Winter 2015 Top Ten IndieNext Pick When Mr. Squirrel awakens to find that the moon has landed on his tree, he frantically tries to get rid of it before someone suspects him of stealing it and puts him in jail. But when he rolls the moon off of his tree, it's gets stuck on Mrs. Hedgehog's bristles and when the billy-goat arrives and butts it with his horns . . . Will the moon ever be the same again? Sebastian Meschenmoser's hilarious illustrations and rollicking tale will be a bedtime favorite.

It’s springtime and bees, flowers, and love are in the air! When Mr. Squirrel’s friend, the hedgehog, catches sight of an attractive lady hedgehog, he isn’t sure what to do to win her heart. What a stroke of luck that he has a friend like Mr. Squirrel, who can help him. Mr. Squirrel knows all about love, and what ladies like. Lady hedgehogs like heroes! But can Mr. Squirrel and the hedgehog conquer the most dangerous animal in the forest?

Squirrel, Hedgehog, and Bear have never seen it snow, so when Deer predicts an early snowfall, they attempt to stay awake to see the snow.

Reading the World’s Stories is volume 5 in the Bridges to Understanding series of annotated international youth literature bibliographies sponsored by the United States Board on Books for Young People. USBBY is the United States chapter of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), a Switzerland-based nonprofit whose mission is bring books and children together. The series promotes sharing international children’s books as a way to facilitate intercultural understanding and meet new literary voices. This volume follows Children’s Books from Other Countries (1998), The World though Children’s Books (2002), Crossing Boundaries with Children’s Books (2006), and Bridges to Understanding: Envisioning the World through Children’s Books (2011) and acts as a companion book to the earlier titles. Centered around the theme of the importance of stories, the guide is a resource for discovering more recent global books that fit many reading tastes and educational needs for readers aged 0-18 years. Essays by storyteller Anne Pellowski, author Beverley Naidoo, and academic Marianne Martens offer a variety of perspectives on international youth literature. This latest installment in the series covers books published from 2010-2014 and includes English-language imports as well as translations of children’s and young adult literature first published outside of the United States. These books are supplemented by a smaller number of culturally appropriate books from the US to help fill in gaps from underrepresented countries. The organization of the guide is geographic by region and country. All of the more than 800 entries are recommended, and many of the books have won awards or achieved other recognition in their home countries. Forty children’s book experts wrote the annotations. The entries are indexed by author, translator, illustrator, title, and subject. Back matter also includes international book awards, important organizations and research collections, and a selected directory of publishers known for publishing books from other countries.

Author Jeff Anderson and literacy coach Whitney La Rocca lead a vibrant approach to grammar instruction in Patterns of Power, Grades 1-5: Inviting Young Writers into the Conventions of Language. Here, young, emergent writers are invited to notice the conventions of the English language and build off them in this inquiry-based approach to instructional grammar. The book comes with standards-aligned lessons that can be incorporated in 10 minutes a day. Patterns of Power’s responsive, invitational approach puts students in an involved role and has them explore and discuss the purpose and meaning of what they read. Students study short, authentic texts and are asked to share their findings out loud, engaging in rich conversations to make meaning. Inside you’ll find: Ready-to-use lesson plan sets that include excerpts from authentic and diverse mentor texts curated for grades 1-5 and can be adapted over 5 grade levels Real-life classroom examples, tips, and Power Notes gleaned from the authors’ experiences that can be applied to any level of writer Resources, including a Patterns of Power Planning Guide and musical soundtracks, to use in classroom instruction or as handouts for student literacy notebooks Patterns of Power, Grades 1-5 provides a simple classroom routine that is structured in length and approach, but provides teachers flexibility in choosing the texts, allowing for numerous, diverse voices in the classroom. The practice helps students build cognitive recognition and provides a formative assessment for teachers on student progress. With these short lessons, students will grow their confidence and move beyond limitation to produce effortless writing in your class and beyond. The Patterns of Power series also includes Patterns of Power, Grades 6-8: Inviting Adolescent Writers into the Conventions of Language; Patterns of Power en Español, Grades 1-5: Inviting Bilingual Writers into the Conventions of Spanish; Patterns of Power, Grades 9-12: Teaching Grammar Through Reading and Writing and Patterns of Wonder, Grades PreK-1: Inviting Emergent Writers to Play with the Conventions of Language.

Extending the discussion of critical content analysis to the visual realm of picturebooks and graphic novels, this book provides a clear research methodology for understanding and analyzing visual imagery. Offering strategies for "reading" illustrations in global and multicultural literature, chapter authors explore and bring together critical theory and social semiotics while demonstrating how visual analysis can be used to uncover and analyze power, ideologies, inequity, and resistance in picturebooks and graphic novels. This volume covers a diverse range of texts and types of books and offers tools and procedures for interpreting visual images to enhance the understandings of researchers, teachers, and students as they engage with the visual culture that fills our world. These methods are significant not only to becoming a critical reader of literature but to also becoming a critical reader of visual images in everyday life.