Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem

Soloy, Lauren. Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem. Toronto: Tundra, 2021.
Where do you like to go when you want to think about big questions? Do you have a favourite place where your imagination can fly and your mind can ponder? Etty and her father, Charles Darwin, like to take a daily walk in their garden. They observe plants and animals and talk about big questions. Like this one: Do fairies exist? Etty’s father prefers proof before believing something is real, but Etty reminds him that he can’t disprove the existence of fairies. The two of them decide to keep an open mind.
This imaginative picture book – with an afterward explaining a bit about the real life of Charles Darwin – is highly recommended for readers 6 to 11 years old who have their own curious questions about life. 

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Biographies of Charles Darwin

Prairie Lotus

Park, Linda Sue. Prairie Lotus. Boston: Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
Hanna and her father move to Dakota Territory in the spring of 1880. Her mother has died from injuries incurred during anti-Chinese riots in Los Angeles, and her father – a dressmaker – wants to start afresh in a new place where they will be safe. Hanna is supposed to stay out of sight. People tend to be cruel to half-Chinese and half-white people, and her father – originally from Tennessee – wants to shield his daughter and protect his business prospects. But Hanna wants to go to school. She’s a teenager now and has dreams of someday earning a graduation diploma. Will her father allow her to attend school? Will the townspeople allow her to mingle with their children? Will she make any friends in this new place? At the end of the book, Park explains why she modelled the setting of her story after the Laura Ingalls Wilder stories and how she, herself, has faced many of the racist attacks depicted in her novel. This 247-page award-winning book, printed in an easy-to-read font with widely spaced lines, is highly recommended for readers 11 to 14 years old.

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The Secrets of Blueberries…

Nickerson, Sara. The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me. New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 2015.
Twelve-year-old Missy and her older brother Patrick convince their parents to let them get a job picking blueberries. But Missy acquires much more than money during the summer. She learns how people change. How life doesn’t stay the same. And sometimes there is no one to blame. Sometimes things just happen.
This 323-page novel with a relatively large font and well-spaced lines of print is easy to read. It flows smoothly with lots of conversation and short paragraphs.
Some novels written from the first person point of view seem too self-centred. This story, though, suits this approach. The difficulties of adolescence, the frustrations of life, the slow change of perspective on life are all empathetically portrayed in this introspective story recommended for readers 11 to 14 years old.

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