Daddy Mojo used to teach. Being an ex educator he’s interested in many things about education, such as teaching policies, best practices and bureaucracy.
Ansel Adams only photographed mountains, didn’t he? Yeah, I thought that, and you might’ve also. That’s how Seen And Unseen, What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration caught my attention. Seen And Unseen is by Elizabeth Partridge with illustrations by Lauren Tamaki and provides an impressive overview of Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in Manzanar in the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
I was talking to a student one day about the approximate distance between Georgia and New York and they had absolutely no clue. Their spatial abilities were suspect at best with them guessing at only a couple of hundred miles to multiple thousands. Space is like that too, except so much more interesting and potentially complex. The Planets Are Very, Very, Very Far Away puts the impossibly massive scale of the solar system into a scope that anyone is able to understand. Author Mike Vago is an author who produces books that are as much of a publishing statement as they are informative, entertaining, or both.
But what about girls?, I can hear that being asked now. I’m casting a wide net that’ll describe a majority of boys, but not all boys. I’ll cast the same wide net and say that a series of emerging reader books on unicorns or kittens will be a big hit with girl readers in second grade. Whenever I teach ELA and I have to attribute one trait to a group there are always a couple who will say, “But, I….”, and yes, you might be the exception to that. Great Battles for Boys is a series of books that hits the reluctant reader boy on the head in an enjoyable and historical way.
Family, especially the older branches in our trees can be complicated, can’t it? When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies is an illustrated book whose sibling we read in 2022. That book, When Plants Took Over the Planet is a gorgeous illustrated book that’s all about the massive wave of plants that crept out of the water millions of years ago. Its sibling, When Dinosaurs Conquered the Skies is cut from a similar cloth in its layout and illustrations. However, in reading it I decided to treat it as a narrative book, instead of a reference book and the result was quite interesting.
From its title, Do You Know Rocket Science? could be confused with something from the What Is or Who Was from the Who HQ authored series of books. While that series is awesome, they’re for older readers, which is somewhat ironic given the subject matter of rocket science. Instead, Do You Know Rocket Science? is actually a book about rocket science, that’s presented on a level that pre-k through first, as well as, their parents, will understand and enjoy. It’s from Chris Ferrie, an author who we’ve written about on a couple of occasions that has a knack for turning science and STEM into something that kids want to know about.
By its title, My First Book of Japanese could easily be mistaken for a children’s book on colors, shapes, and numbers. Actually, it could be used as an introductory vehicle for young children to Japanese. It could also be great for elementary, middle, or high school students to learn basic words. I spent a couple of years living in Japan and My First Book of Japanese is a great refresher for my vocabulary.
Being a substitute primary school teacher I know what schools look like, and sadly, most of them look the same. If you work in an office building you probably know what they look like too and I’d bet that most of them are cookie-cutter-tastic. I’m not naïve, I realize that architecture, especially those that make a statement, come at a price of either money, land, resources or a combination thereof. The Power of Architecture: 25 Modern Buildings from Around the World is an illustrated book for curious kids that want to explore how things are and the way that they could be.
Octopuses Have Zero Bones is one of the best books of the year. Granted, it is very early in 2023, but that’s OK because it was technically released in September of 2022. We’re not going to let a little technicality like that get in the way of calling this book an instant classic and a ‘best of’, whichever year you want to put it in. One thing that we ascribe to is treating kids as smart as you want them to be. When our own children were younger we did it that way and it’s the way that I teach my classes, regardless of the grade. Octopuses Have Zero Bones is a counting book, but it’s so much more than just a book that’ll teach counting to toddlers.
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