My Colors, My World/Mis Colores, Mi Mundo

My Colors, My World/Mis Colores, Mi Mundo
Author and illustrator: Maya Christina Gonzalez
Publisher: Children’s Book Press
ISBN-10: 0892392215
ISBN-13: 978-0892392216

My Colors, My World is a celebration of color, the colors found in nature. Maya Christina Gonzalez modeled the girl in this story after herself and after a doll she had as a child. The result is a beautiful book with a big-eyed Latina girl filled with wonder for all the colors in her world. The story teaches children, that no matter where they find themselves in the world, they can find beauty.

Little girls will love this book - the shiny pink dust jacket just screams girl. Each page celebrates something – a hot pink desert sunset, a garden where purple and orange flowers grows, her red swing set, the black of her father’s hair and the beautiful green of the prickly and ubiquitous desert cactus.

Maya Christina Gonzalez’ almost mural-like paintings of the desert and little Maya are rich, deep, uniquely Latino and colorful, bringing to mind Mexican masters like Rivera, Kahlo, Orozco and Siquieros but only just a bit. Gonzalez adds a whimsy they never had and brings life and fun to each page . There’s something so appealing and happy about her art. It makes you smile and keep smiling. The colors she uses bring sunshine and light and nature all to glorious life. Little Maya is a happy child and a dreamy one, which makes the book even more engaging. Her suns and moons remind me of those colorful ceramic happy face suns that my grandmother would hang about the house.

The book is bilingual and sure to be a hit with ages 4-8, especially girls who love pink like my granddaughter does.

Book Description from the publisher:

Little Maya longs to find brilliant, beautiful, inspiring color in her world.…but Maya’s world, the Mojave Desert, seems to be filled with nothing but sand. With the help of a feathered friend, she searches everywhere to discover color in her world. In the brilliant purple of her mother's flowers, the cool green of a cactus, the hot pink sunset, and the shiny black of Papi's hair, Maya finally finds what she was looking for. The book’s appealing narrative and bold illustrations encourage early readers to observe and explore, and to discover the colors in their own

A Seed is Sleepy

A Seed is Sleepy
Author: Dianna Hutts Aston
Illustrator: Sylvia Long
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN-10: 0811855201
ISBN-13: 978-0811855204

The author and illustrator of the gorgeous An Egg is Quiet join together once again to create an astounding illustrated introduction to the life of a seed. Long’s amazingly detailed watercolors showcase many different types of seeds. The pages are slightly reminiscent of Victorian botanical drawings but these are so much richer in color, depth and scope. Each painting is something special, a treasure to be enjoyed for many years. The succinct and poetic text is just enough information for a very small child and enough of a nip to send an older one (or adult) running to the library to find out more. I love books like that, ones that get you fired up about something you’d otherwise not have an interest in. Now I’m excited about seeds!

The text is poetic too.

“A Seed is Inventive

To find a spot to grow,
A seed might leap from its pod,
[violet]
or cling to a
child's shoestring,
[cocklebur]
or tumble through
a bear's belly.
[Red huckleberry]
A seed hopes to land where
there is plenty of
sunlight, soil, and water.”

How about this wonderful phrase?

“Some have lain dormant, or slept undisturbed, for more than a thousand years”

Makes me just say oooooh.

I can’t say enough about this wonderful book except to say that I dearly hope this fantastic duo does another book. A Seed is Sleepy is a perfect gift for anyone of any age. Even non-book lovers will love this book for its glorious color and appreciation of nature.

If you visit Chronicle Books website, there are posters to print out!

An Egg is Quiet

An Egg is Quiet
Author: Diana Hutts Aston
Illustrator: Sylvia Long
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN-10: 0811844285
ISBN-13: 978-0811844284


An Egg is Quiet is a glorious feast for the eyes. The book is an illustrated introduction to eggs of amazing diversity. The simple and poetic text just adds a quiet drama to the whole book.

“An egg is quiet It sits there, under its mother's feathers... On top of its father's feet ...Warm. Cozy."

