The Book Search

I LOVE picture books.  I love how the authors and illustrators can use both words and images to tell stories.  I how the pictures can illicit emotional responses in ways that words can not.  I love how engaged my really little kids get with a great picture book.  Here are a couple of new ones to look for. The first one is called "My Footprints" by Bao Phi.  It's about Thuy, who is being teased and laughed at by kids at school.  When Thuy goes home, her two moms try to help her feel better.  Thuy notices different tracks in the snow and decides to create tracks from the strongest possible animal to protect herself from the bullies.  Her moms offer different suggestions, including mythical animals from their own cultural backgrounds.  Together they come up with a brand new animal.  It's a lovely story about coming up with strategies for coping in general and specifically with bullies.  The connections to different cultures is affirm...

I'm moving back into my post-CYBILs life.  For the last two months, I've been reading virtually nothing but middle grade fantasy (speculative) fiction.  It's been a lot of fun but I'm ready to move onto something else. So imagine my immense joy this morning to look in Netgalley and find something completely different from what I've been reading, NON FICTION.  So I dove in and what a reward!  Here's some of what I found. The first one is called "Spy on History: Victor Dowd and the World War II Ghost Army" by Enigma Alberti.  It's the story of a group of soldiers during World War II that were artists, weathermen, sound engineers and writers that helped to mislead the Germans into thinking that there were a lot more American soldiers in different places than there actually were.  The story is written in a very easy to read conversational prose that moves the story along quickly.  It recounts several different times during the war when the Ghost Ar...