Aunt Pearl – Perfect Picture Book Friday

Posted on November 1, 2019 by Joanna

Title: Aunt Pearl

Author: Monica Kulling

Illustrator: Irene Luxbacher

 Publisher: Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press, 2019

Ages: 6-9

Themes: homelessness, family, love, garbage, acceptance, imagination, ambiguity, free-spirit, mental health, compassion

Opening:

Aunt Pearl had no home of her own. She slept wherever she could.

Sometimes she crashed on a friend’s couch. Sometimes she holed up in a hostel. In summer, she slept on city benches.

“That’s not how it should be,” said Mom. Pearl will live with us.”

Synopsis:

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 As the weeks pass, Pearl grows quieter and more withdrawn, until, one morning, she is gone.

Why I like this book:

I am so happy to see an author address the topic of homelessness with young children. Sadly, most children these days are exposed to this reality and it is wonderful to have a picture book we can use as a springboard for discussions on this. There are over half a million homeless in the USA and around half that number in Canada.

Monica’s approach is accepting and gracious, and at the same time authentic and gritty. Aunt Pearl is presented as a quirky, strong-willed, creative, generous (possibly struggling with some emotional or mental issues or simply free-spirited.) Her homelessness remains unexplained as do the reasons for her departure leaving her belongings behind at the end of the story. Some young readers/listeners will struggle with the lack of detail and open-endedness, and others will readily embrace the vagueness and lack of closure, and draw their own conclusions. Having bonded with their aunt, especially the little girl, the children in the story are left to wonder why she is gone, and if she’ll ever come back, and this is a great springboard for discussions. Life and relationships are bumpy and not all our questions are answered or answerable. I love the sensitive way Monica depicts the growing tension between Mom and Aunt Rose (inevitable when another adult moves in with a family) and how compassion still reigns and gestures of creativity can smooth things over. Love and family commitment underpin

The illustrations support the text with beautiful nuance, packed with emotions like: joy, messiness, randomness, every day beauty, individuality, loss and love. The ambiguity will have children and caregivers talking. A nice touch-Dan is dark-haired with light brown skin and the rest of the family is white. Encourage children to look for some recurring details in the illustrations!

Amazon has the age-range for this book as 4-7, I personally would age that up a bit, because of the wonderful ambiguity and the length of the text.This is a book I would share in my library time, and would prepare myself for some great discussions about inclusion, choice, diversity, compassion, and family. This story encourages compassion not fear!

Activities/resources:

14 ways to explain homelessness to your child.

Other books: Older children will enjoy Esperanza Rising by Pam Monoz Ryan or The Double Life of Zoe Flynn by Janet Lee Carey. For younger children, try Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts or The Lady in the Box by Ann McGovern.

Each week a group of bloggers reviews picture books we feel would make great educational reads. To help teachers, caregivers and parents, we have included resources and/or activities with each of our reviews. A complete list of the thousands of books we have reviewed can be found sorted alphabetically and by topics, here on Susanna Leonard Hill’s website.

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No-Plastics October – Final Musings

Posted on October 29, 2019 by Joanna

Here are a few final photos.

  • Curried Parsnip Soup
  • Homemade Yogurt
  • Farmer’s Market Haul
  • Freshly fished Striped Bass

My no-plastics month is coming to an end. I have bought almost no plastic this month and have reduced my waste by over 50%. I have tried several alternative products with no plastic content or packaging and will be continuing to use all these foods, alternative toiletries and cleaning products except my tooth powder. I will finish it up as it does a good job of cleaning but I really don’t like the taste. Baking soda and vinegar have become my new best friends. I was well impressed with the shine that apple cider vinegar in water instead of a traditional conditioner gives to my hair. I also love how this focus has decreased my meat consumption and plan to continue that. I probably will still buy the occasional banana and avocado, but I did like my focus on local seasonal produce, and hope I can maintain this, though I will have to check out farmers’ markets during the winter months. And loved that it has made me more experimental again in my cooking, using the veggies I found that week at the market.

I have become hyper aware of plastic this month in my daily life. There are, of course, many plastic products I am not willing to go without like my computer, DVD player, pens, containers of oil and anti-freeze etc, and I am sure I will be buying some wrapped cheese and potato chips again. But, I truly hope many of my changes can be permanent. I want to stick to eschewing all that TJ packaging, for example, even if it is the quickest, easiest and cheapest place for me to buy produce. I have become more aware of plastic in clothing, too, and want to focus on natural materials.

