Just Read!

After a class of diverse students selects books at the library, peppy rhyming verse by Degman (Norbert’s Big Dream) and whimsical digital-and-watercolor illustrations by Tentler-Krylov (Read-Aloud Classics: Peter Pan) integrate the chosen titles’ settings and subjects into the children’s lives, underscoring the ease and joy with which readers are transported by books (“Hooray! I know how to read on my own!”). A girl reading My Big Book of Animals affectionately pets a moose sticking its head into her subway car while a dazzling menagerie looks on; a reader floating in a swimming pool filled with sea creatures pores over Shark Facts. Also spotlighted are more realistic scenarios: a boy grocery shopping with an adult peruses The Kid Chef, and a guitar-toting kid flips through a songbook at a music store. Welcome inclusions are a girl reading a book in Braille as she flies on a magic carpet over an exotic city (“I read with my fingers across bumpy lines”), pictured alongside a child communicating with a sibling in sign language (“I read with my voice or my hands, using signs”). A chipper, colorful celebration of the limitless possibilities for what, where, and when one can read. Ages 4–up. [em]Illustrator’s agency: Studio Goodwin Sturges. (Mar.) [/em]