The book displays eggs in all their glory with different textures, colors and themes. There are lacewing eggs, salmon roe, ostrich eggs, etc. Each egg portrayed is gorgeously painted in rich, layered watercolors of such depth and color that they seem to be real. You can almost feel the depth of texture. The endpapers of the book are pale blue and speckled giving the feel of an eggshell. The attention to detail is simply amazing. What a labor of love this must have been!

The book talks about the shapes of eggs – the tubular eggs of the Dogfish Shark or round like a sea turtle’s. It talks about size – the mammoth eggs of the ostrich. It goes on to discuss egg embryos, egg habitats, etc.

The colors! Oh, the colors used are wonderful! Pale blues, mottled greens, light browns, oranges that ache with their beauty, butter yellows, stunningly simple brown ink text that adds to the lushness of the colors used in the gallery of jewels called eggs. What a lovely way to teach children (and adults) about nature and its diversity. An Egg is Quiet is instructional, arty and simply beautiful. An absolute must for any library and a book that is sure to be pored over lovingly for years to come. A masterpiece!

Book Description from the Publisher:

Award-winning artist Sylvia Long has teamed with up-and-coming author Dianna Aston to create this gorgeous and informative introduction to eggs. From tiny hummingbird eggs to giant ostrich eggs, oval ladybug eggs to tubular dogfish eggs, gooey frog eggs to fossilized dinosaur eggs, it magnificently captures the incredible variety of eggs and celebrates their beauty and wonder.

The evocative text is sure to inspire lively questions and observations. Yet while poetic in voice and elegant in design, the book introduces children to more than 60 types of eggs and an interesting array of egg facts. Even the endpapers brim with information. A tender and fascinating guide that is equally at home being read to a child on a parent's lap as in a classroom reading circle.

About the author and illustrator:

Dianna Aston spends a lot of time in her backyard hoping to find new eggs. She often enlists the help of her husband, children, and their assorted pets. She lives in Texas.
Sylvia Long is the illustrator of many books for children including the best-selling Sylvia Long's Mother Goose, Hush Little Baby, and Snug As a Bug, all published by Chronicle Books. Ms. Long's detailed paintings are inspired by her love of animals and the outdoors. She lives in Arizona.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy

The Incredible Book Eating Boy
Author/Illustrator: Oliver Jeffers
Publisher: Penguin Philomel
ISBN-10: 9780399247491

The Incredible Book Eating Boy was a title that immediately caught my attention. I love books and I always want to read books about books. Imagine my delight when I found this gem by Oliver Jeffers. I was intrigued.

Henry is a boy who one day just took a bite of a book and liked it so much he started eating books. He found that the more he ate the smarter he got so he kept on eating them. Red ones are his favorite. Soon Henry is super smart but he’s also getting sick. Worse, his stomach and the knowledge he got from the books is getting all jumbled up and he’s making mistakes – big ones. What’s he going to do?

I loved it! The story was so funny. I just laughed and laughed and laughed all through it. I loved Henry and how he loved books. He loved them even more than I do. The illustrations were so clever and funny as well. I just couldn’t stop smiling through it. I loved the little bite taken out of the corner of the cover too. Very clever touch!

I loved it so much I couldn’t wait to share it with my grandchildren, Aiden and Jasmine. I had to have them over a day earlier than I usually do. I handed Jasmine, the four-year old the book solemnly and waited. I didn’t wait long. She looked at the cover and smiled. Then she turned it over and saw the bite and her eyebrows crinkled. “Grammy”, she said in her ooh you’re in trouble tone “who was bad and bit the book?”

Then I read it to them. Aiden kept laughing and pointing to different sections of the pages (he’s 18 months) and Jasmine laughed and laughed at the story and the drawings. At the end of the book she laughed and said, “Grammy, Henry was silly. Everyone knows you get smart by reading books, not eating them.” Smart girl. I asked if she liked it and she said, “I loved this book! May I take it home?” It lives at her house now and I’ll have to get another.

Bottom line? It’s quite wonderful.

