Ten Titles on Tuesday: 4/6/21
Heyo. It’s Tuesday again. They keep coming around. I’ve been thinking about the character (the flavor? the color? the feel?) of Tuesday, which is not Monday, and isn’t yet Wednesday. For some reason I keep thinking of a tea that I like but don’t necessarily love — that feels like Tuesday to me.
This week’s Ten Titles, never in any particular order:
Mia Mayhem Is a Superhero! by Kara West
Girl on a Motorcycle by Amy Novesky
The Dumpster Diver by Janet S. Wong
Sometimes I’m Bombaloo by Rachel Vail
The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig
Life by Cynthia Rylant
Way Past Mad by Hallee Adelman
Dick King-Smith’s Animal Friends: Thirty-One True Life Stories by Dick King-Smith
Follow the Recipe: Poems About Imagination, Celebration & Cake by Marilyn Singer (Imagination, celebration and cake? Yes please)
Watercress by Andrea Wang
In all the research I’ve ever done about finding more diverse books, I’ve never come across a resource for Black history as incredible as Amber O’Neal Johnston’s blog, Heritage Mom Book Recommendations — to say that it’s robust is a laughable understatement. I especially appreciate that she has broken her recommendations down into time periods — I’ve wanted to find African and African-American resources for Early Modern history but haven’t dug up more than a handful of titles, due absolutely to my relative ignorance of what I am looking for to begin with. I also love, love, love her lists Chapter Books: Black Girls Just Being Kids and Chapter Books: Black Boys Having Fun, as I am always on the lookout for early chapter books now, and there are some great ones there (I’ll never shut up about Anna Hibiscus and Atinuke in general — I had been waiting impatiently for her newest book, Too Small Tola, to become available on CD so I could gift it to my children for no reason other than it’s a new Atiunke book, and that’s reason to celebrate, but then I saw it at a used bookstore last week and couldn’t walk away. Story of my life. Ruby and the Booker Boys: Brand New School, Brave New School by Derrick Barnes is already on deck for late this summer, ahead of a new school year when my homeschooler will be headed back to public school for 2nd grade and my preschooler will begin 4K — a new experience for our family). I encourage you to dig around Heritage Mom’s site — it’s a treasure trove.
(And now I am lamenting the lack of a “chest of gold” emoji — lamenting a specific emoji is apparently a thing that happens to me often.)
Read good books and take good care 😘
Sarah