Creativity…art…can these things be analyzed and broken down into doable steps? Can creativity and art be harnessed to make money?

This book answers yes to these questions and then explains the hows and whys.

Author Maria Brito looks at creativity as a force to use to shape a business in a positive direction. She outlines the steps to do so. And she talks her readers into listening to her by sharing stories of her own successes and the successes of others in using creativity in the world.

The children of the castle, Thomas and Emily, meet Meg, an old friend of their mother's. Meg tells the two children stories of their mother's youth, especially about the time their mother was taken prisoner by a dragon, and the children gradually come to know the story of the estrangement of Meg and their mother.

The characters are all cleverly drawn and appealing, and the story is rich with humor and fun. As a child (and, truly, even as an adult) I loved the stories like this, with illustrations sprinkled throughout the book, and with a feeling of magic throughout.

Birdie's father has been called up to war again, and the rest of the family must go to stay with Gran for the duration. Birdie is very worried about her father going to Afghanistan and she makes a deal with God that she will be good if God will bring her father home safely. And then God doesn't. What does this mean? Why didn't God make good on his part of the deal? Is there a God at all? And is God really like the God she learned about at Bible Camp?

I don't run across enough stories with families who struggle economically, like Birdie's family does, and I don't run across enough stories about children who think seriously about spiritual issues, and this book takes on both of these themes and does a good job with both.

A great introduction to the life cycles of butterflies, filled with helpful photographs. The intended audience is older children, but, as a newbie butterfly-er (defined as person who is as entranced with butterflies as a birder is with birds) I found this book very helpful. Of the twenty-three garden butterflies that are highlighted, most are butterflies I have seen in my area.

"We're not just losing the wild world. We're forgetting it."

Thus Simon Barnes, Nature Lover Extraordinaire, begins his book Rewild Yourself. He proposes twenty-three simple ways to reawaken yourself to the magic of the natural world.

His proposals are magic. He suggests stopping by a buddleia tree, a tree that attracts scores of butterflies, and discovering the names of some of the butterflies that alight there. He offers the idea of listening to the birds and finding out what birds make the songs we hear.

He reveals lots of other ideas of discovering the magic that is right in front of our eyes and ears but that we have lost the ability to see and hear.

The book focuses on England and the English, but it's quite simple to adapt the ideas for our own specific parts of the world.

Hey, everybody, how would you like to read a book about the periodic table? Whatja think? The elements? You know, sodium and hydrogen? All that? Who is in?

Okay, you don't have to react like that. Please. No more boos and no more hissing. I know, I know, it sounds like a snoozer, but, trust me on this, this could be the best book you read all year.

Sam Kean tells stories about all of the elements in the periodic table, and, believe it or not, these tales are tales of passion and murder and betrayal and adventure and scheming...everything you want in a story, and they all center around the elements.

I loved this book, and that's fabulous, but the odd thing is that I, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a good understanding of basic chemistry and physics.

You know trees are alive. But do you think of them as living beings? With individuality? And needs?

You will after reading this book.

Author Jonathan Drori, an Ambassador for the WWF and Trustee of the Eden Project, accompanied by illustrator Lucille Clere, takes us on a trip through trees around the world. He visits with trees I know well, like the Elm and the Lodgepole Pine and the Baobob and the Date Palm, but he adds stories and details about the familiar that are surprising and unexpected. He also makes stops with trees I knew little about including the Brazil Nut and the Neem and the Coco-de-mer and makes me add these to my list of favorite trees. Drori is a former documentary film maker for the BBC. I hope someone will make this into a documentary.

I know that not everyone is as enamored of trees as I am (yes, I even have a Goodreads tag of trees), but even if you don't think you are, you still might enjoy this book; I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't.

#2020ReadNonFic

The dog is sick today. In steps the cat to replace him in the story. But the cat is aghast at what he is being asked to do...dig a hole?...swim across the lake?...retrieve a stick? The results are comic.

Let me be honest: I put off reading this book for a long, long time. Why? I loved Merci Suárez Changes Gears so much, and I am always disappointed with sequels. I just didn't want to be disappointed.

Maybe I'm not always disappointed with sequels. The truth is that Meg Medina did a fabulous job with this sequel. Merci Suárez Can't Dance equals or, maybe, even exceeds Merci Suárez Changes Gears.

Of course there are the same great characters from book #1, but these characters, like all good characters, are continuing to change, are evolving, growing, facing new challenges, struggling, sometimes slipping and doing the wrong thing, and finally moving forward despite the terrible consequences of doing so.

I'm so glad I read this new book about Merci. Frankly, I'd welcome another sequel about this wonderful group of people, and I never thought I'd say that.

