Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
February 2021

Be Kind
Our Rais­ing Star Read­ers con­trib­u­tor Ann Angel always has a unique take on select­ing books for her Read­ing Team. Here, Ann talks about books that encour­age what she calls “mind­ful­ness moments” — titles that help kids (and adults) slow down and focus dur­ing our cur­rent “wild” times: Our house is home to three gen­er­a­tions. So hus­band Jeff and I live with Ted­dy, a rather ram­bunc­tious five-year-old, and his mom.… more

Library EMT

The best way to find your­self is to lose your­self in the ser­vice of others.” —Mahat­ma Gandhi I went into the week­end pre­pared to take it easy from a long and busy week. I quick­ly shift­ed my focus to the hor­ror hap­pen­ing in Aus­tralia. I was watch­ing a video that showed a small frac­tion of the ani­mals and humans faced with this dis­as­ter.… more

Ann Angel and Her Reading Team
January 2020

Wherever You Go
Rais­ing Star Read­ers rel­ish­es this chance to catch up with Ann Angel and her multi­gen­er­a­tional Read­ing Team. For this entry, Ann was espe­cial­ly focused on how the words and visu­al art in pic­ture books lead kids to think and to dream. Here’s how Ann describes it: Long before I had kids and grand­kids, I thought I’d grow up to be a visu­al artist.… more

Laughing Matters

Kari Pearson
This month, Jacque­line Brig­gs Mar­tin and Phyl­lis Root, the usu­al hosts of this col­umn, have invit­ed Kari Pear­son to share her rec­om­men­da­tions for fun­ny pic­ture books. Let’s play a game! It’s called Funny/Not Fun­ny. It goes like this: Fun­ny: Eat­ing greasy bloaters with cab­bage-and-pota­to sog (see: How Tom Beat Cap­tain Najork and His Hired Sports­men) Not Fun­ny: Shov­el­ing gigan­tic snow­drifts out of my dri­ve­way into piles almost as tall as myself.… more