Author Archive

“The toad feels bumpy, like a gnarly tree. The snake feels smooth, like a stone polished by the sea. One by one the hedgehog discovers the textures of his animal friends. But how does the hedgehog feel himself? Award-winning author/illustrator Rebecca Bender’s How Do You Feel? will utterly charm children ages 2 to 5 with […]

“Little Fox, Lost is a children’s picturebook with an important moral about safety. When a young fox strays far from home and becomes lost, what is he to do? Fortunately, he remembers what his mother taught him: ‘If ever you are lost, my child, / Don’t let a stranger guide you. / Be still, and […]

“Adrift at Sea is a nonfiction picturebook about a six-year-old Vietnamese boy named Tuan Ho, one of sixty Vietnamese refugees who, in the year 1981, braved a dangerous sea journey in search of a better life. The a two-page spread at the end place Tuan Ho’s journey in historical context, describing the exodus of refugees […]

“Format: Hardcover Rating: (1-5 5 is a starred review) 4 Genre: Picture book What did you like about the book? This book is about an adorable hedgehog who asks animals how they feel. The answers speak to their physical nature. A duckling feels fuzzy like tall grass reaching for the sun. Each animal responds with […]

Excerpt: “All libraries [should buy this book]”—Youth Services Book Review Full Text: “Format: Hardcover/Board book Rating: (1-5, 5 is a starred review) 3 Genre:  Picture book What did you like about the book? The format of this book is a cross between a hardcover and a board book. The cover is padded and the pages are […]

“Did you know an elephant’s trunk has more than 60,000 muscles? This is just one of many things I learned from this fantastic book. Elephant Journey: The True Story of Three Zoo Elephants and their Rescue from Captivity by Rob Laidlaw is a great non-fiction picture book. That means it is a great book with true facts, […]

“We rated this book: 5/5 Tuan lives in a place where life isn’t very good and a lot of people are getting killed. His mother tells him that they are going on a boat to escape…. This book is true, and it is really sad. It was really scary for Tuan to try to escape, […]

“Timo the cottontail rabbit has signed himself up for the upcoming garden tour. He creates a list for what he would like to keep, discard and add to his garden however tension begins to mount as he worries that one week might not be enough time to make his ‘good’ garden look great. By mid-week […]

“The Wolves Return is both a beautifully and a realistically illustrated picture book. It offers young readers just the right amount of text and back story to give them a complete picture of the purposeful reintroduction of gray wolves in 1995-1996 to Yellowstone National Park without getting too fact-heavy. Publishing 20 years after this historic […]

“…The Wolves Return is another book by the environmental writer/illustrator Celia Godkin….Thirteen Canadian wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and a further ten the following year. Enough time has now passed to fully appreciate the positive effects that the re-introduction of this one species has had on the entire ecological system. This has […]