Category: fiction

Aunt Pearl
by Monica Kulling (Author) and Irene Luxbacher (Illustrator)

Booktalk: Aunt Pearl arrives one day pushing a shopping cart full of her worldly goods. Her sister Rose has invited her to come live with her family.

Six-year-old Marta is happy to meet her aunt, who takes her out to look for treasure on garbage day, and who shows her camp group how to decorate a coffee table with bottle caps. But almost immediately, Pearl and Rose start to clash — over Pearl’s belongings crammed into the house, and over Rose’s household rules. As the weeks pass, Pearl grows quieter and more withdrawn, until, one morning, she is gone.

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Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

Small World
by Ishta Mercurio (Author) and Jen Corace (Illustrator)

Booktalk: When Nanda is born, the whole of her world is the circle of her mother’s arms. But as she grows, the world grows too. It expands outward–from her family, to her friends, to the city, to the countryside. And as it expands, so does Nanda’s wonder in the underlying shapes and structures patterning it: cogs and wheels, fractals in snowflakes. Eventually, Nanda’s studies lead her to become an astronaut and see the small, round shape of Earth far away.

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Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.