Welcome to Litsy!

Check out my (very red & angry) new tattoo!

It‘s a memorial tribute to Moxie (my pet house rabbit), taken from Brian Wildsmith‘s picture book “The Princess and the Moon.”

My artist (who just happens to be a descendent of Owen Chase, first mate onboard the Essex — the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick! 🐋) used a process called “bloodlining” to get the color bleed right. Pretty bad-ass, tbh.

She said I sat like a champ. 🏆

I love #PictureBooks and I love collective nouns so I couldn‘t resist this stunningly illustrated book.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐5 ⭐
I love this book, but trying to say why I love it is hard. It has great woodblock style illustrations, and most of the book is putting things in families like an unkindness of ravens. It just has something I love, but I can't articulate why.
#Wintergames #teamreadnosereindeer +16

I wasn‘t too sure about this one. A child explores the natural world, before coming home to his ‘tribe‘, a tribe of kids. The collective nouns (which I thought might be the point) were a slightly odd mix of imaginative and traditional.

And then I learnt that concerns had been raised by Native American scholar re the use of the word tribe, alongside images of ‘wild‘ kids, potentially perpetuating stereotypical images.

And hmmm 🤔

This MF-animal fantasy book follows a young child and the animals they meet on their adventure in the search for their own “tribe“. This book teaches collective nouns and could be used for GR with emergent readers. Readers can use the illustrations of animals to decode words. https://images.macmillan.com/folio-assets/teachers-guides/9781596436077TG.pdf provides pre-reading activities and comprehension questions to go along with the story.

Even the bathroom is adorable with prints from the tagged books-- a group of penguins is called a "huddle," who knew ?

#NoFemmeber Day 15: This book celebrates #WildCreatures and as Fats noted in her review: “makes use of clever lines to highlight a variety of animal groups. The first thing this book asks is this:
‘Do you ever wonder
what animals do
when they gather in groups
of more than two?‘”
Her full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-dIJ

I‘ve posted about this picture book before, but was reminded of it when my daughter brought it up for her reading time. The artwork is outstanding! Love the labels of the groups, my favorite is an ostentation of peacocks.

Fascinating memoir about rescuing a penguin from an oil spill, including a marathon bus trip and smuggling it across the border into Argentina. Recommended by a friend, not something I would have chosen for myself, although I am a sucker for stray cat stories eg Dewey, Bob and Cleo! An enjoyable read with a smattering of Argentine history. #tommichell #penguins #collectivenouns