WTBA is a collection of and conversation about powerful books that strengthen, elevate, inspire and help to grow powerful, resilient kids. We're a book oriented guide for parents, grandparents, educators, aunts, uncles and anyone involved in nurturing children and caring for friends.
Michael Morpurgo often chooses war as a theme around which to wrap a story that isn’t really about war at all. In I Believe in Unicorns there is a war and it carries all the usual elements—and the war is pivotal to the story. But the story itself is about belief, acceptance, virtue, love and hope. It's told in the first person by Tomas who is remembering the time war came to his town.
ages 6 years to grownup
ages 2 to 8 years
This is a rollicking book—so much fun to read and so much fun to look at. The story is an adapted Danish folktale and the fabulous illustrations reflect that. It’s the story of Goodie, a plump and obviously happy woman, who is making sausages to store up for her family—she makes hundreds of them and has to hang them from every nook and cranny. Inevitably, funny happens!
I don’t normally like books that overtly teach. I prefer the teaching part to settle gently in the recesses of small minds ready for them to catch and adapt as life throws circumstances to them that don’t quite match the books they’ve read. Mile-High Apple Pie is an exception - there's the obvious, plus much more.
ages 4 to 12 years
Read MoreThis is a truly gorgeous Nativity book. We love it because it tells the nativity in a way that makes new listeners stop and think and ponder to understand. The story is in idioms from Liberia and it’s beautiful to read. It’s so well told that the rhythm of the words is easy to catch and then it just flows.
ages baby to grown-up - and everyone in between.
Read MoreTruly, this is a lovely book. In a time of poverty and despair, two young men - a priest and a teacher - recognised the gift that comforting words could be and created a carol that would drift and echo through the ages.
ages 4 to 12 years
Read MoreThis is a nativity story that invites us into Joseph’s thoughts on that first magical night. We hear Joseph’s doubts about his own abilities and his wonder at the child who is before him. And he wonders how he can ever live up to the task.
ages 4 to grownup
ages 4 years to grownup
Set in Europe, this is one of my absolute favourite books. It's a book to give perspective to small bingles and it's a book to plant notions of empathy, courage, and resilience in children. Definitely one to have in your home library, Let the Celebrations BEGIN! speaks across a wide range of age groups and relates to so many sets of circumstances.
A conversation about books + kids. A website resource and book reviews for educators, parents, grandparents. The main focus is emotional resilience.
