Moví la mano / I Moved My Hand

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Moví la mano / I Moved My Hand
by Jorge Luján (Author), Mandana Sadat (Illustrator), and Elisa Amado (Translator)

Booktalk: When a little girl moves her hand, she changes the world as she discovers it. As she moves her known world she discovers her own power and creates everything anew.

Snippet:
Moví la mano y encontré un coco.
I moved my hand and I found a coconut.

Agité el coco y encontré un lago.
I shook the coconut and I found a lake.

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STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

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Make a Moon Painting.

moon.painting

poetry friday

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Reflections on the Teche.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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It’s a Seashell Day

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It’s a Seashell Day
by Dianne Ochiltree (Author) and Elliot Kreloff (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Sunny-as-a-summer-sky rhymes chronicle a mother and son sharing a day of sand digging, seashell collecting, and seashore exploring. (See the seashell facts in the back of the book.)

Snippet:
I rush down the path, over the dune.
Salty breeze blows. We’ll be there soon!

ItsASeashellDayInteriorSpread

STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

Try this Sand Art project.

sand1

poetry friday

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by iWrite in Maine.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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Random Body Parts: Gross Anatomy Riddles in Verse

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Random Body Parts: Gross Anatomy Riddles in Verse
by Leslie Bulion (Author) and Mike Lowery (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Witty and nimble verse about body parts pairs with whimsical drawings in this informative, fun collection. Sidebars further educate readers about the anatomical subject in question, while appended notes offer a crash course on poetic form and a few facts about the Shakespearean works that inspired the verses. A glossary for science terms is included in the back matter.

RBP page 29

Snippet:
RIDDLE ME THIS
Of course you have a body,
But do you have a clue,
Where all the body parts you’ve got are found
And what they do?

RBP page7

STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

Use this printable to Write Your Own Riddle.

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This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by The Logonauts.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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Red Light, Green Light

Red Light, Green Light

Red Light, Green Light e-book
by Anastasia Suen (Author) and Ken Wilson-Max (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Roll into one little boy’s make-believe traffic world, filled with flashing lights, zooming cars, whirring helicopters, and racing fire engines. He’s turned records into rotaries, shoe boxes and books into highway ramps, crayons into lane markers, and dandelions into trees. It’s a world where imagination rules and creativity abounds.

Snippet:
Red light, stop.
Green light, go.

Cars and trucks
drive to and fro.

Author’s Note:
It’s the 10th anniversary of my picture book, Red Light, Green Light and the e-book has just been updated! Hooray!

Here’s the short version of the long story…

I sold this book in 1999 and it came out in 2005. It was on the final Gulliver Books list and then that imprint of Harcourt was closed. A few years later, Harcourt was sold and then the company that bought them, Houghton Mifflin, went into bankruptcy. After the new Houghton Mifflin Harcourt came out on the other side, they re-organized several times.

In the middle of all this change, Red Light, Green Light was converted to an e-book. It was still the early days of e-books and I’m sorry to say that the conversion was not a success. There were extra words on top of the art and the art itself moved up and down as you “turned” the pages. But all of the people that I worked with on this book were long gone, so my efforts to get the e-book fixed went nowhere for a long time. In May I tried again and a very friendly customer service representative said she would talk to her manager…and it worked! On June 1st an email came saying that the book was being remade. Three weeks later, the e-book files were updated on Amazon, Google Play, and iTunes!

For me, this is a summer book because of driver’s ed. That’s when my two teens took it (and so did I, lo-o-o-o-ng ago.) I wrote this book because of the 100 hours of required driving practice. I was sitting on the passenger’s side of the car pressing my foot on that imaginary brake at each intersection…making my new drivers crazy! (Mom!!!) The book dedication reads: “For my two new drivers, it feels like just minutes ago that you were driving toy cars.”

STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

Make my Traffic Light Necklace Craft.

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Materials:
red, green, and yellow yarn
black construction paper
red, green, and yellow dots (I used 3/4″ dots from Office Depot)
scissors
glue stick

Directions (before the kids arrive):

1) Cut the yarn in to 36″ lengths.

2) Gather the yarn into triple strands (one red, one yellow and one green for each child.)

3) Cut the black construction paper in strips. (I used 9×12″ paper so I cut the 12″ side into 2″ strips. Each strip was the 2″ wide and 9″ long.

