Anastasia Suen – Page 14 – Booktalking #kidlit

Benny and Penny in Lost and Found

Benny and Penny in Lost and Found
by Geoffrey Hayes (Author, Illustrator)

Booktalk: Benny’s in a foul mood! He can’t find his pirate hat, and when he sets out in the fog to find his missing hat, he leads himself and his sister Penny straight into…big trouble! (Level 2 beginning reader comic)

Snippet:

The Problem with Not Being Scared of Monsters

The Problem with Not Being Scared of Monsters
by Dan Richards (Author) and Robert Neubecker (Illustrator)

Booktalk: What’s the problem with not being scared of monsters? Well, they think you’re one of them! And then they’re too friendly, ALL the time.

Snippet:

Walking home is a drag.

Strike!: The Farm Workers’ Fight for Their Rights

Strike!: The Farm Workers’ Fight for Their Rights
by Larry Dane Brimner (Author)

Booktalk: In 1965, as the grapes in California’s Coachella Valley were ready to harvest, migrant Filipino American workers—who picked and readied the crop for shipping—negotiated a wage of $1.40 per hour, the same wage growers had agreed to pay guest workers from Mexico. But when the Filipino grape pickers moved north to Delano, in the Central Valley, and again asked for $1.40 an hour, the growers refused. The ensuing conflict set off one of the longest and most successful strikes in American history.

Snippet: The Delano grape workers wanted better wages. Growers only paid them 90 cents an hour, plus 10 cents a log, or box, of grapes picked. At the end of the day, the average picker earned about $1.20 per hour, while some other farm workers were earning more.

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Bombs over Bikini: The World’s First Nuclear Disaster

Bombs over Bikini: The World’s First Nuclear Disaster
by Connie Goldsmith (Author)

Booktalk: In 1946, as part of the Cold War arms race, the US military launched a program to test nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific Ocean. From 1946 until 1958, the military detonated sixty-seven nuclear bombs over the region’s Bikini and Enewetak Atolls. The twelfth bomb, called Bravo, became the world’s first nuclear disaster. It sent a toxic cloud of radiation over Rongelap Atoll and other nearby inhabited islands.

Snippet: “I began to feel a fine powder falling all over my body and into my eyes. The coconuts changed color. By now all the trees were white, as well as my entire body. I didn’t believe this was dangerous. The powder fell all day and night over the entire atoll of Rongelap,” Moyor John Anjain later recalled.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Old Manhattan Has Some Farms

Old Manhattan Has Some Farms
by Susan Lendroth (Author) and Kate Endle (Illustrator)

Booktalk: No matter where you live, you can grow food! In this new take on “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” the farmers are city dwellers and the farms consist of rooftops, empty lots, hydroponic labs, patios, and other urban nooks and crannies.

Snippet:
Spray some water here,
move an earthworm there–
pull some weeds, grab a spade.
Who’s got veggies they can trade?

http://youtu.be/oFBMm68zUcw

Find out how the author was inspired to write this book.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by Keri Recommends.

Sequoyah and His Talking Leaves: A Play About the Cherokee Syllabary

Sequoyah and His Talking Leaves: A Play About the Cherokee Syllabary
by Wim Coleman (Author), Pat Perrin (Author), and Siri Weber Feeney (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Doing what no one had ever done before, Sequoyah set about creating a written Cherokee language – helping preserve the tribe’s history and culture even today.

Snippet:
Sequoyah: Why, many words use the same sounds! There are far fewer sounds then there are words! I need to discover every sound used in the Cherokee speech. Then I’ll be able to create marks for all of the sounds.

Historian 2: Many people call Sequoyah’s writing system and alphabet. Actually, it was based on the individual sounds of words, or syllables–so it was really a syllabary.

Flatland

Flatland
by David Sayre (Author) and Rebecca Emberley (Illustrator)

Booktalk: What happens when people and things we love are no longer where we can see them?

Snippet:

The United States Marines

The United States Marines (U.S. Military Forces)
by Michael Green (Author)

Booktalk: For younger readers, a simple introduction to the United States Marine Corps.

Snippet: The Marines quickly respond to threats against the United States. They are often the first troops called into battle.

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Learn to Program with Scratch: A Visual Introduction to Programming with Games, Art, Science, and Math

Learn to Program with Scratch: A Visual Introduction to Programming with Games, Art, Science, and Math
by Majed Marji (Author)

Booktalk: Rather than type countless lines of code in a cryptic programming language, why not use colorful command blocks and cartoon sprites to create powerful scripts? Scratch is a fun, free, beginner-friendly programming environment where you connect blocks of code to build programs. While most famously used to introduce kids to programming, Scratch can make computer science approachable for people of any age. Hands-on projects will challenge you to create an Ohm’s law simulator, draw intricate patterns, program sprites to mimic line-following robots, create arcade-style games, and more!

Snippet: In Scratch, you won’t type any complicated commands. Instead, you’ll connect graphical blocks together to create programs.

This book covers Scratch 2, which was released in May 2013. This version allows you to create projects directly in your web browser so you don’t have to install any software in your computer…

To start Scratch, go to the Scratch website and click the TRY IT OUT link.

It’s STEM Friday! (STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics)

Share
by Sally Anne Garland (Author, Illustrator)

Booktalk: When Bunny’s little cousin visits, her mother tells her over and over that she must share. But her cousin wants to do everything Bunny does.

Snippet:
As soon as he came, he wanted my bear.
Mom said, “Remember, please let him share!”

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