Jude Isabella

An adorable and approachable book about the history and future of language. It covers early spoken sounds, alphabets and written languages, multiple languages, made-up languages, neologisms, sign language, and does it all in an entertaining and easily understandable way.

This conversational history offers many tidbits of the origin of words, how languages came to be, language families, slang, unspoken language --sign language, and so much more. I can see reading a page here and there to deepen or being a lesson on grammar ("Grammar Day is March 4th" (p.8) Who knew?), a lesson on vocabulary ("By the time you're finished high school, you'll have a vocabulary of about 20,000 words" (p. 6) I think this might inspire kids to enrich their vocabularies. And you show more gotta love this: Shakespeare "liked to turn nouns into verbs. He 'friended' long before Facebook. And we can thank him for 'zany,' too." show less

Isabella's Bringing Back the Wolves is a middle-grade nonfiction book about the importance of conservation. It is the tale of an unintended effects of the early American government offering bounties on predator species. This resulted in wolves disappearing from what is now Yellowstone National Park. It covers the chain reaction caused by the absence of this important keystone species, and the project that reintroduced wolves back into the park. My cubs and I read this together and enjoyed show more it. It is very informative, without being too complicated for younger readers. The artwork is quite lovely as well. Highly recommended for any child interested in nature and animals!

***Many thanks to the Netgalley & Kids Can Press for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. show less

Leo wants a bike, not just any bike but the red one with 18 gears. He works shoveling snow, cutting lawns and raking leaves until he has enough money to buy it. He rides it everywhere for many years until he is finally too big for it. Because he has taken such good care of the bike, it looks almost new. He wants the bike to go to someone who really needs it and will appreciate it the way he does. When he tells the bike shop owner, he tells Leo about an organization that will take bike show more donations and send them to countries where they are needed. At the donation area, Leo takes Big Red apart for shipping and soon his bike, along with 461 others, is sailing across the ocean on its way to someone in Africa who really needs it. When Big Red arrives in Africa, it is matched with Alisetta. She learns to ride Big Red so she can get to the fields earlier, harvest more sorghum for her family. She can also ride to market to sell the goods her grandma makes to earn money to she and her little sister can go to school. Alisetta finally earns enough money to buy another bike, but while she is gone to get it, pigs fun over Big Red and bend the spokes and ruin the bike. A worker from a medical clinic takes the bike, repairs it and turns it into an ambulance by attaching a trailer and stretcher on it. Now when people in villages can't otherwise get to the clinic, Haridata can ride to them and even transport them back to the clinic using her bicycle ambulance. Soon people in all the surrounding villages know about the wonderful bicycle ambulance that the kids now call Le Grand Rouge. What a wonderful journey big Read takes and what a useful life it leads. The illustrations are done in a folk art style which adds to the story.

This is an awesome book that informs children about the world and inspires them to be better global citizens. The section at the end of the book letting kids know what they can do help with their outgrown or no longer needed bicycles was great and hopefully will encourage them to help others.

Thanks to Netgalley and Kids Can Press for the opportunity to read and review this book. show less