What sets you apart is often what makes you great

Can we read? No. 92

Good morning! It’s a beautiful day and I hope you are well.

Before we get into today’s issue, bear with me 🐻 while I promote Can we read? gift subscriptions (as well as craft a sentence that allows me to use the bear emoji — very important work happening here, people).

🌟 Give the gift that keeps on giving twice a week all year long 🌟

Guess what isn’t affected by supply chain issues, long lines at stores, or your low energy this holiday season? Gift subscriptions to newsletters!

You can buy a gift subscription today and schedule it for any date in the future — checking off a box ✔️on your gift list RIGHT NOW!

If you know someone who would benefit from a weekly guide to children’s books that does the hard work for them, now is a great time to give them this gift. Who could these people possibly be? 🤔

• A new parent

• Friends with young children

• Grandparents! (Thank god for grandparents!)

• Your child’s teacher or daycare provider (or both)

• A school librarian and/or your local children’s librarian

• Anyone who supports your kiddo/s — a coach, a therapist, a reading/math interventionist, a group leader

• Any good soul that serves children whom you’d like to thank for all their hard, mostly-unrecognized work

If you purchase a gift subscription and want a physical object to tuck into an envelope or wrap, feel free to print this handy, official Can we read? PDF.

Can We Read? Gift Certificate

533KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Thank you for helping get Can we read? into more people’s inboxes, which really means more books being read to kids. Your gift recipient will thank you later; I thank you now! 🥰

---

Baby Day by Jane Godwin and Davina Bell, illustrated by Freya Blackwood (2019)

If you have littles, don’t miss Baby Day, an absolutely joyful romp through a baby’s outdoor birthday party, full of all different kinds of babies, families, cupcakes, dogs, tears, giggles, and everything else that comes along with having — and celebrating — a baby.

With short, staccato sentences that do not rhyme but create a pleasing rhythm nevertheless (“Brave baby. Twin babies. Fussy baby. Come on, baby, just try it!”), Godwin and Bell have created the perfect story to engage babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, all of whom will also enjoy Blackwood’s warm, gestural line-and-watercolor illustrations, which expertly depict the chaos — and the delight — of these fleeting years.

---

Migraine and Mia by Kat Harrison, illustrated by Marusha Bell (2021)

“Hi, I’m Mia, and I have chronic migraine. Have you ever had one? They’re the opposite of fun. You see, a migraine isn’t just a headache. It’s a full-body pain parade that’ll make your stomach swashbuckle and your skin swelter.”

So begins this thoughtful picture book about a topic that has rarely (if ever) appeared in children’s literature. I’ll admit I had a selfish reason for buying it — I wanted to explain to my children what I feel when I have a migraine, and how they can help (by being quiet, bringing me a glass of water, etc.) Though I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, this nicely-done book was perfect for that, as well as for helping them to build empathy about other people’s bodies (and the challenges they face, whether permanent or not).

In a page of notes at the back from the American Migraine Association, it states that one in four households in the U.S. has a member with migraine, so it’s worth reading about, because all of us probably know at least one person who regularly suffers from what Mia calls “brain pain.” While neither Harrison’s sensory-rich text nor Belle’s colorful digital illustrations are probably going to win any awards, this is still a good read, and one I recommend especially for classrooms and libraries.

---

Luci Soars by Lulu Delacre (2020)

Luci is a girl without a shadow — literally — so she learns to walk in other people’s shadows, though she longs to be in the light. One day, she musters her courage and steps into it, only to be mocked by everyone else with shadows. It hurts, of course, until she wonders: “Why do I need a shadow anyway? Does a shadow keep you on the ground?” She drifts until she begins to fly, and suddenly, in discovering her superpower, she realizes she can change the way she looks at things. (Delacre does a skillfully subtle job of sending the message: so can you.)

Delacre’s masterful craftmanship in both writing and illustration is on full display here in this poetic, metaphorical tale that’s best for elementary-aged kids, who have a better chance of understanding the point: that it’s okay to be different, that your differences can make you strong. Don’t we all need the reassurance that what sets us apart is often what makes us great?

---

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien (1970)

If you’re a paid subscriber, you likely already know how highly I recommend this chapter book as a read-aloud — my kiddos and I enjoyed it immensely a few months ago, and I haven’t stopped raving about it since.

The tale itself is creative and in many places, riveting — a single mother, Mrs. Frisby, must figure out how to save both her home and her ailing son before the cold weather sets in and a plow comes through to till the soil. She summons an enormous amount of courage and begins on a path — figuratively and often literally — to solving the problem, mostly by enlisting the unlikely help of a group of super rats, whose brains and bodies have been chemically altered in a medical lab (hence NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health). Readers big and small will get sucked into the double narrative: will Mrs. Frisby be able to save her house and her family in time? And what will happen to the physically and mentally turbo-charged rats, who want to move off the farm to live in peace?

O’Brien’s gripping story won the Newbery Medal, among several other major awards, when it was published in 1970, but 52 years has not dulled its inventiveness or its appeal even one iota. I wasn’t sure my children — or I, for that matter — were going to be into science fiction, and science fiction about rats, no less, and I was dead wrong: this is one of our favorite reads of 2022. I’m just going to keep on raving about it.

---

Thanks for reading! And thank you for your ongoing support of this newsletter — you’re the best! You look lovely today! I like you!

Sarah