Letters in Charcoal
by Irene Vasco, Juan Palomino (Illustrator)

5 of 5 stars

A young girl grows up in a poor village in Colombia. There is only one person in the entire village who knows how to read, and this girl barters with them to learn the alphabet. She studies to learn to read, so that she can read letters that arrive for her family. She makes alphabet letters from charcoal or chalk, deciphering their meaning and sharing her knowledge with the other children in the village.

Tree Whispers (The Child’s Play Library)
by Mandy Ross, Juliana Oakley (Illustrator)

4 of 5 stars

This book of poems offers a refreshing look at trees and how much they contribute to our world. There are beautiful poems about the rings of a tree, the roots of a tree, and different rare types of trees like the joshua tree or baobab tree. There is a poem about forest bathing and another about birds’ nests. There are poems for oak trees, jacarandas, willows, sycamores, and fruit trees.
There is also an emphasis on protecting the trees that provide homes for so many animal species.

Merlina and the Magical Mishap
by Daniela Drescher

5 of 5 stars

Merlina and her friend Igor the Dragon are preparing for the pumpkin harvest. They have already made apple and pear jams, and the next item will be the pumpkins for pies and breads. While picking pumpkins, Igor gets a sharp thorn in his foot claw. He cries for help, asking Merlina to use her magic to disappear the thorn. Merlina casts a spell, but it goes wrong, changing the thorn to a toadstool that grows out of Igor’s toe! The next spell Merlina casts accidentally changes the toadstool into a large green leaf! Can Merlina find a solution for getting the thorn/toadstool/leaf off her friend’s toe?