The best stories are stories that have been told and retold and retold for years and years and years. They simply can't help but be the best, after the boring parts have been left out and the exciting parts emphasized. The best stories have great characters and dramatic action and yet they also tell us something important about life.

That's what this book is. The Three Princes of Serendip is a collection of stories the author, Rodaan Al Galidi, put together based on the best stories he heard in his childhood while growing up in Iraq.

The summer was supposed to be so different, but instead of Peyton and her best friend finding their perfect first boyfriends together and working together, Peyton's friend will be elsewhere.

Then Peyton discovers an unconscious boy lying on the road. She saves his life by alerting the authorities and she finds she has a curious attraction to the boy, Gray, lying in a coma in the hospital. Gray, Peyton decides, will be her perfect first boyfriend. And it will be she who discovers the identity of the person who hit him and fled the scene.

Crashing in Love is a surprisingly complex story of a girl sorting out her feelings about her parent's divorce, her precarious friendship with her BFF, and her quotes designed to keep her life safe from emotional disaster.

"Some monsters eat peaches,
some monsters eat pears,
and then there are monsters who only eat chairs."

Well, that's a fun surprise!

The kids I read this with enjoyed it very much.

Who doesn't like books with not-very-scary monsters?!

Geraldine Pu loves to take her lunch box to school with delightful dishes her grandmother prepares at home—-rice, soup, dumplings, noodles, cucumber salad, steamed pork bag, and stinky tofu. All is well until another child in her class makes fun of her food. Soon the whole group is ridiculing her food and even her name. But Geraldine is a strong girl, and she finds a way to fight back and speak up for her food and her name and for others.

A first graphic novel. It’s a complete delight.

The Peachey family is having fun preparing meals until Pa Peachey decides to start baking. His baking is generally a fail, and the family’s dog, McTavish, ends up with most of it smuggled to him from unhappy tasters under the table.

Then Pa Peachey gets the idea to enter a baking contest. After days of hard work, his entry is another disaster. Can McTavish save the day?

Clever dialogue (without being overly rude) among the family members. And a dog who is the cleverest one in the family.

What a fun book. It's a project for a year (which explains why it took so long for me to finally review it!) or it can simply be a delightful browsable book. Each day has a quote and the story from history that inspired the quote. Read through the book, day by day, or simply pick and choose among the quotes. Either way, it's full of reading joy.

The House of Grass and Sky reminds me a great deal of one of my favorite books, The Little House. Told from the point-of-view of an old house in the country, the story is of a house that has experienced much joy over the years from providing a happy home for families. For many years, the house lies unoccupied and solitary and lonely, as family after family passes on it. Finally, a new family comes to live in the house and it is once again content.

Annie Lumsden can’t focus on letters or numbers in school, and she quickly decides to simply leave. She finds pure joy and delight when she swims in the sea and lies on the rocks at the beach. It’s the stories of her mum and the coming of a stranger that helps Annie come to an understanding of where she came from and what she is that frees her to be fully herself.

The illustrations are beautiful and inviting, and what child doesn’t feel like she doesn’t really fit? I had a wee bit of trouble with the way Almond allowed Annie to suddenly be able to focus on letters and numbers after she understands her origins; I’d rather have Almond allowed that to slip away from her as unimportant, I think.

Amber and Clay is the story of two children who are very different and who have very different life experiences and yet who join together to try to accomplish a common goal. Amber is a wild girl, reckless, undisciplined, plain, the child of a rich man, a child unloved by her mother. Clay is a quiet boy, the son of an enslaved woman, thoughtful though untaught, clever though unschooled, interested in drawing horses. The story takes place in ancient Greece and the other characters include a philosopher, a bear, and some of the gods.

You can't help but be amazed at this book, with its beautiful structure of beginning chapters with an artifact of ancient Greece, found in the present day, an artifact that is closely tied to the plot. The characters are all vivid and completely unique, and the author bravely allows them to experience the full repercussions of their actions, some of which is heartbreaking. Author Laura Amy Schlitz uses timeless poetic forms to tell the story, and, again, that is an achievement that the reader can't help but admire. The lives of these two children are fascinating to watch as the story unfolds.

A brilliant book.

It's a story of summer, a story of changes, a story of tensions, a story of relationships, a story of attractions, a story of growing up.

A family of four children and two parents spends every summer at the beach, and nearby is a cousin and her longtime boyfriend. This summer two young men join them, and that changes everything.

Meg Rosoff builds an atmosphere bone-wrenchingly candid about the teenage experience of alienation and confusion and agonizing learning, starting with a mysterious teen narrator whose name and gender are never specified, and adding hints of disconcerting behavior from most of the characters, and culminating in sharp shards of broken glass as relationships shatter.

