Dear Bookstore by Emily Arrow

Some of our favorite family memories are visits to bookstores. It is something we’ve done together since my children were very little and it is something we still enjoy!

I seem to be a collector of books about books and reading. There are so many great books that capture our love of books and many of these help start great conversations with elementary readers as they begin to build their identity as readers.

Dear Bookstore by Emily Arrow and illustrated by Geneviève Godbout is a new favorite in my collection of books about books and reading! I am a long-time Emily Arrow fan so I was thrilled when I saw she had a new picture book out-the fact that it is about books and bookstores makes it even better.

The simple book does an incredible job of capturing the joy of bookstores as we follow a reader from her very first visit! I can only imagine the kinds of memories and conversations this book might ignite in classrooms.

The illustrations are unique and magical. I love the author’s note from Emily Arrow–about her visit ot Parnassus Books (a bookstore I am dying to visit because who doesn’t love Ann Patchett!?) . Both the author and the illustrator dedicated the book to bookstores and booksellers.

And of course, Emily Arrow has a “Dear Bookstore” song🙂 A great companion to the book!

In this time of reading mandates, book censorship and more, this book came at the perfect time. A reminder of the importance of our indie bookstores and the magic inside.

Poetry Friday: Pick Yourself Up and Keep Going

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LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Don’t forget to share the love with YOURSELF!

Linda has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.

Read more about Derek Walcott and hear his poem read aloud at The Marginalian. Today’s image is from Unsplash.

A Book For These Times

Let’s Move the Needle: An Activism Handbook for Artists, Creatives, and Makers
by Shannon Downey (aka Badass Cross Stitch)

You don’t need to identify as an artist, creative, or maker to read this book. Read it as An Activism Handbook.

Shannon is wise and funny, opinionated and knowledgeable. She doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk…and has been for years.

“Build community and make change!” — that’s what it’s all about.

We’ve got this. Let’s go.

Poetry Friday: Brown

‘Prize Malted Brown’ by Owen Simmons from The Book of Bread (1903)

It was my turn to offer the challenge to the Inklings. Newly in love with the Public Domain Image Archive, I suggested that each poet plug a color into the search bar and use one of the images as her inspiration. Like Molly and Heidi, I found that searching for more esoteric colors like aubergine gave no results. So I searched “brown” and got this slice of “Prize Malted Brown” and a small poem about baking.

But that last line got me thinking about how baking bread is like writing, which is also “all process” and this draft happened:

So here, on a virtual plate, I offer you not one, but TWO slices today!

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core

Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Beyond LiteracyLink.

A Book to Pre-Order Today!

“Created by real-life rivals and #1 New York Times bestselling authors Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft this hilarious illustrated story features two talented fifth graders going head-to-head in a competition for the ages.” (From Hachette Book Group)

I have never been a fan of bloggers recommending books that I can’t buy yet! But I couldn’t wait to share this one with you and I know Barnes and Noble has their PREORDER25 code active now for ordering preorders. So I highly encourage you to go to your local independent bookstore or to Barnes and Noble to preorder this book today! (I could write a whole post on this being a great time to be very INTENTIONAL about where you are spending your money, but that is for another day.)

So, I finished J vs. K by Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft this week! I picked up an ARC at NCTE’s annual convention –it was the one book I really hoped I could get before the publication date because it looked so fabulous. It definitely met and exceeded all of my expectations and I can’t wait to share this one with kids and teachers.

I love everything about this book! First of all, the characters are both fabulous. Both main characters are 5th graders. K is an incredible writer and J is an incredible artist. Both use these skills for storytelling and their classmates love their stories (words and pictures.). As a literacy teacher, how could we not love characters whose passion is to tell stories!? The characters are also kind and funny and most of all, genuine. There are features throughout the story where the authors talk to us and where the healthy competition by the authors is mirrored by the actions/words of the characters.

I also love the plot. There is a big storytelling contest at the school and it is a BIG DEAL. The whole school is getting ready and even though no 5th grader has ever won, both J and K are certain they can win. Threaded through this is a theme of friendship.

The format of the book is great. Lots of text and lots of visuals throughout. There are some fun features that focus on vocabulary, some back-and-forth between the authors and font changes throughout.

Every detail of this book is intentional–from the Dear Reader to the Author/Illustrator(Not Illustrator) bios. 

