 Welcome to Picture This. I am Chenda at the Falk Library and I'm Denea from the Region 2, Maine Library. This is our monthly conversation sharing great picture books, collection airing on the first Wednesday of every month. Denea, what do you have to share this month? Well, for my first two books I have, my first book is a stack of alpacas. This is written and illustrated by Matt Cosgrove. We also have a stack of packs, which is another book that Denea is writing. We have to check this one out in this book. We need Maka, who is an alpaca. Let me show you who he is. Okay, this is him. This is Maka. And he's an alpaca. So we also need his nephew and two nurses who come over to go visit him. So we have Denea. Oh, those are the two nephews. And we also have Denea. So they love to jump on their uncle. Like, so when they went to school and visit their uncle Maka, he has some rules and they thought it was very cool to break every rule that uncle Maka had. So that did not make him very happy and he was actually really sad because we were doing a bunch of things that were not good and they were making a mess. Oh no. And then he was not happy. He cracked. So he cracked and they all apologized and made everything right. And uncle Maka was happy. But I really loved how cute the alpacas were drawn and the illustrations. And it's a simple book and it's really cute. And the storyline is really fun. So if you want a silly book with some love. You can use the book to read and you'll really like the ending on this one. I thought this was really cute. And look at their eyes. I think the second one is sticking his tongue out. So they're really silly. It's a silly bunch. Okay, so for my second book, I have Grumpy Monkey up all night. And this is a series of one of the many books in this series. This is Grumpy Monkey. He's a really cute monkey. And this was written by Suzanne Lang and illustrated by Max Lang. And this is Grumpy Monkey. His name is Jim. And he's excited to go and to sleep over at his parents' house. So he invited his friend Norman. So this is his friend Norman. He's a really big gorilla. So he's really excited. Jim's really excited to go see his family. And so he invites his friend Norman over to the seat, over to meet his family and his brother, Jim. So this is his family portrait. Jim's family. And so Tim and Grumpy Monkey and Jim have quite a sibling relationship with one another, with one another, with each other. But you'll see when you're reading this book, it's kind of, it's really cute because you can kind of relate to siblings, how they act with each other. When you're reading this, I really saw like, yeah, I could see kids just doing this together. Like just kind of a banter with each other. And you'll get to see the fun activities that the family gets to do together. You get to read like all the fun things. But the cool thing is Jim loves to stay up all night. Him and him we stay up all night. And his mother was a little hesitant and she said, you know, stay up all night. You can make some grumpy monkeys. So they do all these things you need to read all about it. And let's see, even though they're saying they stay up all night. And I thought the ending was quite, it was a quite grumpy situation, but you can have to read it and find out how the ending goes. I really loved it. And if you like this book, check out many other books in the series. I also tag it into this picture of this. I said, do you like this one? It'll be easy to find the other ones. Okay, what about you, Chanda? Okay, I'm going to share a very simple, very popular concept book of counting by Kim Norman, illustrated by Pierre Carlette Derby. And I'm going to show you guys two asaurus. You know, most of the dinosaur lovers doesn't really matter, but this one is really wonderful to read, because they call out one asaurus, two asaurus, and it's a counting game, three asaurus, four, five asaurus, six asaurus, seven asaurus, and then roar. So I can just imagine playing high and seek and instead of counting alligator, you count one asaurus or one dinosaur, two dinosaur. It's a really fun game, and I love how the kids ready or not. Here I come, dinosaur stampede, and everyone hides behind the number. There's one, two, three, four, and you'll never guess who is the ten, the number ten that's coming to catch them all. I won't show you that. It's really cool. It's a concept book of learning to write the number, but also spelling the number out so you see the kids who are learning to recognize their written word for the numbers. I love the illustration. Very simple, and I can just imagine a very fun game of hide and seek dinosaurs. So that's a really cool one by Kim Norman. And then there's this one. Now I could not relate this to the dinosaur until towards the end, I saw the little girl playing with dinosaurs, but this one is Margaret's Unicorn by Breone Mae Smith. She must be English because the author information in the back says so, and also the scenery, it's the English countryside, and it's really beautiful. And it seems that Margaret is moving near to grandma and she has to go to a cottage that's a little bit far away, but they want to be near grandma maybe to take care of her or to help her out. She's feeling kind of lonely, so she takes a walk to go exploring. She saw in the clouds, some