My research has also led me to some encouragements, not just to doom and gloom articles with all the horrible stats of ever-growing plastic pollution of our planet. A couple of my FB friends pointed out recent research suggests there may be some plastics that do degrade over time in the oceans, and that eventually thermal depolymerization may be cost effective enough to break down plastic and turn it into the fuel that the next generation needs. 

 it’s not realistic to ask people to give up all plastics. But, we do have better, reusable alternatives to most of the stuff that gets picked up on beach clean-ups all over the world, and we used to use many of them. If everyone could be more mindful about curbing wasteful, single-use plastic, we could help create powerful, lasting change for the better.

Laws and social movements are the most effective means of changing consumer behavior on a large scale, so get involved with some of these issues. We do need to vote locally and federally for women and men, who care about this issue. And we need to put pressure on offenders and praise those who are reducing plastic. If a company or manufacturer uses excessive plastic packaging, let it know. Write a letter or send a tweet. If you get no response, post it on social media. Conversely, praise businesses that are reducing their use of plastic by tagging the business and posting photos on social media. In an ideal world, policymakers and manufacturers would have a greater handle on all this. But because this is slow to change, those who help create a demand for alternatives by producing and buying more obscure items are making a positive contribution. I have renewed my vows to living, and I phrase this carefully, “as plastic-free a life as is feasible within my budget and time constraints.” Thanks for reading along with me this month, and I’ll keep you posted.

For further reading, do check out this terrific list of 100 steps to a Plastic-Free Life.

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Plastic Ahoy – Perfect Picture Book Friday

Posted on October 25, 2019 by Joanna

Title: Plastic Ahoy, Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Author: Patricia Newman

Photographer: Annie Crawley

 Publisher: Milbrook Press, 2014

Ages: 8-12

48 pages

Genre: Nonfiction

Themes: plastic scraps, environment, conservation, plastic scraps, single-use plastics, sustainability, marine pollution, waste, getting involved, solutions, great pacific garbage patch, Pacific Ocean, science, the scientific method

Favorite Quote:

To See plastic debris in the middle of this large stretch of ocean, far from land, offers a vast wakeup call for the way we leave our footprint even on remote places of the Earth.

Synopsis:

Three young PhD students are on a mission to study a massive accumulation of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, AKA the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The scientific method unfolds as they conduct their investigation. Their adventures introduce readers to the basics of ocean science and the hazards of plastics.

Why I like this book:

A thoroughly researched non-fiction read, Plastic, Ahoy!: Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a pertinent introduction to this specific example of human pollution and to modern marine science.

What makes this a stellar NF addition to your school shelves?

It’s a mission about three young female scientists and their specialities and research on this trip. We learn much about the stages of scientific inquiry, equipment used, and the living organisms they researched under the sea. This brings some real people into the science, and it shows the range of issues being studied about the garbage patch as well as the specificity of each scientists’ interests and expertise.

The text includes questions on many levels, as well as the process the scientists go through in answering one question, which leads to another one they have to design an experiment to answer, and on and on. It also explicitly states that often their questions (experiments) led to more questions. 

Sidebars outline clearly how the scientists’ work and experiments use the scientific method.

Awesome specific human details like, how the soda machine breaks down during the trip and how the team pulls a smelly dead squid onto the boat.

The color photographs by Annie Crawley from the actual expedition make you feel like you are right there on the boat. The photos make this book, capturing all the action right down to that broken soda machine.

I always say, almost everything I know, I learned form picture books, and this is no exception. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was not discovered until 1997, although it has probably been in existence much longer than that. No one knows how much plastic debris is in the patch or what exactly it is doing to the ocean ecosystem. Some of the first discoveries included that most of the plastic is broken bits the size of “confetti.” Not what I expected. It was fascinating to see how many animals were making a new home out of the plastic. What I imagined was a garbage island floating out in the ocean, but it isn’t really like that. Much of the bigger plastic floats just below the surface, and the bulk of the plastic are small pellets the size of rice. Another interesting fact was that some plastics absorb toxins created by the degrading of other plastics– meaning that animals ingesting those pellets got a double-dose of bad.

This is a compelling read for all ages.

Activities/resources:

There is a ton of supplemental reading as well as source notes at the back of this book and there are tips to combat this devastating destruction in our ocean.  It’s a great choice for children interested in marine biology, chemistry or conservation, and will be a great resource for any science unit on the environment, marine ecosystems, food chain, ecology, trash/recycling, plastic pollution or natural adaptations. It would make perfect reading for Earth Day or World Ocean Day.

Patricia has many more resources on her website including a 30-Day Challenge she created with Annie Crawley.

Each week a group of bloggers reviews picture books we feel would make great educational reads. To help teachers, caregivers and parents, we have included resources and/or activities with each of our reviews. A complete list of the thousands of books we have reviewed can be found sorted alphabetically and by topics, here on Susanna Leonard Hill’s website.

Posted in conservation, Earth Day, nonfiction, Perfect Picture Book Friday, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments