Top Grade Spring 2018 Selections
Created by Top Grade on June 21, 2018
Tree Song
Listen to the music of the trees.
This joyful book follows the life cycle of a tree as it grows from seedling to mature tree, and finally gives way to a new sapling. At every stage of the tree’s life, children are seen playing under its branches.
Each season brings with it new sounds, whether it’s the chirping of birds in the spring or the flitter flutter of leaves in the fall. As well as a home for animals, the tree provides a canopy for a summer picnic, and a perfect place to hang a swi …
Animals Illustrated: Bowhead Whale
Animals Illustrated mixes fun-filled animal facts suitable for the youngest of readers with intricately detailed illustrations to create a unique and beautiful collection of children’s books on Arctic animals. Each volume contains first-hand accounts from authors who live in the Arctic, along with interesting facts on the behaviours and biology of each animal.
In this book, kids will learn how bowheads raise their babies, where they live, what they eat, and other interesting information, like …
Siku and Kamik Like to Play
Siku and Kamik have a lot of fun together!
This book shows all the different ways the dogs have fun in their Arctic community together.
What Happens Next
What Happens Next is a raw, realistic story told by an unnamed protagonist who is made to feel different from everybody else—even invisible sometimes. Bullied by a girl at school, our narrator gives a terse script of the related facts (What Her Friends Do: Laugh. What Everyone Else Does: Nothing.) and emotions (How I Feel Sometimes: Bad. Really Bad.).
The narrator takes these hurt feelings home, where Mom listens and offers some ideas. At school the next day, the child confronts the bully by t …
Princess Angelica, Camp Catastrophe
Angelica isn't a liar, she just loves making up stories.
When Angelica goes to sleepaway camp and is mistaken for a princess, she could easily clear up the misunderstanding...but pretending to be royalty is way more fun! When her best friend from home surprises her at camp, Angelica is forced to fess up. Luckily, she also has a talent for repairing things, and when disaster strikes on the girls' kayaking trip, Jelly has to repair more than just her newfound friendships.
Better Together
Better Together explores how people gather in groups of all kinds to fulfill the basic human need for companionship.
From the smallest units of parents, siblings and friends to global organizations that try to build on a foundation of common human experience to meet their goals, people working together are a powerful force for change. Too often, we look at someone and see all the ways we are different. People all around the world come together to build things, teach and entertain each other, and …
Krista Kim-Bap
Krista and Jason have been best friends since preschool. It never mattered that he was a boy with reddish-brown hair and she was the “Korean girl” at school. Now in fifth grade, everyone in their class is preparing their Heritage Month projects. Jason has always loved Krista’s Korean family, and particularly her mom’s cooking, but Krista is conflicted about being her school’s “Korean Ambassador”. She’s also worried about asking her intimidating grandma to teach the class how to m …
Alex and The Other
Beware The Other …
Alex is the loneliest boy at school. Not only are his parents away (again), but his beloved cat is missing. Plus, one morning his reflection in the haunted bathroom mirror at school starts talking to him. Then two mysterious strangers in overcoats and sunglasses appear, whispering the same message, over and over: Beware The Other.…
But, worse than all that, is the girl with the braid. She looks just like Alex. She’s better than him at everything, and they even share the sa …
THIS PART IS (MOSTLY) TRUE
You should know, before you even start this book, that it’s a little scary. And parts of it are even a bit weird and strange. I wish I could make the story less scary and strange, but this is the way I heard it, so I really have no choice.
It starts like this:
A long time ago, an old farmer woke in the middle of the night, to the sound of his pigs.
They were screaming out in the pigpen.
Now, if you’ve never heard a pig scream, you’re lucky. They sound like, well “other-worldly,” might be the best word for what they sound like. It makes your hair stand up.
The old farmer looked out his bedroom window, and the pigs were going crazy. The piglets rammed into the fence again and again, and their mother, the old sow, tried to dig her way out of the pigpen (something that had never occurred to her before).
“Darn coyotes again,” the old farmer said. The pigs never liked coyotes. With good reason.
The old farmer grabbed his boots and ran into the winter night. He burst out the kitchen door, tramped across the crunchy snow …
… and stopped dead.
His pigs fell silent. They stood perfectly still and looked at him. Which was a bit unnerving.
A strange green fog swirled around them, like a swamp gas or a mysterious vapour. The moon was up and shone on the snow and on the pigs staring at the farmer.
“What the …?” The old farmer moved closer to get a better look and stopped again. At the edge of the green fog, two tall strangers in long overcoats stood beside the fence. Definitely not coyotes.
The strangers stood perfectly still. And watched him.
Just like the pigs.
The silent pigs and the tall figures stared at him in the eerie green fog and the moonlit silence. The farmer suddenly felt very exposed.
“Who are you? What are you doing to my pigs?” he called out. The weird fog swirled, and a green finger of fog stretched toward him.
There was no answer. He called again. “What do you want with my pigs?”
The wind blew, the green fog stretched across the ground toward him …
… and a strange voice answered, “We seek The Other.”
The old farmer swallowed hard. The voice! The voice was nothing like he’d ever heard before. A squeal. A rasp. A grunt. It made his hair stand up.
“What’s that? What’s The Other? What do you mean?” He tried to get a better look at the tall strangers, but they were shrouded in the green fog. The pigs turned and looked at the strangers as though they were waiting for an answer, too.
“Beware The Other,” the awful voice said. It sounded … exactly … like a pig might if it decided to start talking to you. The farmer swallowed again.
“Who are you?” he called.
But as he watched, the strangers turned and vanished into the foggy trees.
Every piggy eye in the pigpen turned to look at the old farmer. A distinctly piggy voice said, “They’ll be back.”
Which was when the farmer turned, ran back into the house, and jumped under his bed. It took his wife a long time to coax him out. The next day a FOR SALE sign was on the farm and the old farmer never, ever spoke about that night again, not to anyone. The pigs were sold to a farmer down the lane. The odd thing was (although, really, what part of this story isn’t odd?), when it came time to count and sell them, there were two piglets missing. And then there weren’t. A little while later, they turned up again.
Who ever heard of a weird green fog that made pigs panic? Or vanish and reappear? Or talk, for that matter?
But every once in a while, in that time and place, a strange story popped up about a green fog that swirled across a winter barnyard and panicked the pigs. The story usually included a missing pig or two and mysterious, tall strangers looking for something, but no one was quite sure what it was.
It’s weird, I know, but as you’ve likely heard somewhere, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. Which you’re about to find out.
You don’t have to believe this story. But just because things are odd or a little strange or unbelievable doesn’t always make them untrue. Truth is an odd thing; one person’s truth can be another person’s lie. That’s the most important thing to remember about this story: sometimes things that seem like lies are actually true. And sometimes you never can tell.
That’s the spookiest thing of all.
