pick#CoverLove Day 3: #Dots can only mean Yayoi Kusama. Fats reviewed this picturebook biography a few years back - and she included photos from Kusama‘s exhibit in Cleveland Ohio where she lives. 🔴⚫️🔵⚪️ Her feature here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-j8e
#CoverLove Day 2: #Black with a touch of orange. Finished reading our #CampLitsy24 book club pick for July while in the plane from Dubai-Doha enroute to Jakarta a few days ago. Cannot wait to discuss this!
One of the four lectures I am doing here in Bandung, Indonesia. What a privilege to be able to travel to different parts of the world to talk about my favourite things. The effusive and warm welcome is quite unforgettable.
#CoverLove Day 1: #Red is this book that I inherited from a good friend and colleague who has left our university to teach at Indiana University this coming fall. We will miss him dearly. I got several boxes of books from him - all awesome! Here‘s my post about the rest of the titles: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qzW
#SummerSouls Day 30: #Waves - posting a day early since traveling to Bandung Indonesia for a Visiting Professor invite. 💕
#SummerSouls Day 28: #Rollercoaster romance-friends-lovers kind of vibe in our book club pick for June/July with college kid who is home from Seattle. Dexter is definitely not endearing himself to me one third into the novel that our 22 year old and I are reading aloud. We read one chapter a day.
#SummerSouls Day 27: #Perfect poem for 14 year old Snickers who passed away onto the rainbow bridge last week - the very first dog I have ever loved.
pick#SummerSouls Day 24: This beautiful book tells you when it is summer: “When #insects billow black from the trees, and the sun slips into an orange dream.
This is how I know summer.”
The entire picturebook is a testament to this wide-eyed attention to the little details found in the passing of the seasons. As Mary Oliver noted: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.” My full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qnb
pick#SummerSouls Day 23: There is an intimacy in Fogliano‘s verses here, with the constant “if you were.. and i was…” accompanied by such powerful imagery by Loren Long. It‘s like every page has a sigh, an exhalation, an unexpected gasp that tilts one‘s world a bit, allowing the reader to glimpse a different world of beauty, longing, and glowing #fireflies. My full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-lU4
#SummerSouls Day 22: The cover of tagged book is bursting in full #Bloom - our Emirates Literature Foundation book club pick for July. Paired with my quinoa avocado salad. Yum.
#SummerSouls Day 21: I do like our #cocktail err mocktails lols with our reads. Our GatheringReaders book club pick for June - we usually meet online via zoom.
#SummerSouls Day 20: This frozen lemon daiquiri looks much like #IceCream. Perfect companion to our #CampLitsy24 June pick the next two Saturdays.
pick#SummerSouls Day 19: In the Author‘s Note, Eva Chen spoke about the “meteoric rise in anti-Asian sentiment” during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, inspiring her to write this story, paradoxically at a time when she was advising her own parents to wear #sunglasses – and essentially remain invisible so as to not let people realize they are Asians. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-oeu
#SummerSouls Day 18: The Schloss#Park Nymphenburg in Munich is one of our most favourite #Park(s) and/or castles in Germany - possibly because it is only 5 km away from the place where we were staying during my time as an international research fellow at the International Youth Library - still one of the absolute best times of my life. Featured it here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-h1V
#SummerSouls Day 17: #Grassy cover right here in my book haul from the Big Bad Wolf Book sale in Dubai. Cannot wait to read it.
#SummerSouls Day 16: Now this is a real #Rainbow book from Norway. Part of my Norwegian haul. Mother-daughter tandem right here.
pick#SummerSouls Day 15: Kanafani wrote in a matter-of-fact yet also highly intimate manner – like stories that are being whispered around a #Camp #campfire. Most are horror stories that one would not imagine could happen to another human being – yet these stories are snapshots of actual lived experiences of people, who are still pretty much going through what Kanafani had surfaced here. My review 4 yrs ago: https://wp.me/pDlzr-mKo
#SummerSouls Day 13: Not sure if this is the sun or the moon on the cover but perhaps my lemon daiquiri (non alcoholic of course) will make up for it with the #Sunny prompt today. Loving this #EuropaCollective title for the month of June which I am reading alongside Yuzuki‘s “Butter.”
so-so#SummerSouls Day 12: A young, well-meaning, highly inventive artist is pleased with her creation. As the title goes, she has created a house for every bird. She assumed that blue #birds would prefer blue houses and that orange #birds need to go to orange houses. It is an insightful story about how, oftentimes, even the most well-meaning people can make mistakes that are based on false assumptions. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-odh
pick#SummerSouls Day 11: Part of the Katie Museum series, this time Katie brings us inside five of Van Gogh‘s masterpieces, beginning with the gorgeous #Starry Night. However, try as she might, Katie just can‘t reach those magical, bright stars. Not one to give up easily, she was resourceful enough to find something from one of Van Gogh‘s paintings that would allow her to reach the skies. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-j4y
pick#SummerSouls Day 10: #Boat on the cover of this gorgeous picturebook. The first time I encountered this book was back in 2015 when I was asked to serve as one of the judges for the Scholastic Picture Book award in Singapore. It was entitled The First Journey at the time and was published by Scholastic. More here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-pMu
pick#SummerSouls Day 9: This picturebook is a biography of a country - Netherlands, the #Bicycle capital of the world. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-ptD
#SummerSouls Day 8: We care because we are #Friends. Recent Libby ebook find. Review is forthcoming. 💕
#SummerSouls Day 7: We had #Fruity non-alcoholic mocktails last night for our friend‘s 68th birthday. He is moving back to the US by end of month, his last birthday here in the Emirates. We had happy mango, wonder melon, and lemon daiquiri for me. 🍋🍉🥭
pick#SummerSouls Day 6: Ai Weiwei‘s story is introduced to the reader with the pivotal harrowing events happening in the world today that inspired his art. The color scheme of blue and orange also served as a cohesive visual code embodying the search for sanctuary and refuge in the infinite blues of the #Sea among wave-riders and dream-seekers. My review posted yesterday: https://wp.me/pDlzr-qxy
#SummerSouls Day 5: #Pool reminded me of this utterly amazing picturebook that apparently I have yet to feature in GatheringBooks. I included it as part of my conference presentation on how to dismantle systemic racism through diverse picturebooks. Full list can be found here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-oQy
pick#SummerSouls Day 4: Lines in the #Sand is Unlike other books on war and peace, this collection contains letters, illustrations, folk tales, animal tales, short stories, fragments from longer novels, and most of all poetry. My full review here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-8eY
#SummerSouls Day 3: They look like #Summer drinks don‘t they? Perfect companion to our #CampLitsy2024 June read.
#SummerSouls Day 2: #mountains reminded me of a Poetry Friday feature Iphigene once shared on GatheringBooks with the ballad Far Over the Misty Mountain here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-8PY