4) Fold each black strip in half to make a tent. (Now it’s 2″ wide and 4 1/2″ tall.)

Directions (after the kids arrive):

5) Put the yarn inside the black paper “tent” and center it so approximately 18″ of yarn extends out on each side.

6) Rub glue on the inside of the tent. Then press the paper tight so the glue holds.

7) Place a green dot, a yellow dot, and a green dot on the black paper. Green is Go! Yellow is Slow! Red is Stop! Now you have a traffic light!

8) Tie the ends of the yarn into a bow. Now put the bow over the child’s head. It’s a traffic light necklace!

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This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Mainely Write.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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The Dinosaurs Are Having a Party!

The Dinosaurs Are Having A Party

The Dinosaurs Are Having a Party!
by Gareth P. Jones (Author) and Garry Parsons (Illustrator)

Booktalk: The dinosaurs are having a party but things get out of hand and when the boy tries to leave, T-Rex gives chase!

Snippet:
The dinosaurs are having a party.
It starts precisely at three.
But I’m a boy not a dinosaur,
So I’m pleased they’ve invited me.

STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

Make your own dinosaur “fossils” with small toys and Plaster of Paris.

Dinosaur Fossil Making Steps

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Carol’s Corner.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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S is for Sea Glass: A Beach Alphabet

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S is for Sea Glass: A Beach Alphabet
by Richard Michelson (Author) and Doris Ettlinger (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Enjoy a variety of poetry forms such as free verse, haiku, and ode in this A to Z celebration of the beach and seaside life.

Snippet:
F is for Flip-Flops
Winter is buckles and shoehorns and laces
And wingtips, galoshes, and hightops,
But summer is giggles and smiling faces
And wiggling toes into flip-flops.

See this page inside the book.

STEM + the Arts = STEAM

STEAM DIY Activity

Write a Summer Acrostic Poem.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by A Year of Reading .

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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Spectacular Spots

Spectacular Spots

Spectacular Spots
by Susan Stockdale (Author, Illustrator)

Booktalk: What kind of spots do animals have? And why do they have them? Find out the many ways in which animals benefit from their spots. (Animal facts and spot matching game in the back of the book.)

Snippet:
Spots on creatures all around
way up high and on the ground.

#kidlit Link of the Day:

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Jama’s Alphabet Soup.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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A Bat Cannot Bat, a Stair Cannot Stare: More About Homonyms and Homophones

ABatCannotBat

A Bat Cannot Bat, a Stair Cannot Stare: More About Homonyms and Homophones
by Brian P. Cleary (Author) and Martin Goneau (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Do you think there’s no more to know about homonyms and homophones? This book will prove you wrong! With dozens of laughs per second, the value of the lesson doesn’t lessen the second time around. (In the book each pair of homonyms or homophones appears in color for easy identification.)

Snippet:
Homonyms are spelled the same,
and they’re alike in sound.

Their meanings, though
are different–like
“That sink may
sink into the ground.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Buffy’s Blog.

#kidlit Link of the Day:
Looking for book comps? Check the Children’s Picture Book Database at Miami University for a collection of picture book abstracts searchable by topics, concepts, and skills.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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Birthday Rules

BirthdayRules

Birthday Rules
by Laurie B. Friedman (Author) and Teresa Murfin (Illustrator)

Booktalk: When it comes to birthdays, no one knows how to party like Percy! Just follow his simple rules—like #2 “Happy times call for happy measures” and #9 “Be careful what you wish for”—to make the most of your celebration.

Snippet:
And here’s a little secret.
I’m a birthday pro.
When it comes to festivities,
There’s nothing I don’t know.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Random Noodling.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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In the Waves

#kidlit Book of the Day: In the Waves from HarperCollins

In The Waves

In the Waves
by Lennon and Maisy Stella (Authors) and Steve Bjorkman (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Grab your ol’ flip-flops and your sunblock, too, for this fun-in-the-sun story told to the tune of the debut original song by Lennon and Maisy Stella, stars of the hit ABC show Nashville.

Snippet:
Just use your imagination
You can have a dream vacation
In the waves, in the water
In the waves, in the water

Hear Lennon and Maisy sing the song!

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Today’s Little Ditty.

Copyright © 2015 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.
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