The word "parent" is not just a noun. It's also a verb.
Berta, compartmentalizes all of her feelings in four separate boxes: yellow, red, blue and green. If she gets “too sad” she opens up the blue box and fills it with tears. Too happy? No problem. Opens up the yellow box and fills it up with springing jumps. Once she’s done expressing herself, she closes the boxes tightly.
This web has a few bugs in it.
I’m putting this one in the “coffee table books for the middle grade set” category. Which is not necessarily a good thing, but not necessarily a bad thing either.
In short, the book tries to cover too much, in too little space.
From the insecurities of body image to “a” goodbye, to the final goodbye, Dakos weaves humor and pathos into a wonderful collection of poems that will get children talking.
Max and Ely are two little boys working hard to get the moon to stay in place. They send a rocket up to try to lasso it, they even try to scold it into submission. Each night the moon comes and goes, bringing closer the day that Ely must leave for the hospital.
In these uncertain times, this book felt so grounding to me. The book is probably more suited towards the 3-8 year old crowd, but the words and illustrations were soothing enough and a great reminder to anyone, regardless of age that living in the moment, breathing, feeling, and finding your calm is not only a faint possibility, but within all of our grasp in one way or another.
As we read through the story, we find that what we see at face value isn’t always the whole picture. We learn that listening to others and validating their feelings is important.
Kanella is a stray dog who lives on the island of Lesvos in Greece. She’s scrawny, afraid of humans, the other dogs, and even the alley cats from whom she can steal away no food. She ekes out a lonely existence, until she finds a home among the camp workers who have arrived to help refugees from the Middle East embark on the next leg of their perilous journey (this is implied by the description of the refugees, and confirmed in the Author’s Notes).