unicorn flying away. And in the heather she finds a baby unicorn, and I found out baby unicorn, they only eat flowers and they only drink water that's been bathed in moonlight. So beautiful to make their horn grow and, you know, glow. And then, you know, it's amazing because you imagine if you brought a unicorn baby unicorn home with your granny or your parents, let you just cuddle it and play with it, and keep it until the season changes and change. And that but that's what happened to Margaret. So she got to play with the unicorn until spring came and then its mommy came and took it home. But Margaret and her friend Abby still misses the unicorn. And right here, they're playing with dinosaurs. And if you read all the way to the end of the book in the back information. So in this big matter of the book you'll see random house included a teacher librarians that on their website that you can print out the illustrators. The author's illustration that you can use to color, but there's if you're trying to improve your vocabulary. You can also print out a word search. So that's a really good source if you really love unicorn and just imagine having one as a pet. What do you have to nail. Oh, well, I have two books, another two books that I want to share. And first one is talking is not my thing. And this is by Rose Robbins. So in this story, we are looking through the life of this young girl here who's she's nonverbal, and she has autism. The pages have speech bubbles where we are reading her thoughts and also whenever her family or members are talking to her so you can kind of see the difference between the oops. Oh, there you go. When you can see between the speech bubbles were when the brothers talking it's just a circle, and then when she's talking it has like a little more scribbles around it so you can kind of see a difference between it. So this is a really, I really love this book went after reading it. And so the pages have speech bubbles where we are reading her thoughts and her family, who are they verbally are speaking, and she's letting us know what she thinks while while she's eating or like how she's feeling. So like he's telling her that they're going to go spaghetti and then in here is like sometimes I try to use my voice but the words don't come out right. And then so she actually has a regular word bubble where it goes deep. And so I mean, I'm okay with it. And it's okay. So in dinner time she says, in her mind all the noises at dinner too much I wish I could turn off my ears. So, but I still feel like I still like to feel included. So you know she's still sitting through even though it's tough, you know so she, and so she lets us know what she thinks while she's eating She also uses flashcards to communicate with her family so she's watching TV with her family, and she looks she has a slick on her face. That looks like the bathroom face. So she's like, I think I need one of my flashcards so she goes, and she tells her character that she needs to use the restroom so she shows the restroom card so they go use the restroom. And now like sometimes like she still needs help using the restroom. So, I know this is a very good book in letting readers have an understanding on what a number of a person with autism might be thinking. And this has great talking points to where the readers can go back in the book and talk about how the young girl might have felt at certain times during this like throughout the book. And, and you can also talk about how she communicates like she there are times where she used flashcards and there's also another time where she's with her brother, and she just even points to the clock to let him know and he knows like oh you know this is a time. And there's also other ways that even that like if you can talk about like what other types of gestures or language that you can use sign language is another way of communicating like if there was something that didn't talk. And I know this is a really great book and is a great introduction and is very simple and I really loved it and it was cute and I love the illustrations on that one. Okay, so my next one is a very similar well to dinosaurs but this little dinosaur right here is named worry source. And this is by Rachel bright and illustrated by Chris Chatterton. And this is cute little dinosaur, and he wakes up and he's so excited about his day and he plans it. And everything that he's so excited brushes his teeth and washes his top and tail and he gets everything ready. And then all of a sudden, he starts to worry about what's going to happen. And the reason the color of the page turns blue because he's so nervous that everything that might happen wrong, right will happen. So, as he's starting to worry about everything a lizard comes along and tells him that it's going to rain and he started to even worry even more. So, and so what helped him was he thought about what his mother told him to chase away the butterflies. There's a little butterfly right there. So his mother tells him to chase the butterflies away. And you see where he sort of carries happy things and it's a little tin. So what he does is whenever he starts feeling worried he takes out these little objects inside the tin and it helps him feel better. And so, and then all of a sudden all of the worry went away. So she started feeling better again and the day started to turn out just like how he thought it would be. So this is another great book to talk about with each other afterwards you understanding that sometimes people worry more than others, and how to create dialogue that you can probably talk about when you know that somebody is worrying a little bit more. And maybe asking the child, what could you do to help that person if they're worrying. And also you can even create your own tin of that like for happy thoughts. So if like if you're just having like a, if you know that something big is happening you're nervous, and maybe you can make like a small 10 to kind of give you that support so I really like this book. Okay Jen know what about you. Oh that's a good. Those are two great books. I would have to to follow. Maybe war is horse can use this book to meditate. It's by Miriam Gates, it is a nonfiction children's nonfiction, but they're just wonderful. Simply explain steps that you can take to just be mindful, notice your breathing and stuff that kids can do and relax and of course it's wonderful you can do it with them, of course. It shows the different ways of different areas of to meditate or just to slow down and be conscious of your thoughts and reading and one of the items that I really like is to make a water bottle. Clear bottle. So you just have a few items. See if you can find someone that will stay afloat. I don't. I prefer to use clear just regular tap water so that as the as you shake your bottle is your feeling chaotic and kind of worried, or just stress you can shake your bottle like you're feeling, and then settle your bottle and breathe with it. And notice the glitter going down and then notice also a light and maybe some happy things that you can find that stays afloat. Those are your happy thoughts. And I just found these little plastic bubbles that stays up and it reminds me of like little fish that are still swimming. So, because I didn't like to have glue gun or I didn't want to use glue gel or gel glue. I just use regular tap water just make sure it's sealed. And then at the end, after you listen and you practice your reading, the author does include a very easy four steps you can take to meditate and it's just simple, you know, sitting up and relaxing but also sitting company and what you do. And you do this for a stressful day if you're going to school or if you're having a bad day, and just talk and exhale that breathing in. And so it's really a wonderful book to share, sit, breathe, listen and relax. You can even do this when you're being read to so that's a really good thing to practice before nighttime. Really good one. And then my other one to go with. Talking is not my thing or worry source. This is Doug and don't hug Doug. And he's those right here. It's just not his thing. And he doesn't like it and it's okay written by Kerry Finneson drawings by Daniel Wiseman and it's really, really simple. It's very light. We are all different. And personally, not everybody needs to be hugged or like to be hugged and you should always ask somebody when you don't know them. If you can have them before you do adults and children need to be given permission and I love the opening you can hug a bug, you can hug a bug or a slug. But don't hug Doug. He doesn't like it. No hugs please and it goes through what he does like what he doesn't like he's a really interesting boy he collects rock socks. But he just does not like to hug. So can I hug you, you have to ask this. These are identical twins one say yes. The other one says no. So you have to ask before you hug someone and it's really cool. I love it. All the way to the end. And Doug found other ways of reading and showing affection by giving high fives or maybe a fist pump, all that other ways or elbow bomb. It's really cool. I like my favorite, the spinny five so you do spin and you get high five. And it's really cool. So, yes, he loves high five, go ahead high five. That's a great way to show, you know, not everybody enjoy. They just don't know you, do you know what his mom is so lucky, he loves her hug. So unless you're his mommy doesn't want to hug. That's a really good book. All right, Danea, what's your next. Okay, so I have my last two and this is in honor of Father you say this month. So, um, my first one is, um, why and there's a rainbow in front and I can actually see my background with another rainbow within a rainbow. And so this is a really cute book. So this is actually many of the books I picked are cute today but this is why written by Billy Dunn and illustrated by Reese Jeffries. And in this book we see a young girl and her father. Oh, I'm not opening up today. So this is a young girl and her father. So the young daughter is asking about how a rainbow is made and keeps asking repeatedly why to her father, and the father tries his best to explain it to his daughter as each question gets answered, you can see how nervous her father keeps getting. He's like, yeah, I can answer this and confident and then she's asking why and the further you get along, you can kind of see his face kind of changing. And because it's kind of getting harder to explain it because he's going really in depth into this. And then he's starting to sweat. You see him sweating here at the end. He's not really sweating here