Worries about his parents arguing make it hard for him to sleep, and so he ventures out – only to come face to face with the friendly Aoleon The Martian Girl, who is busying herself with making a crop circle in her flying saucer. As Gilbert makes first contact with […]
A nine-year-old girl. A magical sketchbook. A huge imagination. A lot of trouble.
When men in hardhats arrive at Amy Carr’s house, she’s old enough to understand that this isn’t a social call. They are there to knock down her house. In the ruins, Amy unearths an old sketchbook. Soon she learns that this isn’t an ordinary sketchbook.
The creatures she draws in this magical sketchbook come alive. The premise behind this book is fun and just as creative as Amy’s imagination in the story. Most middle grade readers are still focused inward and aren’t very aware of the outside […]
Wild Dragon Soul by Tatjana Garibaldi is described as “A collection of short stories, written in fairy-tale style, about a journey to find the inner artist.” While this may suggest a book literally about the creation of art, it is more abstract than that, but also quietly comforting. One might call these children’s stories for adults, while they could also be enjoyed by children as well.
The opening story, “Daisy,” for example, is about a flower growing underneath a goose’s nest. The flower can hardly be described as an “artist,” but it is about perseverance, getting help from others, and […]
I wrote and illustrated “The Girl and the Moon” after a late winters walk in our local park with my daughter- then aged four- furiously scooting. As she scooted along she called out that she “wanted to catch that moon mammy!” I asked her what she would do if she caught it, and she replied that she would “eat it!”
The idea was such a simple one, straight from the mind of a four year old, and I couldn’t wait to pack her off to bed that night to […]
The Funny Adventures of Little Nani by Cinta García de la Rosa is a collection of short stories for children featuring the titular Little Nani, an eight-year-old girl who wants to become a great witch. Using her magic spells she tries to help everyone she comes across, making the most unlikely of friends along the way. Unfortunately, Nani never properly learned how to become a witch, having only half-read the messages of her online witch lessons, and her spells almost always go in an unsuspecting direction. The result is a unique collection of tales of “be careful what you wish […]
Amadeus, the hero of this tale, is both inspiring and engaging. The book is filled with many other strong characters as well, including Grandmother Rose, the wise matriarch of the garden; Mr. Black, a kindly raven; and two spunky companions: a meadow daisy and a nervous narcissus flower whom Amadeus meets on his journey to find a medicine that will […]
Nearly every child has heard, “Stop staring at that screen and go read a book!” Before TV, parents were probably saying something similar about the radio. And before that, well, marbles might have been a child’s object of obsession.
Today, however, children have such an enormous plethora of distractions — from the Internet to video games to smartphones and even social networks — that TV has become the least of parents’ problems when it comes to getting their kids to read. It can be easy for a parent to give up and let the video games win the war for […]