I read Animals & Birds in Folklore by K. Nixon. It was several fables / legends / just so stories about how birds got their colors, leopards got their spots etc.
Corduroy is a sweet book about a little bear in a department store who finds a home.
I read "I am Number 4" by Pitticus Lore. This was really good. It's been a while since I picked up a real page turner. This teen novel is great and I look forward to the next in the series.
This is about a planet that was killed off by another group from another planet. Nine children and their Cepans were sent off the planet to grow up on earth. They were protected by a charm and can only be eliminated in order unless they are together. This story is about the fourth child.
Leo Lionni's "It's Mine" is about three selfish frogs who realize that they really do need each other after a flood.
I read: The Boy who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. This is a novelization of a true story about a boy in Nazi Germany who was condemned to death at age 16 for trying to tell the German people the truth about what was really going on. Depressing in the outcome but uplifting in a way when you think about the strength the young man had and the respect he earned from his peers.
I read "Zookeeper's Wife" by Diane Ackerman. It is a story of a woman and her husband who ran the Warsaw Zoo before the Nazi invasion in WWII and what happened to the animals and the many transformations of the zoo during the occupation. In the end, it became a stop on the Underground getting Jews out of the Ghetto. I learned a bit more about the Ghetto and the fortitude of the people living there and the neighbors and strangers that helped and did what they could. Kind of depressing but very interesting and reinforces the fact that there are a lot of good people doing the right thing out there in the world.
I read My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. It is a sweet story about a boy's father's adventures as a youth to a strange island to rescue a baby dragon.
