Oskar Can... by Britta Teckentrup (Picture Book Review)

I received a physical copy of this picture book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

Oskar Can...

by Britta Teckentrup

Published by Prestel Junior

on October 23, 2018

Length: 32 pages

Ages: 2-5 

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Synopsis:

Oskar the raven is back, and this time the beloved young bird is finding out all the things he can do. 

Britta Teckentrup has established herself as one of the most popular children's book authors today. Her vibrant, collage-based illustrations have made her books a favorite in homes, schools, and libraries. And her character, Oskar, based on her family cat of the same name, is the perfect companion for young readers. This new book sends a simple, positive message that will empower kids to claim their own accomplishments. Tie a shoe? Brush their teeth? Wash their dishes? Bounce a ball? If Oskar can do it, they can too. Fans of Oskar's adventures will be thrilled to discover their friend is back with a new story. And readers meeting Oskar for the first time will discover a delightful, relatable character who makes them feel good about themselves and the world around them. 

My Thoughts:

Oskar is a super cute raven that can do anything he puts his mind to. He can jump as high as his friends, do yoga, and make the perfect cup of tea. He can fly and ski and ride bikes with his buddy Mo. 

This special little book points out to its' readers that anything and everything can be an accomplishment. If Oskar can do it, so can you! It's fun to see what all Oskar can do, and it sets in motion the idea that the reader can do these things too. 

I loved the simple, shape-based illustrations sitting on bold and textured backgrounds. Each page has detail but not in an overwhelming sense. Each page is rather simple so younger children can find the focal point and follow along easily. 

The quality of this book is fantastic. Every page is thick and creamy (and may I say that I love the smell as well)! The cloth stitched binding may well hold up to lots of rereading, which is a bonus for us as we cycle through many books daily. 

I also have to say that I adored the end pages in this book! The repeating Oskar pattern is too cute! 

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison (Picture Book Review)

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History

by Vashti Harrison

Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Published on December 5, 2017

Length: 88 pages

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Literary Awards: 

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Picture Books (2018)
NAACP Image Award for Children (2018)

Synopsis: 

Featuring forty trailblazing black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations. Illuminating text paired with irresistible illustrations bring to life both iconic and lesser-known female figures of Black history such as abolitionist Sojourner Truth, pilot Bessie Coleman, chemist Alice Ball, politician Shirley Chisholm, mathematician Katherine Johnson, poet Maya Angelou, and filmmaker Julie Dash. Among these biographies, readers will find heroes, role models, and everyday women who did extraordinary things -- bold women whose actions and beliefs contributed to making the world better for generations of girls and women to come. Whether they were putting pen to paper, soaring through the air or speaking up for the rights of others, the women profiled in these pages were all taking a stand against a world that didn't always accept them. The leaders in this book may be little, but they all did something big and amazing, inspiring generations to come. 

My Thoughts: 

Much like Little Leaders: Visionary Women Around the World, this is a fantastic collection of biographies on 50 extraordinary women. What sets it apart is that this particular collection is entirely about African-American women who pursued their dreams.  

I love that the author's introduction includes the hope that readers of every background, and not just African-American readers, can enjoy this book and see themselves in these 'Little Leaders'. 

We read Visionary Women in January and loved it so I knew I'd make this a priority for Black History Month. My daughter wasn't interested enough to sit through every page so we read a few pages a day this week. I'm certainly getting more from it at this point but hope that the overall idea that women can do whatever they put their mind to sticks for her. 

I was quite surprised at how many names were familiar for me. It helps that there are a few authors, poets, and singers, as well as already-famous figures from history, but it also included a lot of women whom I had no knowledge of previously so I learned a lot. 

Each biography is about a page long, with an illustration of each woman on the opposite page. I personally love Vashti Harrison's super-cute illustration style. Each woman looks so peaceful and wise and I love the details in their era dress. I also really love the header doodles and doodled backgrounds that match each biography. 
I  also love the 'Further Reading, Watching, and Listening' pages at the back of the book that shares websites to do further research as well as lists of films these women starred in or books that they wrote. 

More from this author: 

More books for empowered girls:

    

Happy reading!!

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (Young Adult Book Review)

All the Bright Places

by Jennifer Niven

Published by Knopf

on January 6, 2015

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Mental Health

Length: 378 pages

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Literary Awards:

Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult Fiction (2015)

Pennsylvania's Young Readers Choice Award Nominee for Young Adults (2016)

Milwaukee County Teen Book Award Nominee (2016)

Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Nominee (2016)

South Carolina Book Award Nominee for Young Adult (2017)

Rhode Island Teen Book Award Nominee (2017)

Missouri Gateway Readers Award Nominee (2017)

Lincoln Award Nominee (2017)

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for the Best of the Best (2018)

Synopsis:

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. 

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death. 

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the "natural wonders" of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It's only with Violet that Finch can be himself--a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who's not such a freak after all. And it's only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink.

My Thoughts:

This book was painful.
I'm quite fond of tragedy but I think this one hit me a little too hard. Everything about this book was beautiful but also so heartbreaking.
You think you'll be okay because you know from the start that Finch doesn't plan on living, but it will still hurt. A lot. 

Niven did an amazing job of covering mental health as well as the spirit of being a young adult while dealing with difficult life situations in this book. 
I think All the Bright Things has a lot of hard life lessons in it though. Ones like: You may/will get hurt, more than once, in ways that you think you may never heal from. Time does heal though. The memories will always be there, but the pain does lessen, and the best way to deal with it all is just to live - however you can. Just live. 

I personally don't think that anyone that is going through a really rough time and that may be susceptible to low moods should read this until they are in a stable frame of mind. As an adult who has much better control of my emotions now than I did as a teenager, I was still affected pretty deeply by this book. It doesn't have the most positive, uplifting, or happy ending. It doesn't seem very hopeful. It's definitely worth the read though. 

If you're just looking for an ugly cry, this might be the perfect book to choose. 

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Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (Picture Book Review)

Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race

by Margot Lee Shetterly

with Winifred Conkling

Illustrated by Laura Freeman

Published by HarperCollins

on January 16, 2018

Genre: Children's, Picture Book, Nonfiction, Biography, Science, History

Length: 40 pages

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Literary Awards:
Coretta Scott King Honor for Illustrator (2019)

Synopsis:

Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden were good at math... really good.

They participated in some of NASA's greatest successes, like providing calculations for America's first journeys into space. And they did so during a time when being black and a woman limited what they could do. But they worked hard. They persisted. And they used their genius minds to change the world. 

In this illustrated picture book edition, we explore the story of four female African American mathematicians at NASA, known as "colored computers," and how they overcame gender and racial barriers to succeed in a highly challenging STEM-based career. 

My Thoughts:

I have the full-length novel somewhere on my TBR shelf waiting to be read but I couldn't pass up reading the picture book to my daughter. I love books like this that show girls that they too can grow up to do amazing things if only they persevere and follow their dreams. 
More so, this picture book is about the four intelligent Black women who worked for NASA, doing mathematics, programming their first computer, engineering airplanes & spaceships, and helping the United States to send the first man around Earth and land on the moon.

This picture book only dips into the lives of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden and their accomplishments, which just makes me want to read the full-length novel more, but it is a great summary of both the history of  'the Space Race' and these extraordinary women.

It follows a timeline (which is illustrated in the back of the book), starting in 1943 when the first African-American female "computers" were hired at what is now NASA. These women did all the complicated mathematics that we now use actual computers for.
Each of the four women started working for NASA at different times but each played a huge roll in aeronautics and space travel.

Overall, I'm glad to have come across this important book and hope to read and learn more about these women and their contributions soon in the young adult and adult versions of this book!

Looking for more biographies of amazing women?
Be sure to check out my reviews for these!

    

Happy reading!

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren (Nonfiction Book Review)

Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages

by Gaston Dorren

published by Atlantic Monthly Press

on December 4, 2018

Genre: Non-fiction

Length: 320 pages

Goodreads | Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

Synopsis:

English is the world language, except that most of the world doesn't speak it--only one in five people does. Dorren calculates that to speak fluently with half of the world's 7.4 billion people in their mother tongues, you would need to know no fewer than twenty languages. He sets out to explore these top twenty world languages, which range from the familiar (French, Spanish) to the surprising (Malay, Javanese, Bengali). Babel whisks the reader on a delightful journey to every continent of the world, tracing how these world languages rose to greatness while others fell away and showing how speakers today handle the foibles of their mother tongues. Whether showcasing tongue-tying phonetics or elegant but complicated writing scripts and mind-bending quirks of grammar, Babel vividly illustrates that mother tongues are like nations: each has its own customs and beliefs that seem as self-evident to those born into it as they are surprising to the outside world. Among many other things, Babel will teach you why modern Turks can't read books that are a mere 75 years old, what it means in practice for Russian and English to be relatives, and how Japanese developed separate "dialects" for men and women. Dorren lets you in on his personal trials and triumphs while studying Vietnamese in Hanoi, debunks ten widespread myths about Chinese characters, and discovers that Swahili became the lingua franca in a part of the world where people routinely speak three or more languages. Witty, fascinating and utterly compelling, Babel will change the way you look at and listen to the world and how it speaks. 

My Thoughts: 

I don't usually review non-fiction unless it's for children but I've been very absorbed in this book lately and had a few things to say about it. 

I've been fascinated by languages lately and have been actively learning a few. I love that the internet bridges the gap between countries and cultures and allows us to converse about things we have in common. Learning new languages has helped me learn more about the world and the cultures and people within it. Likewise, I've learned more about the history of the world and have only wanted to learn more since then. 

That curiosity is why I picked this up as soon as I saw it at my local library. I'd already started learning at least three new languages so I needed something that could teach me a little something about each of them, and more. 