because he's talking about the wavelengths. And he's sitting on the floor now almost turning into a ball. So he's actually really good and she's really loving it as you can tell as he keeps explaining everything. But I think as a parent, when a child keeps asking why we can all get a little flustered and when you keep answering having to answer so, you know, and the data is curled up in a ball and the dollar tells him loving that he could have simply just said, which means like where she says you could have simply said and she gives him a hug. And when I kind of just means like, oh, you could have just told her like straight straight forward or even he was trying to simplify everything but we all know that sometimes there are some things that's really tough to explain so I really thought this was a really cute father and child book and I thought that was cute. So my next one is the match my last one is the little fox and the wild imagination, and this is written by drama to coon and illustrated by Dan Santat who's my favorite. So whenever he comes out with everything, anything you'll probably see me talking about it. So this is a story about a dad picking up his son from school, and it looks like his son was not having a good day. And he looks to send looks really sad and the dad's trying to cheer him up. So he does something great to cheer him up he starts to play pretend with his son and it sounds like, you know, like whatever, but but how can one resist the imagination play of pretending. So the father comes up with all these cool ways to cheer his son up by, as they go to the bus stop, they become race car drivers, and also, Yeah, well that's all pretending imaginations, because I get to the bus stop. The sun looks pretty happy but then you kind of get into a little mood again and then you see the dinosaurs. So all of a sudden the dinosaurs come to life. The imagination just keeps getting wilder and wilder throughout the day. And as they get home, the imagination gets pretty crazy. And all of a sudden there's robots with broccoli that turns into trees. And then the dad ends up in the ocean. It's really funny because they made a mess during while eating dinner. And then so they have to take a bath and ends up the dead ends up in an ice cream truck with a shark trying to eat him so the dad is like what's going on. Obviously, but you can read this but can see how crazy that adventures get. And so this is just a really wonderful book showing the love of a father and the links to that he goes to to cheer him up. And all you need is a good old imagination and the willing to pretend play and you have a good day. And I know you have a lot of good books to show me. Maybe the Fox dad can give him a hug. Have you a good one. I have a book called I am a bird. Celebration of dad to buy hope limb illustrated by hey one young. And I noticed right away I was trying to find out where is this little girl at trying to find out where does she learn because. I don't know but then I noticed there's some Korean text on the doorway right there so I was thinking maybe like a village in Korea. And it does say that the author hope grew up in South Korea so it's really beautiful. And so it's just a father taking his daughter to work to school. She loves bird and everyone that she meets and see wave and smile so they're very happy people because she expects that because she's a very cute little girl. But then she noticed there was a woman in a blue coat and a big bag. She was walking. She did not wave and she did not smile. She just made up a judgment right away if she's not smiling to her or she's not waving and she must not be a very nice lady. And her dad just said well, she doesn't have to. Right. She doesn't smile she doesn't wave and the little girl says, Daddy, I don't like her. She says she's just a lady taking a walk and then they continue on their way day after day until they see the woman in the park. The woman is smiling. She's making bird sounds to the bird. She's whispering to the bird and the opinion of the little girl as she sees the woman in a different perspective. She's a nice lady and she's saying and the little girl say and they have something in common and the little girl feels like she's a bird again. So it's a wonderful lesson to talk about, you know, maybe a neighbor or someone you know who doesn't always smile and wave and it's cheerful, but they have their own time to be nice. It's really beautiful. I love the pencil drawing and coloring. It's a little bit different from digital art so it's really nice and calming, and I love the detail of the neighborhood and the background too. So it's really beautiful to share all the details. And then another one. This is a my other nonfiction picture book and butterfly for King. It's a silver medal winner Susan L Roth and Cindy Trumbory. So it's a beautiful book that you if you're sharing with a very young crowd like preschoolers, you can just read the top part, which is kind of like a rhyme. It's called lava flow and island rose, island rose and former chain, and it talks about the island of Hawaii. So all the islands, but the bottom part is very informative. It talks about the elementary courage elementary school students who advocated at the state representative to make a butterfly Kamehameha butterfly to be the state