Pajama Press

“Alma Fullerton’s text is rich, spare and beautifully crafted. Her narrative is strong and lyrical as she shares Kato’s daily trip to get drinking water for his family…. This important book shows children how difficult life can be for kids living in war-torn areas and in drought….It addresses tough issues in a hopeful and age-appropriate manner and is an excellent read-aloud for the classroom. Karen Patkau’s digitally rendered illustrations are colorful and lush. They work beautifully with the text and illuminate the message in the story.”

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“…Overall, I liked A Good Trade, and believe that it can be used to launch a discussion about gratitude and what it’s like to live in a third world country.”

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Pajama Press is proud to announce that A Good Trade by Alma Fullerton and Karen Patkau has been nominated for the 2015 Kentucky Bluegrass Awards.

A student  choice award program, the Kentucky Bluegrass Awards are open to all public and private schools as well as public libraries in the state of Kentucky. The program has been encouraging young people to read quality literature for 32 years. Learn more at kba.nku.edu.

A Good Trade, which highlights a day in the life of a young boy in rural Uganda, is also nominated for the 2014 OLA Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award.

Congratulations to both Alma and Karen. We’re thrilled that so many students will be reading A Good Trade.

“This book is a good example of how spare language and imagery can highlight social issues in a way that young children can understand. I’d read this book again to study how the author uses words to create compelling images. The illustrations evoke a strong sense of atmosphere, as well as providing more to think about in showing details of Kato’s life in Africa.”

Click here to read the full post at That’s Another Story.

“…a simple and poignant story.  Told in a clear, clean prose, the story is about Kato who goes to fetch water and do chores, but also finds something special to give the aid worker that gives out new shoes.

The art is digital.  It has a mixed media collage look to it…There are several terrific perspective spreads…I would use this with preschoolers to second graders, because of the simple storyline, but older children could be introduced to a study on Uganda with this title.”

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“Alma Fullerton and Karen Patkau’s A Good Trade starts out simple. Kato, a young boy wakes on his mat in Uganda. He carries his gerry cans to the well for water, splashing his bare feet. Questions start to form in the reader’s mind. Why are the cattle-spotted fields guarded by soldiers? What is this “aid worker’s truck” Kato peeks into? He spies a single white poppy and makes a trade for what he’s seen: a pair of runners. The beautiful pictures and the one-sentence-per-page provide great starting points for discussing life in Uganda, world help organizations, and inequity in general.”

Click here to see the rest of the Books with Sole(s) list.

While perusing the internet this morning, we came across a beautiful book trailer for Alma Fullerton’s picture book A Good Trade. Created by Sarah from Hugh Cairns V.C. School in Saskatoon, this trailer manages to perfectly capture the essence of this book. Take a look.

Click here to see our book trailer for A Good Trade.

Pajama Press is pleased to announce that three of our Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 titles have been nominated for this year’s Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading^®awards.

A Good Trade by Alma Fullerton, illustrated by Karen Patkau, has been nominated for the Blue Spruce Award™. Nix Minus One by Jill MacLean has been nominated for the White Pine Fiction Award™. One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch has been nominated for the Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award™. At the Festival of Trees in May 2013, Skrypuch’s Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War was declared an honour book for the Red Maple Non-Fiction Award™.

The Forest of Reading^® is a reading program run by the Ontario Library Association.Each year, over 250,000 participants read a shortlist of books in their age category and vote for their favourites.

Pajama Press extends our most sincere congratulations to Alma Fullerton, Karen Patkau, Jill MacLean, and Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch. Our warmest thanks go to the Ontario Library Association for promoting reading through this exciting program.

“Patkau’s bright illustrations originally caught my eye. I grabbed this lyrical book to teach my children about a corner of the world they have no other way to experience. Fullerton shows life in this war-torn part of the world in an age-appropriate way.”

— Kristin W. Larson

Click here to discover the recommended activities to teach this book.

Click here to see the full list of Perfect Picture Books.

In a recent article titled “Lost Childhood,” School Library Journal contributor Kathleen St. Isaacs highlighted books “about child refugee experiences and children who’ve found safe havens, but have haunting memories.” The selections are “emotionally rich narratives, often with a political subtext.” They include two books published by Pajama Press:

A Good Trade by Alma Fullerton, illustrated by Karen Patkau

“Gr. 1–3—On his daily trek to get water, a Ugandan boy sees a treasure in an aid truck—bright new sneakers—and finds just the right thing to exchange. Colorful illustrations full of details of daily life in a war-torn country will show well when the spare text is read aloud.”

One Step at a Time: A Vietnamese Child Finds Her Way

“Gr. 4–6—A seven-year-old Vietnamese refugee, newly arrived in Canada and unable to understand the language, faces a painful operation to straighten an ankle bent by polio. Tuyet’s poignant story was begun in Last Airlift: A Vietnamese Orphan’s Rescue from War (2012) but readers don’t have to have read that to enjoy this story of healing.”

Learn more about School Library Journal here.