 Hi everybody. Hi. My name is Denea and I'm from the Billy Qing Qing Library. And I'm Ms. Chenna from the Bok Library and welcome to Picture This. Welcome to Picture This, our monthly conversation sharing great books from our picture book collections airing the second Wednesday of every month. Denea, what do you have to share today? All right, so for my first two books I have, my first book, it's The Alphabet's Alphabet. And it's written by Chris Harris and illustrated by Dan Santat, who is a very awesome illustrator. So this book is a totally twisted take on 26 letters. And after reading this book, you'll see the letters in a whole new way. So the author and illustrator really outdone themselves in coming up with ways on how to make one letter look like another. So for example, an L is an X waving help in quicksand. So if you look at the X, you start off with the X and he goes, oh, look, hey birdies. And then as he's walking towards you starting to sink and then you start missing the bottom and then what does he turn into? L. And another good example that I found is over here, you see the letter V, but a V is an M that just cut its long hair. So if you look over in this picture, what do you see? You see an M and he got his hair cut and then he turned into a V. But there's also, there's one letter in this book that just stays the same. So you just have to like really check this one out to find it. And I'm not gonna tell you the letter. I don't know. And my next book is, it's the Kevin the Unicorn series and so why can't we be bestie corns? So, and this is written by Jessica Vaughn inner redner and Kevin has a new neighbor and his name is Eric. And Kevin is very sure that Eric is gonna be his best friend, but then as things start to progress and they start doing things and Kevin realizes like, no, that they both really like some different things and they try doing things that each other has like or likes but they don't get along with that. They don't really like it and it's okay because it comes to a point where instead of trying to force a friendship, Eric and Kevin decide just to be friendly and I really love illustrations in this book and they have a lot of fun things that they do together and it's really silly how some of the things that they do and like over in this picture, Eric suggested that they try something outdoorsy but Kevin didn't catch the camping bug and you can see he got stung by a lot of mosquitoes. So it's a great book showing kids that they don't have to be best friends with everyone and having a friend is just awesome and that's okay. So this is a really good book and if you love the unicorns and these are the ones. How about you, Tender? Wow, I like that. Kevin, the unicorn. So it is really hard sometimes to have a best friend but it's nice to just be friends too. So you can do different things with different people. The first book I'm gonna share is Second Banana, Words by Blair Thornbow and Pictures by Kate Vorobi. So you see the picture is winning with this one because the illustration is so on point with the expression of the bananas. You see the little girl who is a little upset. She, you see she has brown spots and everything and she's kind of like a little saw. She's bruised and the reason why she's bruised is because every year the 15 kids in Mrs. Millet's class put on the famous food is fun, healthy eating, good nutrition pageant and every kid is opposed to get their own unique costume and she cannot wait. But then look, all the costume of the healthy food. It's so wonderful except somebody ended up having to share being the banana. And she became the second banana. You have to ask mom and dad what the second banana means. Oh, look at the picture and expression of disappointment and just anger and just more crying and tantrum and all the flat banana until she realized, she can be a good friend to the first banana to the other banana when she realized that she needed a friend and that's what happened. So it was a wonderful story about putting aside your disappointment and being a friend to another person who may be the first banana and that's it. I hope you give this book a chance because it's a really good story. It's just a fun read also. And then this one, so they became friends but this one is about Besties which is this Max and Marla series. There's four of them by Alexandra Boyger. She is a lovely illustrator and author. One of my favorite, this is Max and Marla are flying together where Max is actually very excited about flying the kite and trying to convince Marla the white owl to fly. But surprisingly Marla doesn't want to fly and they have to find a compromise. Then Max and Marla are having a picnic. But this one is one of my favorite because Max and Marla are going on a trip and the trip happens to be in Australia. And Max is so concerned, like some of us sometimes when we're going on a trip, so concerned about taking pictures that's missing out on the experience. So finally something happens and the camera, oh no. My camera and lost the camera. But then instead of being disappointed, they walk through the woods with their eyes wide open and actually was present during the whole trip. So it's a wonderful book about best friends on a trip together and just capturing every moment by being present. It's a really good book. There you go. What do you have Danea? All right, let me unmute myself. So in honor of National Poetry Month, I chose two books to talk about. National Poetry Month is To Salute Poetry in All Forms. So I chose two books. The first one is I Am Loved by Nikki Giovanni. She is a recipient of seven NAACP Image Awards, the Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award and the very first Rosa L. Parks, Woman of Courage Award. The excerpt in the book, if you