Review: Will You Be My Friend?

Primarily a lesson in friendship and patience, Will You Be My Friend? highlights the beauty and essential nature of simple play. Too often children are scheduled within an inch of their existence and play is abandoned in search of “more meaningful” activities. McBratney highlights how much simple play can accomplish in simple, unencumbered moments.

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OFF THE SHELF REVIEW: When Pumpkins Fly

Seeing a pumpkin for the first time, the local kids eagerly carve and light their first jack-o-lantern. But when everyone adjourns to the community hall for the Halloween dance, the pumpkin is left alone outside.
He doesn’t know why he’s a quilt. His parents are both sheets, and so are all of his friends. (His great-grandmother was a lace curtain, but that doesn’t really help cheer him up.) He feels sad and left out when his friends are zooming around and he can’t keep up.

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Review: La Frontera (My Journey with Papa)

I want you to stop for a moment and imagine being a parent telling your eight-year-old that you’re about to send him on a journey that will take him to another country, mostly by foot, across hundreds of miles, across all sorts of terrains, in all sorts of weather, facing untold dangers, in search of a better life. Now imagine that you’re the eight-year-old.

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OFF THE SHELF REVIEW: Trap the Monster

Turn the pages in this delightfully silly board book to lock a wolf behind bars, send a vampire away in a rocket ship, and smash a monster with a fly swatter… until there’s nothing left to be scared of!

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Review: What if a Fish

I want more of this kind of book for my kids. Without making it mushy or unbelievable, Fajardo masterfully intertwines the stories of this precocious not-child and his not-adult brother into one of the sweetest narratives I’ve read in a long time. She allows them to be vulnerable and share a very tender bond that flies in the face of the machismo we’ve been told to expect, and to celebrate.

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OFF THE SHELF REVIEW: A Tiger Called Tomás

When Tomás and his family moved to a new house on a new street, he took it into his head that the new people might not like him.

He doesn’t know why he’s a quilt. His parents are both sheets, and so are all of his friends. (His great-grandmother was a lace curtain, but that doesn’t really help cheer him up.) He feels sad and left out when his friends are zooming around and he can’t keep up.

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Fault Lines in the constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today

There are people who carry a pocket US Constitution in their, you know, pocket. This book is not for those people. In my experience, the folks with the slim black copy of the Constitution in their jacket pocket tend to take the document as an unchanging lodestar, practically perfect in every way. I suspect they wouldn’t like this marvelous book aimed at middle grade Con Law scholars , because the authors present a more sophisticated, nuanced, and dare I say, correct view of the matter, one that shows us where the Framers got the Constitution right, and where they just got it written. And you know what? It’s a serious page turner.

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Review: A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow

As the youngest daughter of a Cuban family living in Miami, Lila Reyes has everything she could possibly want. She has spent her life learning to make all of the recipes her grandmother taught her while working at their family bakery, La Paloma. Cooking and baking are Lila’s heart and soul; they are the passions that drive her dreams and fuel her goals. The recipes her grandmother taught her go far beyond the kitchen where she spends so much of her time; they are the very beat of her heart.

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OFF THE SHELF REVIEW: The Halloween Tree

Everyone knows most young saplings dream of becoming Christmas trees. But one grumpy, old tree who doesn’t like lights, decorations, or people is determined to be different.

He doesn’t know why he’s a quilt. His parents are both sheets, and so are all of his friends. (His great-grandmother was a lace curtain, but that doesn’t really help cheer him up.) He feels sad and left out when his friends are zooming around and he can’t keep up.

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