The story is beautifully told, and the characters feel so true-to-life as to be painful to read.

This is a book with a clever idea for struggling readers who are a little older than most early readers: it's a book designed for shared reading, with an experienced reader and a struggling reader each reading a side of the page. Meg and Greg have lots of adventures including assisting a baby duck who has been hurt, replacing a lost pet fish, rescuing farm animals during a wildfire, and recapturing an escaped sloth. Each chapter focuses on a consonant digraph: ck, sh, ch, and th.

I'd love to see this in action.

Little Feat is a horse in Belgium who is disappointed to learn that he is the only horse in his stable who is not sold at the horse sale. His parents know the reason is that he is a very small horse. Little Feat continues to practice jumping and, with the help of a little magic, he finds he can jump over the highest fences.

Ella comes to Belgium when her family at home have money problems. Her quirky aunt sees her sadness and decides to help her by getting her a horse.

Ella and Little Feat are a perfect match for each other.

Beautiful illustrations and a lovely little story.

Helen Skelton, you are something.

You took on some amazing challenges.

You attempted to travel 500 miles across Antarctica, some of it on a bicycle, to get to the South Pole, in twenty days.

You tried to do three marathons, with a total of 78 miles, across the desert, in a single day.

You decided to see if you could solo kayak more than 2,000 miles down the Amazon.

And more...

These stories of your training and your attempts to accomplish these challenges were fascinating. Lots of fun sidebars and graphics and stats, too.

Helen Skelton, my hat is off to you.

Twelve members of a boys' soccer team and their coach decide to spend a day exploring a cave in Thailand. They do not realize that the cave is flooding with water as they explore, and when they decide to exit, they quickly learn that they are trapped inside, with no way to communicate with the outside world.

Christina Soontornvat tells the true story of the cave rescue of the boys and their coach. I was taken with the research Soontornvat did on the story and the beautiful and thorough way she told what happened. An incredible story of danger and rescue.

It's 1918, and war is raging.

John's father is fighting in the war and John's mother is working in a munitions factory at home in England. John is confused. He is just a child. His teacher tells him that we are at war. But he is just a child. Is he at war?

In what feels like a dream, John meets a German boy, Jan, and a feeling of hope comes over John, a feeling of hope for a better world someday.

Sometimes it's children's books that tell things best.

Look at the cover of this book. What sort of story do you think it will be?

You are right. Scary. But not grownup-horror-scary. Kid-scary.

And that is just what kids want. Ask a group of kids, any kids, anywhere, any time, what kind of stories they want to read and they will say scary.

There are not very many scary stories for kids. I don't know why. And there are very few good scary stories for kids. But this is one of them.

Some animals are scary to children.

The bat is scary to some children.

How do you combat the scariness?

Silly illustrations. Speech bubbles. That ought to do it.

Now add all the fascinating information about bats (and there is a lot of fascinating information about bats) and you have an ideal first reader for young children.

"Here's a red button.
I wonder what happens
when you press it?"

Oh my goodness. Me, too.

"Beep!"

Well, that was fun. What's next?

"Here's an orange button.
What does the orange button do?"

Oh yes. Just my sort of book. Let's go.

"It's a clapping button!
Everybody clap!"

Clapping! Hurray.

"What happens when you
press the blue button?"

I can't wait to press the blue button....

I could do this all day. Over and over.

So could all the children who have seen this book....

Kizzy has always dreamed of having a pony. What is she to do, then, when she finds a real, live pony wandering the aisles of her grocery store? Well, she must take it home, of course, to her apartment on the twelfth floor.

I loved this charming story of a girl and her horse, as she manages to sneak the pony up the elevator, into her bedroom, up on a balcony, into a garden at school, on a bus...it's completely fun, a dream come true for all those who long for a pony of their own.

It’s 1914, and Daring Darleen is the twelve-year-old star of the silent screen adventures. Unexpectedly, her film studio ploy for publicity goes wrong, and Darleen is kidnapped, along with rich orphan Victorine Berryman. Now Darleen and Victorine must use everything they have learned, Darleen from her work in movies, and Victorine from her life of privilege, to escape from their captors and bring the wicked to justice.

Daring Darleen is a dip into the past, and it’s quite well done, with vividly complex characters and wild leaps from windows and a fascinating setting in the world of early film

Heather Box and Julian Mocine-McQueen present a simple guidebook to finding, crafting, and sharing your story. In a hundred pages, Box and Mocine-McQueen offer succinct tips for storytelling, including the why, the how-to, the shaping, and the presentation.