Bee Frog

Bee Frog
Author: Martin Waddell
Illustrator: Barbara Firth
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN-10: 1844285413
ISBN-13: 978-1844285419

Recommended for baby-pre-school ages

Bee Frog is the cutest little story and very young children will be charmed by it.

Bee Frog is a little frog that wants to play make believe with her parents. She want’s to be a dragon! But Mom and Dad frog are very busy and just can’t give her game the attention it deserves. What’s a little frog to do? She tries to get her Grandma’s attention but Grandma is busy too. Bee hops off, running away from home but is suddenly feeling very lonely and scared all on her own.

When her family comes looking for her, Bee is all too happy to come home.

I loved this little story. Young children relate to the little frog not being paid attention to while the adults that are reading to them relate with the busy lives of the parents. It’s a gentle reminder that children need attention and we need to take time from our busy days and just play with them. Having been a working single mother and now a working single grandmother, I find less and less time to just play with the kids.




This little book hit home and I’m going to make a real effort to just stop and smell the roses or rather play with the grandkids a little more. So often, like now while I am writing this review, they are trying to get my attention and I’m too busy writing, reading or just working on things around the house. I don’t always give them the attention they deserve when they come here so this book really packed a punch.

I stopped writing this review to watch them stick stickers of the next book in the review queue to their little faces and they were happy to get the attention.

Buy Bee Frog, it’s completely lovely and the illustrations are as soft and gentle as the story.

Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship
Author: Mary Higgins Clark
Illustrator: Wendell Minor
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN-10: 1416935142
ISBN-13: 978-1416935148

Prolific and first rate author Mary Higgins Clark has turned her pen to a children’s picture book and the result is fantastic.

Ghost Ship is the story of Thomas, a 9-year old boy who is visiting his grandmother on Cape Cod. His grandmother lives in a 300-year old house above the beach with steps leading down to the shore. The house was built by Andrew Hallet, a great sea captain and an ancestor of Thomas. His picture hangs on the wall in the house and Thomas often wonders about him.

One day after a storm, Thomas wanders down to the beach and finds an ancient buckle in the sand. As he dusts it off and wonders about it, a ghost of a boy appears and speaks to him. That ghost is Silas, a cabin boy to the very Andrew Hallet Thomas has so often wondered about. Silas speaks, using thee and thou, which I thought was a very realistic touch given the fact that he was alive in 1690. He tells Thomas of life in his time and how hard it was. He speaks with pride of Andrew Hallet and of how he and the other boys of his town banded together to set a huge fire that eventually saved Hallet’s boat from thieves.

Thomas has many questions for Silas as well and Silas is eager to tell his story. I thought the book was lovely and interesting. It brings back a lost time and is so vividly told that you can almost smell the sea air.

The vivid and colorful illustrations by Wendell Minor are amazing and make me think of those great, sweeping oil paintings of seascapes, sailing ships and storms. Each page is like visiting a museum. The book is simply beautiful.

I think Ghost Ship will be a favorite of any young child that loves the sea. Adults too will find it highly readable and a visual delight.


Book description from the publisher:

"I am so pleased to have written my first children's book and to have my dear friend Wendell Minor illustrate it. I thought it would be a daunting project, but with six grandchildren and eleven stepgrandchildren, I've been telling stories to children for a long time."

-- Mary Higgins Clark

Thomas loved his summer visits to his grandmother's on Cape Cod. He spent hours wondering about the sailing ships of the past and imagining their stories. He dreamed of being on a sailing ship himself. One afternoon after a night of terrible thunderstorms, Thomas finds, deep in the sand, a weathered, old-fashioned belt buckle. When he picks it up, a boy his own age, Silas Rich, who was a cabin boy on a ship called the Monomoy that sailed almost 250 years ago, appears. Suddenly the world of sailing ships is very near as Silas tells his tale.

Beloved and bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark tells a story of mystery and adventure that will transport readers to a time and place beyond their imaginings in her first book for children. Wendell Minor's inspired paintings make a time long ago very real.