of fish like the official state insect, and they wrote letters they partition, and they actually got the law passed. And then they realized that the numbers, the butterfly numbers were shrinking and there wasn't that many left in Hawaii so they had to find ways and work with the Department of Land and Natural Resource to find ways to reintroduce the butterfly back into Hawaii. Using their website, citizen scientists where people can go and if they spot the butterfly, their lava or their chrysalis, they can upload that information for the scientists to collect, and then that's how the scientists are able to reintroduce the Kamehameha butterfly back into Hawaii. And I love the book also have phonetic spelling of the Hawaiian word that is so tongue twisting to say and it's really wonderful. So this book is great for a natural science week or fifth grader even to do the science project and other really interesting week with great picture books to share for preschoolers. And then a very simple Father's Day, Sawadee. I used to say Sawadee Ka, that's in Thai, it's Ming Huang Ho, she also wrote, she also wrote a while ago Hush, that's also a lullaby in Thai, illustrated by Molly Mead, you should see the little girl. She plays peek-a-boo with her dad and he wakes up Yutya, baby peek-a-boo, wanna play, where are you? So he, in every page you just have to look carefully to find the little girl as she's hidden from hiding from her father. And throughout the book, you'll find common animals you find in Thailand, like the dragonfly, the rooster, tiger, turtle even and a crocodile. But finally he's so frustrated, Yutya, baby, there's peek-a-boo, no more hiding, where are you? Do you ever play peek-a-boo with a baby? And then they hide so well you get a little scared. Where are they? So it's a really wonderful book to share, peek-a-boo with daddy. And then this one, it's a very easy, wordless picture book. The boy and his dad is by Pete Allfold, so I love this, it's called Hike. And it's just a very simple, very detailed, wonderful book to share about a boy and his father waking up really early, taking a long drive. The page is really wonderful, it shows the dad crossing the stream or the river with the wood. And then the boy is on the other side, he's too afraid to cross. And of course dad is there to coach him to cross. And it's really wonderful. And eventually they get to the top, they take a picture, and they plant a tree. Just be careful, because the author in the back tells you, that planting trees in a public place is sometimes legal, sometimes not. So be sure to check out nationalforest.org if you want to plant a tree, or maybe you can volunteer for Arbor Day or Earth Day with your mom or your dad. It's a wonderful book to share. And my last one, oh my gosh, is Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carl. This is one of my favorite, it's an old one, but one of my favorite because it shows Mr. Seahorse for Father's Day, he should be honored because he takes care of his babies. He, the mother lays the egg, and then he fertilized them, but he's there in his pouch and he stays with them. And you'll see him going out with the baby in his belly. And you'll see him meet other fishes at the acetate page, you'll see other fishes hidden in there. There's a picture of other fish such as stickleback, tilapia, cactus, nursery fish, pipe fish, bullhead catfish, and my two favorite fathers who are taking care of their eggs is the tilapia because could you imagine, he keeps his eggs in his mouth. Look at that. Mr. Tilapia laid her eggs, now you're taking good care of them until they hatch. And Mr. Tilapia with his mouth full of eggs can only nod. You must be very happy, said Mr. Seahorse. And then he goes on and he meets Mr. Curtis. Oh my goodness, look, he has his egg. He stuck them on his head, on top of his head. Oh, and he has to take care of them until they hatch. Oh, that is such a wonderful book to share. And I bet your dad, can you imagine if your dad had to carry you on his, on his head, and finally, oh, look, the seahorses, the baby's hatch, yay. And he says, oh no, one baby try to come back and get back into the pouch too. Wonderful. So this is a wonderful winner by Mr. Eric Carl, never disappoint, so beautiful. So I hope you guys have a wonderful Father's Day, June 20, and do something fun with maybe your uncle, your older brother, someone that makes you feel that you have a dad in your life. Okay, so that's a really good way to think of it. And then please be sure to look up these books if you want them right on our catalog with picture this 0621 if you want any of the books we mentioned and that we talked about. And I just want to mention besides Father's Day, June 19 is the start of our summer reading program. So please log on to our library website to learn more about it. It's going to take place from June 19 to August 14 on Beanstack, just go to our website. I'm closer to the date and you'll find more information. They're going to have weekly prize and weekly drawings and, and also starting May, mid May, May 18, I think we're going to go grab and go. I'm already started. So we might see you guys at some of the branches that are open. Yay. Thank you for joining us for picture this. Okay, we'll see you next month. Until then, stay safe, take care. Thank you.