Author Profile: Salina Yoon

We love, love, love author/illustrator Salina Yoon in our house. She writes engaging and visually charming stories for young children, primarily in board and picture books. Her books are all sweet, while the illustrations are simple and cute.

Her books range from interactive board books for toddlers (Kaleidoscope and Pinwheel) to picture books for the 3-8 year old range. She has several character book series starring Penguin (from Penguin and Pinecone and other stories) and Bear (from Found and other stories).

We discovered Ms. Yoon’s books through my daughter’s preschool teacher. Miss Lisa loves penguins, and she read several of the Penguin books to the students. We secretly think Miss Lisa feels a close connection to Penguin (they are both sweet and love to knit!). We began taking out Salina Yoon books from the library on our own and have enjoyed them all, including:

Found is our favorite, and we bought it for our home library so we would stop wearing out the library copy. Read my previous review here. In preparing this list, I found that Bear’s Big Day came out in June. We’ll be on the lookout for it!

What is your favorite Salina Yoon book? Please share in the comments!

Our Favorite Books of Winter/ ALA Awards

Happy winter day! Here in the Northeast US, this winter has been a mix of sun, wind, and more temperate days. We finally got enough snow to play in last week, so we’ve been in the mood for some picture books about winter and snow. Since winter has come around every year since the beginning of time, it makes sense that we enjoy both classic and contemporary snow/winter books.  Here are some of our favorites:

  • The Mitten, Jan Brett
  • Katy and the Big Snow, Virginia Lee Burton
  • Snowmen at Night, Caralyn Buehner
  • The Snowy Day, Ezra Jack Keats
  • Owl Moon, Jane Yolen
  • Snowballs, Lois Ehlert
  • The Snow Cat, Dayal Kaur Khalsa
  • Bear Snores On, Karma Wilson
  • Snowflake Bentley, Jacqueline Briggs Martin
  • Penguin and Pinecone, Salina Yoon
  • Jack Frost, William Joyce

What are your favorite winter picture books? Do you love a book that’s not on this list?

The other great thing about this time of year is the announcement of the American Library Association (ALA) Book and Media Awards. You can find the complete list on their website, but I wanted to highlight a few of the awards here. This was an unusual year for the John Newbery Medal, which frequently goes to a middle grade or young adult novel. This year it went to a picture book, Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña. This story about a boy riding the bus with his grandma not only won the 2016 Newbery Medal, it also earned a 2016 Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor for Christian Robinson. Congratulations to Matt de la Peña, Christian Robinson, and all the other award winners!

Have you read Last Stop on Market Street? Did you enjoy it? What are your thoughts? Please share in the comments!

Review: Found

Found by Salina YoonFound

Written and Illustrated by: Salina Yoon

Walker Books, 2014, Hardcover

Target Audience: Ages 3-8

Genre: Fiction

Theme: Responsibility, friendship

How We Discovered This Book: This was in the new books bin at our library, and I immediately loved the illustrations. My son thinks it was created in oil pastels.

Summary:

This is a book of few words, with a simple but important premise. What do you do when you find an adorable stuffed bunny in the forest?

What I Liked:

This book is so sweet. You think you know how this book will turn out, but it takes a little twist at the end. The illustrations perfectly express the sweetness of the story.

What Did My Kids Think?

A bulletin board of lost notices plays prominently in middle of the story. It is full of tongue-in-cheek references, as well as jokes from other stories and fairy tales. I thought some might be over my kids’ heads, but they got most of them, and giggled like crazy. There is something to be said for books that don’t talk down to kids.

Resources:

Have your kids/students make their own lost sign for something they have lost – the more creative the better!

Brainstorm with your kids or students on what would be the best thing to find. And then what would they do with it? Play? Share it? Give it to someone else?