read in the inside, it'll tell you about why, who actually these verses were hand selected by Newberry Honorary Ashley Bryant. And it says, there is nothing more important to a child than to feel love and these gorgeous gathering of poems that are written by Nikki Giovanni. So if you go through the pages, you'll see different, very colorful illustrations and beautiful poems that are very simple to read. And there's one poem that really stood out for me because of course it's about a cat. And this is Paula the Cat. And in this, I will read, I hope it's out of, I'm gonna just let you read this poem. And it's Paula the Cat, Not Thin Nor Fat. Is as happy as house cats can be. She reads and she writes with all the delights of intelligent cats of a tree. Tired of the view, she chose to pursue a fate unbeknownst to the crowd. Finding a boat locked up in a moat, she boarded and shouted out loud. I'm Paula the Cat, Not Thin Nor Fat. As happy as house cats can be. But now I've urged for the spirit to surge and I shall go off to sea. And this is a really great poem that I thought like you can always talk about with your child or whoever. And you can talk about, well, where do you think she'd wanna go, you know? And it's just like, we can talk about the color, the illustrations and I love it. And the last one I really liked, there's one poem where it's actually a mirror and we can see, hi Jen down there. So this is a really wonderful book and I really enjoyed reading some of the poems or actually all of them. Okay, and so my next book is I Got the Spirit. And this is written by Connie Schofield Morrison and illustrated actually by her husband, Frank Morrison. So it's a really cute purple book, I guess. Here we have a nice, it's like very, very beautiful book. I love how the colorful font inside the book, sorry, the colorful font, if you see. I pass the spirit over to a friend and it was Crunch Munch Sip. And then these really, I loved how it lets you either emphasize the words or even ensure like to do a movement. And as the illustrations done by Frank Morrison, fill the page with colors and I loved how diverse the characters are in this book. Now, and it's very colorful, the tones and everything. So reading your book is like reading rhyming poetry. So if you read the book, you can kind of tell like a lot of the, it's just like, oh, the page is like, it's just, when you're reading it, it really comes off the tongue really easily and so rhyming books teach children how language works and how it helps them notice and notice and work with the sounds within words. And it also helps children experience the rhythm of language. So there's a reason behind the poetry. Okay, and those are right to what about you, Chanda? Well, that's a really nice one. I enjoy them both, but of course, I am a little biased when it comes to cats. So the Paula the cat reminds me of my cat. This book is written by Sarah Howden, illustrated by Carmen Mock, cone cat. So if you've ever had a dog or a cat, sometimes they need to have a cone around their head when they injured or they need to have a medical procedure and one day Jeremy woke up at the vet. Oh, and there was the cone. So he does not look too happy and he tries to do everything that he can to get it off. And it was not having a good time. He think, oh, I am cone cat now, I will never be the same. And I love his expression and throughout he's thinking of, you know, what he used to do without the cone. But then, you know what? He figure out like with the cone, there are some advantages. Like when the kids start having a party and he realized, oh, he can actually get a scoop of ice cream in his cone and enjoy it. And you can do so many more things that are just fun with a cone until suddenly it was off his head. He, his head was free again. Oh no, goodbye forever cone. He actually grew to love wearing the cone. But as soon as possible, he remember what he used to do without the cone being a very naughty cat. But that is a very, very funny cat cone. So I hope cone cat, so I hope you give that a try. I love the illustration. I'm very short story, but a very, very funny story to share with cat lovers or even dog lovers who had to put their pet in a cone. And I just wanted to share that one because it reminded me of when my cat Annie had to wear a cone. He wore it for about a day because he was just so miserable and he would just sit there and not move at all. So we just end up holding him most of the time without the cone to prevent him from scratching at his area. He was a cat that was allergic to fleas. I love those. They're so cute. So that's my Annie. And my Annie love to look at birds. So this book is a counting book, 10 on a Twig by Low Cole. And it's a wonderful book to share with toddlers and they're probably gonna wanna do it time after time once you start reading it because it's one of those, the flap book I want you to start. So if you're buying this for your own collection, what happens would repeat at use. You might wanna put a tape in the center of the bind just to keep it, you know, just kind of like reinforce it. But anyway, so it starts up with 10 on a Twig just passing time and then snap. And if they keep falling off until of course they reach one, one take a dive and then there are two. So it keeps going. It's a great counting book, but besides counting the birds, you can point out the birds are very individualized with colors and characters. So even their feathers are very different and their eyes. So you can just, you know, look again and again as you keep reading the details of the bird are very wonderful to share as they insist probably on reading it over and over. And I love this book so much that I hope to do a flannel story with it. So if you look in the video, in the video today, you'll