Of course, I skipped around to the languages that most interest me right now, and those that I am studying, but I perused the others as well. 

I was happy to see that some chapters included a lot of history about the language, which was exactly what I was looking for at the time. Other chapters focused on specifics within the language or the author's personal experience with that language. 

As the first book about language that I've picked up to read (besides a dictionary), this was quite informative for me. I've learned a lot more than I would have just studying the languages I'm currently learning and subsequently have learned more about language as a whole as well as that I have a lot more to learn!

2019 Reading Challenge Roundup

Lazy Day Lit's 2019 Reading Challenge Round Up

Who likes reading challenges?!
I may not be the best at keeping up or keeping track of them but I'm going to attempt to try!

I'm also going to challenge myself to continue my 2018 trend of reading out of my comfort zone, to read more of my own books rather than ebooks, arcs, or books from the library, and to read more books set in places around the world. 

The main purpose of this roundup is to keep track of the books I read for which challenges throughout the year.
It's woefully empty but hopefully, we all have an amazing year full of great books! Happy Reading! 

2019 Reading Challenge

Stacy Renee has read 3 books toward her goal of 52 books.

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3 of 52 (5%)

view books

This doesn't seem to be updating in edit view so I'll let you know that I'm at
88/52 including the picture books I review. 51/52 going by my own personal fiction novels goal.

Predetermined TBR
(to choose at my discretion)

ABC Challenge

19/26

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

1001 Books To Read Before You Die List

2018: 61/1001

2019: 62/1001

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 

1001 Books to Read Before You Grow Up List
2018: 143/1001
2019: 147/1001

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (reread)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Charles Carrol (reread)
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (reread)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (reread)


Beat the Backlist challenge:
(I'm only counting books that I already own for this challenge) 
27/40

January:
Chomp by Carl Hiaasen
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven (ebook)

February:
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

March:
Pet Sematary by Stephen King

April:
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah 

May:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Flush by Carl Hiaasen

June:
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo
Hoot by Carl Hiaasen
Nim's Island by Wendy Orr

July:
Mermaid Tales #1 by Debbie Dadey
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

August:
Beauty and the Beasty
Alice in Wonderland
Pippi Longstocking
On Writing by Stephen King

September
Pippi Goes On Board by Astrid Lindgren
October
The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy
Coraline (graphic novel)
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

November
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

December
The Call of the Wild

 
2019 PopSugar Reading Challenge
13/50


Non-Fiction
*Little Leaders: Visionary Women Around the World by Vashti Harrison (children's)
*Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren
 *Becoming by Michelle Obama 
*Hidden Figures: The True Story of Four Black Women and the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (children's)
*Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison (children's)
*The A-Z of Wonder Women by Yvonne Lin 
*The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
*Malala: My Story of Standing Up for Girls' Rights by Malala Yousafzai (children's/MG)
*I Dissent by Debbie Levy (children's)
*I Am Sonia Sotomayer by Brad Meltzer (children's)
*Wild by Cheryl Strayed
*SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson
History's Weirdest Deaths by James Proud
On Writing by Stephen King
She Explores by Gail Straub
History's Weirdest Deaths by James Proud

New to Me Authors
Carl Hiaasen
Jennifer Niven
Gaston Dorren
Vashti Harrison
Michelle Obama
Margot Lee Shetterly
Erik Larson
Malala Yousafzai
David Small
Samira Ahmed
Kristin Hannah
Cheryl Strayed
Agatha Christie
Emily Carroll
Danielle Paige
Jody Houser
Wendy Orr
Debbie Dadey
Delia Owens
Margaret Rogerson
Riley Sager
Barbara Dee
Rory Power
Heather Morris
Rae Earl
Gail Straub
James Proud
Michael Moreci
Eoin Colfer
Kiki Thorpe
Allison Mills
A.W. Jantha
George Takei
Erin A. Craig
Rupi Kaur

Book to Movie Adaptations

All the Bright Places (upcoming)
Jeremy Poldark (Masterpiece theater series)
Dry  (upcoming)
The Devil in the White City  (upcoming tv series on Hulu)
The Sun Is Also A Star  (new)
Pet Sematary  (old & new)
Bird Box (new)
Animal Farm (old)
The Nightingale (upcoming)
Shadow and Bone (upcoming tv series)
Wild (old)
The Tale of Despereaux (old)
Nim's Island (old)
Stranger Things: The Other Side (recent Netflix show)
Peter Pan (old)
Beauty and the Beast (old)
Alice in Wonderland (old)
Pippi Longstocking (old)
Artemis Fowl (upcoming)
The Mist by Stephen King (recent tv series)
Hocus Pocus (old)
The Worst Witch (old tv series)
Coraline (old)
Treasure Island (old)
Tangled (Disney)
The Call of the Wild (new)

Drums of Autumn (Outlander Season 4) (CR)
It  (old & new) (CR)

Thanks for checking out my reading progress! Have a great day!