Groovy!

 Pete the Cat uses his imagination to make a large box into different objects including by flattening it down! The ending is perfect: "When you want to dream of something new, thinking outside the box is the grooviest thing to do!" Very great!

Sensitive!

 There are changes afoot for Paj Ntaub. As she is making sense of all of them, she realizes that her neighbor might be hurting...his wife has died. So she takes her artistic talent to make a map into the world, on his driveway, "Just in case you need it." There are so many beautiful things in this book but, primarily, for me, I LOVE how this story shares the sensitivity and big hearts of children. *This book deserves all of the attention it has been getting!

Gentle and precious attitude

 This is a precious gentle book about how a little girl appreciates and enjoys her father for what he can do, not what he can't do. (He is confined to a wheelchair.)

Love this!

 

This picture book is simply charming. The MacDonalds have a farm adjacent to a body of water. They decide to buy an old boat and fix it up for recreation on the water. They end up calling the boat, "Finntastic." This is great read aloud because the sounds are unexpected. The sounds accompany all the steps it takes to refurbish a boat. The pictures are larger than life and very entertaining. From an adult viewpoint, I like that the farmers sit on their front porch with their coffee. I think this is when they are discussing the purchase of an old boat and they are talking over their dreams with each other. At the end of the book, they are seated by each other again having a soft drink. They have been playing on the water all day! In this scene, I imagine they are congratulating each other on their investment and how their TLC for the boat paid off!

Charming!

 

Thanks, CCBC, for telling me about this book!

Charming premise

Charming characters

Charming plot

Charming illustrations

Charming ending

SPRING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

This is a beautiful book that celebrates the excitement of spring, especially that the days are getting longer! It highlights the ways that humans celebrate spring as well as the ways in which nature itself is changing and happy, e.g. the birds chirping. The pictures are gorgeous and the enthusiasm that is conveyed in contagious!

Great botany lesson!

 

How we blur what is a fruit and what is a vegetable is cleverly addressed in this cute picture book. Tomato is defending his proper place in the fruit bowl and the reader discovers 7 other misunderstood foods--bell peppers, sugar snap peas, eggplant, cucumbers, avocado, green beans and squash all technically qualify as fruit, also!