Giraffes in My Closet tells the tale of three giraffes who find their home in a closet when an unsuspecting boy accidentally leaves his closet door open one night. That night, Mildred, Seth and Emily sneak inside and take up residence in his closet. And once inside, the boy discovers that these gentle giants who often feel awkward and are really quite shy, quickly become comfortable in their new home, their new hiding place, and are almost impossible to get out.
How severe is the literacy gap in our schools? In The Reading Crisis, the renowned reading specialist Jeanne Chall and her colleagues examine the causes of this disparity and suggest some remedies.
Real-life 7-year-old Sophia Spencer was bullied for loving bugs until hundreds of women scientists rallied around her. Now Sophie tells her inspiring story in this picture book that celebrates women in science, bugs of all kinds, and the importance of staying true to yourself. Makes a perfect gift for nature lovers on Earth Day and every day! Sophia Spencer has loved bugs ever since a butterfly landed on her shoulder--and wouldn't leave!--at a butterfly conservancy when she was only two-and-a-half years old. In preschool and kindergarten, Sophia was thrilled to share what she knew about grasshoppers (her very favorite insects), as well as ants and fireflies... but by first grade, not everyone shared her enthusiasm. Some students bullied her, and Sophia stopped talking about bugs altogether. When Sophia's mother wrote to an entomological society looking for a bug scientist to be a pen pal for her daughter, she and Sophie were overwhelmed by the enthusiastic response--letters, photos, and videos came flooding in. Using the hashtag BugsR4Girls, scientists tweeted hundreds of times to tell Sophia to keep up her interest in bugs--and it worked! Sophia has since appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and NPR, and she continues to share her love of bugs with others.
A playful, interactive, and laugh-out-loud-funny picture book with a deliciously hilarious ending! "Once upon a time," begins the big blue monster who is trying to tell a fabulous story. "It needs to be about a kid who is eaten by a dragon," he insists.But his little monster friend is not convinced that this is a good idea. "Dragon stories usually don't end well," he warns.As the two monsters argue over how the story should go, a hungry dragon named Dennis is listening nearby. Dennis knows exactly how this story should go... And by the way, what day is it?Watch out!
Nell Valenti is at ease when managing a farm to table cooking school in sun-dappled Tuscany, but begins to feel the heat when tasked with catching a killer, in this engaging Italian-set cozy mystery series. When a wealthy New York philanthropist pays top dollar for a private, four-day ziti workshop, Nell Valenti wants everyone at the Orlandini cooking school focused on the task at hand. But complications abound when Nell’s boyfriend Pete Orlandini rushes to Rome for an unexpected business trip, Chef Orlandini is more preoccupied with a potential spot on an American cooking show than preparing for the workshop, and an uninvited woman sneaks into the villa to inspect Pete’s olive grove. The last disturbance proves deadly, and when the woman’s body is found in the grove, Nell must investigate before her hopes for the workshop, like the olives, are crushed. Nell now has another item on her checklist--keep the Orlandinis out of trouble and the wealthy ziti-lovers happy while she looks into the stranger’s past. When Nell discovers that for one of the Orlandinis, at least, the murder victim was not such a stranger after all, she’ll learn that when a detective goes digging in Italy, she’d better be ready for truffle.
Doug and Trevor are best friends who love playing in the garden. But one day Doug gets dug up! Stuck at the top of a tower block can Doug find his way back to his friend or will he be trapped forever? Praise for Barry the Fish with Fingers: 'One of the best covers and titles this year complete with sparkly orange foil.' The Bookseller 'A funny tale that [...] ends with the moral that everyone has special talents that makes them unique.' Junior 'This is rather fishy fun.' Families Magazine Praise for Norman the Slug with the Silly Shell: 'With similarly bold illustration, eye-catching cover and simple text [as Barry the Fish with Fingers] this has the potential to be another hit.' The Bookseller 'Lovely glittery illustrations and simple text make this a must for pre-schoolers.' The Daily Mail 'A fantastically bold and fun picture book that will teach children the importance of accepting who you are.' Junior News and Mail Praise for No-Bot the Robot with No Bottom: 'Silly, funny, and very enjoyable to read!' The Bookbag 'Fabulously funny and wonderfully warm.' Liverpool Echo 'Guarantees lots of giggles - from children and adults!' Parents in Touch 'Fans of Barry, Norman and Keith will absolutely adore this new wonderfully eccentric new character.' Mumsnet
This book enables children to begin to recognize the letters of the alphabet, and provides a connection to the concepts they can associate with each character to gain a stronger sense of the sounds hidden in the shapes called "letters."
This new edition of the bestselling guide contains a supplementary chapter, plus fully updated booklists. 'No matter where they go, children lost in books will always find their way home.' Your child deserves the best reading teacher in the world. And the one person who will read more than anyone else to help your child learn to read... is you. In this clear and humour-filled guide, Paul Jennings cuts through the jargon and the controversies to show every parent practical and effective ways for helping their child to catch the reading bug. This legendary children's author has spent years teaching, lecturing, writing and parenting. Now you can benefit from his advice. In this book: brilliant booklists for your child - now updated and expandedthe whole reading experience explainedgreat cartoons and anecdotessupplementary chapter on the special reading needs of boys
The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.
