A Year in Story and Song is a captivating collection of stories and songs that celebrates the seasons. We humans love stories. We love to hear them and to tell them, around fires and by bedsides, and we love to use them to make sense of the world around us. The seasons, in all their ever-changing variety, give us many opportunities for storytelling: the full moons and their names, Epiphany in January, St Patrick's Day in March, May Day, Midsummer, Halloween and more. They feature mischievous boggarts and fairies, saints and sailors, leprechauns and dragons, pilgrimages and charms, milk maids and rose queens, Robin Hood and the green man. The songs range from shanties and love songs, to bawdy ballads and wassails, to carols and rounds, and have been sung for hundreds of years, often at particular moments in the calendar. This is a book to treasure all year, every year.

Every year, Calla and her family participate in the town's showcase, but this year, she is determined to create a song garden without the help of her parents. Her friends all have great ideas, but writing a song doesn't come as easily to Calla. There are so many choices...what if she gets it wrong? Will Calla be able to conquer her worries and let her creativity shine through? Written by an elementary music teacher to spark composition in young readers, The Song Garden teaches children that their creations are truly their own.

Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind and she goes on to encourage another student who feels the same as she had.

The “brilliant” story of July, a slave girl living on a sugar plantation in 1830s Jamaica just as emancipation is coming into action (Reader’s Digest). Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.” Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and the violent and chaotic end of slavery. An extraordinarily powerful story, “The Long Song leaves its reader with a newly burnished appreciation for life, love, and the pursuit of both” (The Boston Globe). Finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize The New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

Frustrated by a day full of teachers and classmates mispronouncing her beautiful name, a little girl tells her mother she never wants to come back to school. In response, the girl's mother teaches her about the musicality of African, Asian, Black-American, Latinx, and Middle Eastern names on their lyrical walk home through the city. Empowered by this newfound understanding, the young girl is ready to return the next day to share her knowledge with her class. Your Name is a Song is a celebration to remind all of us about the beauty, history, and magic behind names.

Beloved children's entertainer Emily Arrow's first picture book, perfect for (little) makers everywhere: a story about finding a space to create! A young bunny makes the rounds of a studio building, taking in all the different artists in their habitats. Making, thinking, sharing, performing . . . but can our bunny find the perfect space to let imagination shine? In this charming ode to creativity, noted children's singer and entertainer Emily Arrow introduces readers to the concept of the studio: a place for painters, dancers, singers, actors, sculptors, printmakers . . . and you! Whether it's a purpose-made space with big windows, a room filled with equipment, or the corner of a bedroom, your studio can be anywhere--you just have to find it!

Kids will read and sing along as feelings come to life in The Story of My Feelings. Growing up is a tough job, and it is important to embrace laughing, sighing, crying, and yelling. Fun and engaging illustrations by Caroline Jayne Church accompany the lyrics and add a vibrancy to the CD. You know you'll feel better after you read and sing The Story of My Feelings!