Last Stop on Market Street
by Matt de la Peña; illustrated by Christian Robinson
This gentle, artfully illustrated tale of a boy and his grandmother offers a thoughtful introduction to adult themes like race, poverty and disability. CJ is a typical kid; he doesn’t want to ride a belching bus to volunteer with his Nana at a soup kitchen after church. But step by step, she shows him how to see the beauty in difference, whether it’s a blind man and his spotted seeing-eye dog or an old woman with curlers in her hair, cradling a jar full of butterflies.
Little Pea
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by Amy Krouse Rosenthal; illustrated by Jen Corace
The small protagonists in Rosenthal’s frankly adorable books go very much against the grain: Little Pea hates his enforced diet of candy and longs for dessert (a.k.a. spinach); Little Hoot pines to go to bed early like his peers, but late nights are the rule of the roost; and Little Oink desperately wants to tidy up his room, even if it’s his piggy duty to make a mess. Will your own little sugar-chasing, bedtime-refusing mayhem-maker be fooled by this reverse psychology? Try it and see.
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