Kids are going to love this book. Teachers and parents will love it too. It is a great story full of humor and it seems like it might be the first in a series! For fans who already love Kwame Alexander or Jerry Kraft, they will be thrilled to see this author pair coming together to create something. For readers who have not yet discovered these authors, I am sure they will go on to read more of their books. 

The book comes out May 6. But I recommend preordering it today!

Poetry Friday: Tan-ku

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The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for January was to write a tan-ku (or tanku), which isn’t so much a form as it is a conversation between two forms, tanka and haiku, and which can be written in conversation between two poets, as our mentor text was. Since our overarching theme for 2025 is In Conversation, this seemed like a good place to begin the year.

This poem spent its first dozens of drafts tangled in unnecessary didacticism. There were lots of conversations in the poem, and lots of (not always nice) conversations between me and the poem. Then the poem and I decided that we’d leave it to you, the reader, to discover whatever conversation these words might whisper to you. We remembered that sometimes you can say more by saying less.

Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:

Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe

Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at bookseedstudio.

The image is via Unsplash.

Blogging, Newbery and More

Today, Mary Lee and I attended Cover to Covers Book Award Watch Party. It was like old times. A visit to Cover to Cover with friends, watching the book awards–cheering for the books we loved and jotting down new-to-us titles that we’ll need to read soon.

Mary Lee and I started the blog almost 20 years ago as a way to have a conversation about the Newbery Award. It grew into so much more. And now it is filled with incredible poetry by Mary Lee. It is hard to believe the blog is 20 years old. I miss blogging. I miss the community. Mary Lee, the best blog partner and friend, has been so patient, keeping up with the blog as I’ve had other projects, life, etc. and then inviting me back in. I did some reflection this year (one does that after a big birthday) and thought back to the things and times in life I loved most. And bloggiing, talking books with friends, thinking together with Mary Lee definitely came up as a favorite time and favorite thing. One that I am sorry I gave up for so long. So I am back to blogging. And I am already (2 paragraphs in) happy to be back.

So I’ll be back to writing about children’s books, adult books I am reading, podcasts and things, all that I am learning in my work with teachers and children, and of course, random things.

So, back to the Newbery. I didn’t read as much middle grade as I had hoped in 2024 but was THRILLED to see Erin Entrada Kelly’s book First State of Being -a book I have read and loved-named this year’s winner! I love this author and I loved the book. It is hard to do a science-fiction book for middle grade readers and this one was wonderful. (I love a good time travel story with a bit of history embedded!)

The other books I read and was excited to see win awards today were:

Home in a Lunchbox by Cherry Mo(Caldecodtt Honor)

My Daddy is a Cowboy by Stephanie Seales and C.G. Esperanza (Caldecott Honor)

Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All by Chanel Miller (Newbery Honor)

Carole Boston Weatherford (Legacy Award)

Coretta by Coretta Scott King and Ekua Holmes (Coretta Scott King Honor)

Louder than Hunger by John Schu (Schneider Honor)

Joyful Song by Lesléa Newman(Sydney Taylor Honor)

Shark Teeth by Sherri Winston (Schneider Honor)

And I added so many to my list of to-reads!! Such a good year for books!

Poetry Friday: Fire

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I’ve adopted Molly’s strategy of using Wordle guesses as writing prompts. Thursday’s final word sparked deeper thinking about fire. The images from Los Angeles are haunting as are the stories of the loss of Black middle class neighborhoods that embodied the American dream of generational wealth. I grieve all the non-human lives that have been extinguished and uncounted and which float now in the air as smoke and ash.

Fire destroys, yet fire is also how we describe love and passion, the urge to create, and the desire to do better. We sing around campfires and we light candles in our religions. Giant sequoias and lodgepole pines need fire in order to release their seeds and regenerate.

Fire is complicated.

Process notes:
I’ve been writing mostly haiku for the first month and a half of #poemsforpersistence, but I’m feeling the urge to return to cheritas.

Today’s poem is comprised of three linked cheritas in which I answered my question of despair, “How is this all going to turn out?!?!” with what can seem grim in stanza/poem one; with the conundrum of the two faces of fire in stanza/poem two (and I’m pretty sure you’re savvy enough to realize I’m not just writing about literal fire); with, in stanza/poem three, the necessity for some kind of answer that can be ongoing and joyous (since…see stanza/poem one).

The image is another from The Public Domain Image Archive.

Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.