Top Grade: K-8 selections, Spring 2014

When Mama goes to work, she wears her working clothes. She combs her hair, She packs a lunch, She takes her special bag. When Mama goes to work, I wear my playing clothes. I comb my hair, I pack a lunch, I take my special bag. When Mama Goes to Work follows several children and their working mothers as they move through their day. From morning to night, through the daily activities of work and play, children and parents keep each other in their thoughts even when they are apart.

Meet the Tweedles: Papa, Mama, daughter Frances and her brother, Francis. It’s the dawn of a new century—the twentieth century! — and the Tweedles have decided to buy a car. But no gas guzzler for this modern family. Only an electric car will do for them.

Frances is the only member of her eccentric family who is not delighted when Papa decides they need an electric car. She would rather read a book. Frances knows that cars go fast, which can only lead to trouble. She is even less impressed …

Mouse Tales, the first volume in the “Happy the Pocket Mouse” series, has been read to tens of thousands of students in Atlantic Canada and Ontario over the past five years, and has gathered a substantial following anxious to have the illustrated book in hand. Here, now, thanks to the artistic vision of Andrea Torrey Balsara, fans everywhere will delight in witnessing Happy and John in action. Readers of all ages will identify with Happy’s bedtime struggle after a long day, his request for …

In this story, the young girl Ra-Eli watches as her family agonizes over the illness of her baby brother Samson. When they approach a healer, the answer comes:

This is a letter of sisterhood to Malala Yousafzai, written from the perspective of girls around the world who share her belief that every girl has the right to go to school, and who represent the many barriers a girl can face when trying to get an education. After being shot by the Taliban for the simple act of going to school in her native Pakistan, Malala has become an international girls’ rights crusader and the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Girls the world over recogn …

Margaret can’t wait to see her family, but her homecoming is not what she expected.

Two years ago, Margaret left her Arctic home for the outsiders’ school. Now she has returned and can barely contain her excitement as she rushes towards her waiting family—but her mother stands still as a stone. This strange, skinny child, with her hair cropped short, can’t be her daughter. “Not my girl!” she says angrily.

Margaret’s years at school have changed her. Now ten years old, she has forgott …

Do you know?

• The North American porcupine possesses approximately 30,000 quills.
• Porcupine quill tips are made of little hooks that make removing them difficult.
• Porcupines do not throw their quills.
• Thanks to their quills, porcupines can float on water.

Find out all sorts of interesting things about porcupines and enjoy a chuckle along the way.

The three books in the popular Shapes in Math, Science and Nature series, Squares, Triangles and Circles, are now available in one amazing compilation. The design has been refreshed, and the text by Catherine Sheldrick Ross has been lightly updated. What makes the compilation so unique and just plain interesting is how many topics it manages to cover for each of these three most basic shapes. For example, squares are explored not just in terms of what they are, how they are drawn and their geome …