Little Voices, Big Ideas

This season, we’re looking at books that inspire the minds of the future presidents in your family. Those kiddos who write carefully-crafted pleas to the Tooth Fairy. Or rally their classes around calls for longer recess. The ones who inspire the family to shirk plastic straws in the new year. Or who would really just like a healthy planet to live on, thank you very much.  Theirs  are the little v...

Of all the experiences we share on our unique and individual life journeys, there’s none quite as unifying as catching big feelings on the first day of school. It's a day filled with promise: New friends! Old ones! New teachers! New ‘fits! New shoes!  But it can also be a day filled with the weight of realizing you’re  different . Everyone but YOU went to faraway places, had the Best Summers Ever....

Farmer Brown has a problem. Not only have his cows taken up… typing, but they’ve used their newfound skill to put their hooves down. The barn, they say, in typewritten notes tacked to its door, is  cold.  And unless Farmer Brown supplies them with some electric blankets to help them brace the herd against the biting chill? Well? No more milk.  Not one to be cowed by the threats of… cows, Farmer Br...

This season, we jump headlong into the murky waters of American democracy, swimming amongst stories with themes that look at the power that the littlest voices can have to enact the biggest of changes. On today’s episode,  We are Water Protectors.  Written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade, this 2020 title tells the story of a young Native American girl who exercises her First...

One morning in rural Alabama, Michael’s granddaddy unexpectedly dons a fancy suit. Now, Granddaddy was ordinarily a man who wore coveralls and work clothes, and it wasn’t a church day, either, so Michael knew that something really special must be happening. He put on a necktie, himself, for whatever the occasion. This was the civil rights era in the South, and the occasion, as it turned out, was v...

Mr. Plumbean lives on a neat street, where all the houses are the same. That is, until a seagull drops a giant can of bright orange paint on the roof of Mr. Plumbean’s house. Will Mr. Plumbean “fix” that splot, returning his house to the ticky-tacky neatness that existed before? Or, will he do something altogether… different, changing his block, and his neighbors, forever? The second season of Lit...

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