Text copyright © 2007 by Mary Higgins Clark
Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Wendell Minor

Fancy Nancy

Fancy Nancy
Author: Jane O’Connor
Illustrator: Robin Preiss Glaser
Publisher: HarperCollins Children’s Books
ISBN-10: 0060542098
ISBN-13: 978-0060542092

Nancy loves being fancy. She wears tiaras and boas and writes with a plumed pen. Her bedroom is frilly. She even likes to use fancy words like posh and stupendous. Sadly, her family is not fancy at all. So what’s a fancy girl to do? They don’t even like sprinkles.

In this charming and warm hearted book, Fancy Nancy decides to give her family fancy lessons and they all are willing to take instruction. Once she gets them the proper attire and lessons is fanciness, they all step out in their finery for a night on the town. Her mom even surprises her with a word in French which is very fancy.

Fancy Nancy is a book little glamour girls will love. It’s plenty pink and shiny as well as being upbeat. The great thing about it is that it’s a good story and doesn’t just rely on the pink and shiny aspect to attract little girls. That’s a given but the story is good and shows the importance of a strong family unit. The family’s love and acceptance for each other shines just as brightly as the pink glitter on the cover.

The new vocabulary words and the way they are showcased just might get little girls up and running for a dictionary to find new fancy words. It may also get them wondering about exploring the world. I love books that attract young readers with something obvious and then take them on a longer road to learning. Fancy Nancy does this in a fun, loving and upbeat way.

Different Like Coco

Different Like Coco
Author/Illustrator: Elizabeth Matthews
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN-10: 0763625485
ISBN-13: 978-0763625481


I loved this book! First of all, I’m a big Coco Chanel fan. Love those clothes and that vintage Chanel look. Of course, being a curvy Latina I’d never fit in her vintage stuff. What I really loved about this book though was the fact that it tells about a young, poor girl wanting more, striving for it, dreaming of it and making it happen. I loved that Coco changed fashion to suit her instead of changing herself to suit fashion. Different Like Coco is a fantastic little book with some important lessons.

We live in a society that is so focused on what is perceived to be beauty and are pretty darn obsessed with it. I hate that. It drives me crazy. I worry about my granddaughters and their self-image and try to turn them away from all that stuff.

My granddaughters are never going to be sized zero boyish looking waifs. Curves are their legacy and curves are beautiful. They’re not going to look like Coco. They can however, have her fiery and independent spirit. They can make the world to suit themselves. I want my granddaughters to know that they are beautiful, intelligent, kind and caring young women who need to be happy and celebrate just how beautiful they are inside and out. Real beauty. Goodness needs to shine through, not how much you make or how skinny you are.

It’s an ongoing battle when they are bombarded with television, magazines, billboards, you name it and to top it off, we live in L.A., Hollywood is a skip away. It’s going to be a rough and stormy battle as they grow up. Books like this one are important in that battle.




Little girls will love this book as will their mothers. The illustrations are beautiful and they give a sense of what Coco must have been like. Personality and style fairly leaps off the pages. The story is a great inspiration based upon a real role model for little girls to look up to. Highly recommended!



Book Description from the publisher:
Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel was always different. And she vowed to prove that being different was an advantage! Poor, skinny, and orphaned, Coco stubbornly believed that she was as good as the wealthier girls of Paris. Tapping into her creativity and her sewing skills, she began making clothes that suited her (and her pocketbook) -- and soon a new generation of independent working women craved her sleek, comfortable, and practical designs. Now an icon of fashion and culture, Coco Chanel continues to inspire young readers, showing just how far a person can come with spunk, determination, and flair. The rags-to-riches story of Coco Chanel plays out in a wonderful picture-book biography as full of style and spirit as its heroine.



About the Author:
Elizabeth Matthews makes her chic picture-book debut with this lively look at a legendary woman. Says the author-illustrator, "When I look in my closet, it’s easy to appreciate what Coco Chanel accomplished for herself, for women, for fashion, and, of course, for little black dresses everywhere." A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Elizabeth Matthews lives in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Cowlick!

