PICTURE BOOK - Luka's Quilt by Georgia Guback

Illustrated by the author

1994, Greenwillow Books

HC $16.99 - looks like it's still in print

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.35 - 49 ratings

My rating: 3.5

Endpapers: solid green, the color of the background of the quilt Tutu made for Luka

Illustrations are cut paper Collage!  Gorgeous

1^st line/s:  "My tutu lives with us.  Tutu.  That's Hawaiian for grandmother.  Tutu takes care of me while Mom and Dad work.  We do lots of things together.  I like that, and so does Tutu.  But all that changed when the quilt came along."

My comments:  I loved the cut paper collage illustrations (gorgeous!) and the beautiful quilt that Tutu made for Luka.  I love all the information about Hawaii.  But I don't love that Luka's pretty much a spoiled little brat.  Nothing I can change about that, it's part of the story, and the story about making the quilt, and the leis, is super. Just don't like the kid.  At all.

Goodreads:  Luka and her grandmother Tutu are best friends until Luka shows her disappointment at the traditional Hawaiian quilt that Tutu makes for her. Tutu is hurt, Luka is upset, and things just aren't the same anymore. But when Lei Day comes, the two set aside there differences to enjoy the holiday.
          "Guback's storytelling proves as affable as her bright, intricate cut-paper collages." -- Publishers Weekly.

PICTURE BOOK - Infinity and Me by Kate Hosford

Illustrated by Gabi Swiatkowska

2012, Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis (a division of Lerner Books)

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 3.99 - 814 rtings

My rating: 4

Endpapers endless numbers black on gray

1^st line/s:  "The night I got my new red shoes, I couldn't wait to wear them to school."

My comments:  Infinity has always been a tough concept for me to wrap my mind around.  In this book, a little girl inquires of different people what they think of when they think of infinity.  The illustrations are really interesting and different.  I'm planning to use this book as the perfect  introduction to a quick program for kids that's an inquiry about infinity.

Goodreads:   When I looked up, I shivered. How many stars were in the sky? A million? A billion? Maybe the number was as big as infinity. I started to feel very, very small. How could I even think about something as big as infinity? Uma can't help feeling small when she peers up at the night sky. She begins to wonder about infinity. Is infinity a number that grows forever? Is it an endless racetrack? Could infinity be in an ice cream cone? Uma soon finds that the ways to think about this big idea may just be . . . infinite.

PICTURE BOOK - Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner

Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal

2015, Chronicle Books (SF)

48 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.1 - 794 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers: Beige with brown line drawings of plants and garden tools

Illustrations:  No white border, actually no white: all beige, edge of page to edge of page...

1^st line/s:  "Up in the garden, I stand and plan ---
my hands full of seeds and my head full of dreams."

My comments:  Great information about gardens, soil, planting, and seasons, this reads as a fiction book but is full of information for little ones.  It also has beautiful language, lots of alliteration, and great rhythm.  I read it aloud to eight preschoolers, holding all their attention, and will use it with my STEM "Down and Dirty" (soils) summer camp at the library.  

Goodreads:  In this exuberant and lyrical follow-up to the award-winning Over and Under the Snow, discover the wonders that lie hidden between stalks, under the shade of leaves . . . and down in the dirt. Explore the hidden world and many lives of a garden through the course of a year! Up in the garden, the world is full of green—leaves and sprouts, growing vegetables, ripening fruit. But down in the dirt exists a busy world—earthworms dig, snakes hunt, skunks burrow—populated by all the animals that make a garden their home.

PICTURE BOOK - Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco

Illustrated by the Author

1990 Philomel Books

32 pgs.. - 4830 ratings

Goodreads rating:  4.35

My rating:  5

Endpapers:  Dark Red

1^st line/s:  "On sultry summer days at my grandma's farm in Michigan, the air gets damp and heavy."

My comments:  I see absolutely no reason not to give this book a "5" rating.  It's wonderful.  Sometimes Polacco's books are really heavily texted, this one is not quite so.  And there are, of course, her wonderful illustrations.  A special grandmother-granddaughter relationship (I love that!), and a cool way to help the child be not so afraid of thunder as well as helping her realize that not everything is quite as scary as it seems.  Lots of great things in one beautiful picture book - plus a recipe that looks like a lot of fun to make, which adds some tomato the the chocolate flavoring....magic....

Goodreads:  Grandma consoles her frightened granddaughter by telling her that the dark clouds of the impending storm are nothing more than the ingredients for a Thunder Cake