(Dive Into Reading)
Henry grapples with anxiety as he prepares to showcase his dance skills at the school talent show. This installment in the beloved Confetti Kids series explores themes of friendship, courage, and self-expression, highlighting the importance of overcoming fears and supporting one another in creative endeavors. Through relatable experiences, young readers are encouraged to embrace their talents and find confidence in performing.
In this new book in the popular Confetti Kids series, Lily and her friends organize a protest in order to save their neighborhood public garden from being demolished. Five friends from diverse backgrounds learn how to navigate common childhood challenges, new experiences, and the world around them in the realistic and kid-friendly Confetti Kids early chapter books. In this story, Lily learns that the community garden is going to be torn down and made into a parking lot. Lily and her friends are upset by the news. They decide to form a protest and call on friends, neighbors, and reporters to participate and save their beloved garden. On the morning of the protest, Lily is unsure if their efforts will work. After all, she and her friends are just kids, and no one is going to listen to them. . . . Or can they prove that kids can make a difference too?
(Dive Into Reading)
Mei faces the emotional challenge of her parents' flower shop closing, navigating her feelings with the support of her best friends. This story highlights themes of friendship, resilience, and coping with change, making it a relatable and heartwarming addition to the Confetti Kids series.
The Animated Universe is the long-awaited debut of a seasoned poet who has traveled the world honing her craft and, in the process, settling into the assurance and confidence in her voice. These poems reflect her movement, but above all they speak to her core belief in the power of empathy and compassion as aesthetic markers. In "signs" she writes, "Everywhere I go/ I see the people I love in the faces of strangers,.." Her poems range across three modes of seeing: the ode that reveals her penchant for finding beauty in the unusual, in the ordinary and in the disquieting things of the world; her legends, which are the mythologizing of daily life that only great calypsonians and natural storytellers are able to achieve; and finally, her lyric disrobing of her heart, her soul and her body--a sacrifice she makes with heart because of her strong conviction that the sharing of self is a healing quality of poetry: "I am a figment/ of God's imagination. / I am more than/ I say. I am./ I am who I am/ becoming."