Cowlick!
Author: Christin Ditchfield
Illustrator: Rosalind Beardshaw
Publisher: Golden Books
ISBN-10: 0375835407
ISBN-13: 978-0375835407

Cowlick! is a completely charming and beautiful book. The rhyming is rhythmic and funny as well as playful. I loved the feel of it when it was read aloud. The story is about two little boys that fall asleep with smoothly combed hair and wake with wild cowlicks.

"To the bedside she comes sneaking/Lifting covers, gently peeking/Sees a face so soft and sweet/Framed with hair so smooth and neat…."

The explanation is that a cow sneaks into the room at night giving slurpy, wet kisses that sweep the hair up into an unmanageable tangle. It’s a great, silly story and a pretty good explanation for what happens to hair in the night. My granddaughter laughed and laughed.

The illustrations are beautiful, textured and fun. The colors are bold, the cow is adorable on the pages as she comes sneaking, skulking in the night.

The packaging to the book is great as well with a textured big slurp going right across the cover. This book is sure to become a favorite both for the fun silliness of it, the bouncy rhyme and gorgeous illustrations.



Book Description from the publisher
. . . She comes in the middle of the night, when everyone is sleeping. When she sees a smooth little head on a pillow, she can't resist giving it a cow kiss—sluuurrrp! Cowlick! gives young readers an imaginative and playful explanation for the "bedhead" that afflicts us all!

About the Author
Christin Ditchfield is a former preschool and elementary school teacher. She's now a popular speaker and host of the internationally syndicated inspirational radio program "Take It to Heart!" A prolific writer of magazine articles and columns for CBA publications, she's also the author of nearly 50 books, including A Family Guide to "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Cowlick! is her first picture book. She lives in Sarasota, Florida.

About the Illustrator
Rosalind Beardshaw has illustrated dozens of picture books for the British and European market since she graduated from Manchester Polytechnic in 1992. In her spare time, she works as a volunteer with adults with learning disabilities. She lives in York, England.

The Woman Who Outshone the Sun

This is one of my most beloved children’s books.

The Woman Who Outshone the Sun/La mujer que brillaba aún más que el sol is such a beautiful and moving story. It is based upon a poem by Alejandro Cruz Martinez, who was a young Zapoteca poet who spent years collecting the oral traditions of his people. The Zapotecas are great storytellers and the tale of Lucia Zenteno comes from that grand tradition. In 1986 he published his version of this story as a poem and was later killed in 1987 while organizing the Zapotecas to regain their lost water rights.

The book is about Lucia Zenteno, a woman who was so beautiful she outshone the sun. All of nature loved Lucia and in this magical story, the fish in the river and the river itself love her so much that she combs them in and out of her glorious long black hair. The people of the village, however are afraid of her because she is different. They whisper about her and are so cruel in their fear of her. The village elders are different. They warn the villagers that Lucia is a woman in touch with nature and they hurt her at their own peril but the villagers don’t care to listen. She is too different, too odd. Finally, Lucia, hurt by their taunts and whispers, leaves the town followed by her beloved pet iguana.

The river and nature mourn her loss and leave with Lucia caught up in her hair. It is only when the village, now desolate and dry that the villagers repent of their cruelty and seek Lucia out.

The book is fabulously illustrated with lush and magical paintings by the acclaimed painter Fernando Olivera who was a close friend of Alejandro Cruz Martinez. Each page is a fantasy of beautiful Zapoteca indigenous dress, nature, animals and of course, the river which is as much an important character as Lucia Zenteno.

The story has a strong moral message for both adults and children and I cannot help but think that to Cruz Martinez, this story was an allegory for the water rights he died defending as the water plays such an important role. His widow gave Children’s Book Press – a wonderful independent publisher that specializes in multi-cultural books that is based in San Francisco the permission to adapt the story and all royalties are paid out to her.

I encourage everyone to purchase this book and to read it to your children or just enjoy it yourself. It is bilingual in English and Spanish and is just such a beautiful and compelling book.