see that I have my flannel somewhere up there. Okay, Denea. Okay, all right. So also there's so many things that are happening this month. We also have Earth Day. Yes, I have like the Earth on Earth Day was actually gonna be on April 22nd in this month. And I picked two books. And the first one is Dear Earth From Your Friends in Room 5. It's a beautiful book where children from Room 5 write letters to the Earth each month. And so you can see each spreadsheet they have, it starts off with them, oops. Whoa, it's showing up in there. And it shows the Earth, I'm sorry. It shows this kid's writing to the, there's a letter writing to the Earth and then this is them and it actually shows them what they're doing. So for on this spread it's for, they write a letter each month. So this is February. So those Dear Earth, we unplugged our chargers and turned off the light. Some of us even saw stars. This month, we're charting how much we use plastic. Oh my, plastic trash travels so far. Sincerely Room 5, yes. Check out our reusable water bottles. No more single use bottles or straws for us. And then the Earth writes back and sends them a letter and then goes Dear Room 5, the stars in the universe, thank you. Our friends in the ocean will too. Some turtles and fish mistake plastic for dinner. Does that sound nutritious to you? So this is a really great book and this is a great way to actually give you ideas on what you wanna do. Like if you wanna do this every month and to give you ideas how to save the Earth. This one is really, really beautiful. Like I love illustrations too, of course. And my last book is This Pretty Planet and it's a lyrical book and I always end up finding lyrical books to show. So this is This Pretty Planet by Tom Trappin and John Forster. So if you look at the book, you can actually see the notes if you ever wanna play it on the piano and see it on the back. In this book, the songwriters take us on a journey to discover the gorgeous wonders of the pretty planet we call home. So they take us all around and things are really huge. Or even take us on a voyage in the sea. And with the help of the illustrator, Lee White, we can see our taking, we are taking away, not only by words, but by pictures and you will always wanna keep coming back to this adventure. And it was really in the list or the lyrics are very simple. And so it's a really fun thing. And you can even look up the song online so if you wanna listen to it, you can. All right, that's my last book. What about you, Chanda? Well, in celebration, in honor of Earth Day. Every day is Earth Day, of course. I want to share Melanie Walsh, 10 things I can do to help my world. It's one of those picture book that's nonfiction because it's informational. But it's a really very simple book to just share with elementary school kids but also at all levels because it's really wonderful. And it shows I always throw away my trash because putting garbage away keeps the world safe and clean. And it goes on to list very simple things that kids can do. I enjoy making toys from things around the house and all that stuff. And then you can walk to school or walk to places and I can plant seeds and help them grow. So those are a few of the very simple things that kids and adults can do to help or do things together because all because you love, I love my world. And it's our world to care for because a healthy Earth is a healthy brain. It's healthy for us because we live on it. And the other two books that's in celebration of Earth is the Earth Book by Todd Parle also a very preschool level. But I like it because one of the things I try to eat every bite on my plate and save my leftovers because and I like some of the saying because you just leave, he just leave it with because and then we can have a discussion with the kids to see like what do you think? Why do you think we need to save our leftover? And then they just pretty much have some of the same things why we want to say thank you to that Earth. And then there are 10 ways also I can help the Earth turn off the lights, recycle, save my leftover, be nice. Sharing a book, that's a great way of helping too because when you reuse, you reduce waste and that's a great way. You know, especially if you go to a library and check books out, that's a way of sharing with the community. And that also, you know, we don't have to always buy books and then save water and, this is a funny one. I don't know if we should do this but put my underwear in the freezer when it's hot and then you can take it out and wear it and be cool. I didn't know about that one. That one's funny. Every one of us can help protect the Earth and make it feel good. Remember, if we take care of it, it will take care of us. Love Todd. Todd Parr is one of the best preschool illustrator, author. There is another one that has, you know, just love the world and that was just more about, you know, giving and loving everyone that's around us and all the nature that we have around us and all the people that we have around us all. And I love his drawings the best because it's very colorful. It's not restricted to what, you know, sometimes tree doesn't always have to be green and just different, just very vibrant and it just let kids and adults kind of like have a go at just coloring the world as they want and feel and loving the world for that. So that's by Todd Parr and he has many, many more books for preschoolers. So, and that's pretty much what we have for today. And though if you're interested in any of the books that we've mentioned, today type in picture this 0421 in the search bar of the Long Beach Public Library catalog and the list of books that we've shared will appear. So this is Chenda. All right, goodbye. And thank you for sharing picture this. Bye. Bye.