Last week we spent the week volunteering at Meet Up & Eat Up….Meet Up and Eat Up was created to ensure all children get a chance to eat nutritious food during summer. There are also guest volunteers from the library, a local museum, various community factories and nonprofits. The kids are served lunch and also sent home with a nutritious sack lunch for supper. We brought books for the kids to keep and my son read a picture book everyday to them before lunch. This a wonderful program and I was delighted to see a bunch of my baggy book friends! The lunches are nutritious and keeping the children’s minds engaged and their bellies full is so very important. We were honored to be a very small part. This spot serves 70-100 kids every week day in the summer. The overall program feeds hundreds of thousands. The following are the books we shared at lunch.
In this deceptively simple picture book, author-illustrator Deborah Freedman has created an irresistible character that springs to life and wreaks havoc in a farmyard with a pot of blue paint. The innocent chicken just wants to help, but things get worse and worse-and bluer and bluer–the more she tries. Playing with colors and perspective, and using minimal text, this richly layered story reveals new things to see and laugh about with each reading.
Kadir Nelson, acclaimed author of Baby Bear and winner of the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Awards, presents a resonant, gently humorous story about the power of even the smallest acts and the rewards of compassion and generosity.
With spare text and breathtaking oil paintings, If You Plant a Seed demonstrates not only the process of planting and growing for young children but also how a seed of kindness can bear sweet fruit.
You might think a book with no pictures seems boring and serious. Except . . . here’s how books work. Everything written on the page has to be said by the person reading it aloud. Even if the words say . . .
BLORK. Or BLUURF!
Even if the words are a preposterous song about eating ants for breakfast, or just a list of astonishingly goofy sounds like BLAGGITY BLAGGITY and GLIBBITY GLOBBITY.
Cleverly irreverent and irresistibly silly, The Book with No Pictures is one that kids will beg to hear again and again.
Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandma ride the bus across town. But today, CJ wonders why they don’t own a car like his friend Colby. Why doesn’t he have an iPod like the boys on the bus? How come they always have to get off in the dirty part of town? Each question is met with an encouraging answer from grandma, who helps him see the beauty—and fun—in their routine and the world around them.
When Bear wakes up one spring, he goes in search of a new home. And he thinks he’s found the perfect place. Unfortunately, things are a bit . . . snug.
Can five little ducks find room for one big bear in their home—and in their hearts? Ciara Gavin’s luminous picture-book debut explores the unconditional love of families in all their colors, shapes, and sizes.
We will be stopping back one more time to bring books for the kids that we have collected and found at thrift stores sometime in August. We will definitely be signing up to do a week next summer.
Be the CHANGE you want to see, in the world.
Peace.
