illustrated by Ryan Andrews

I fell in love with the Cartoon Network mini-series Over the Garden Wall from my first viewing. It’s become seasonal viewing for us as autumn rolls in. What I love most is how the world surprises you at every turn, delivering magical-realist surprises, both exciting and scary. It exists in the realm of dream logic, where the oddest things just make sense. Even as an adult, it evokes that sense of wonder we had as children reading through a masterfully written middle-grade novel. That magic is captured in the pages of This Was Our Pact, a story about two friends on a bike ride that takes them into strange & wondrous lands just around the corner from their own neighborhood.

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book list, nature, science

List: Our Friends in the Garden

Seth Harris

Tokyo Digs A Garden (Groundwood Books)
Written by Jon-Erik Lappano
Illustrated by Kellen Hatanaka

For ages: 3-7
Tokyo lives in an urban center choked by pollution and concrete. There used to be forests, streams, and grass fields here, but the people ate it all up with their construction. One day a mysterious old woman bikes by and gives Tokyo some seeds telling him that if he plants them, they will grow into whatever he wishes. Tokyo does so in his backyard, hoping for a garden. The entire city is covered in plants, vines, trees, and flowers the following day. Rivers have busted through and flow where streets once were. A modern fairy tale in a world where the specter of climate change and the loss of the wild grows ever closer.

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african, author spotlight, black lives, community

Author Spotlight – Oge Mora

Seth Harris

Oge Mora may remind you of the work of Ezra Jack Keats with her collage illustration style, which is a beautiful comparison. Keats was revolutionary in pushing for the inclusion of Black children in picture books even though he was a white man. His work has influenced multiple generations of picture book author-illustrators, Mora included. Mora grew up in Columbus, Ohio but now resides in Providence, Rhode Island, after attending the Rhode Island School of Design. RISD has been an incubator for some of the best people working in children’s literature today. They must certainly be doing something right at that school. As you look over these titles, you’ll quickly see that Mora’s interests lie in making books about people coming together and growing.

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fantasy, humor, kid connection

Kid Connection – I Am a Unicorn/Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Seth Harris

I am an uncle who regularly records & sends my nieces and nephew read-aloud videos. While I like sharing books that I love with them, I am curious about what books they enjoy and why. Kid Connection is a place where you aren’t hearing as much from me as you are my nephew and eldest niece (the youngest is only three, so one day, she will be able to join in). So I recently asked them to pick out two books they enjoyed and explain some details about what they liked.

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fairy tales, illustration

Spotlight – Little Red Riding Hood and The Dragon/Three Little Vikings

Seth Harris

Little Red Riding Hood and the Dragon (Harry N. Abrams)
Written by Ying Chang Compestine
Illustrated by Joy Ang

For ages: 4-8
Discovering a great retelling of an old fairy tale classic is always enjoyable. This version is told to us by a big but not bad wolf who wants to set the story straight. Red Riding Hood came from China. She was bringing her Nǎinai herbal soup & a rice cake. Unfortunately, Nǎinai gets eaten up by a big bad dragon who takes her place in the sick bed, waiting to devour Little Red. The confrontation between the two is a real battle where Red has to find objects around the house to fight back the fearsome beast.

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