I Am a Dancer by Pat Lowery Collins, illustrations by Mark Graham.

Collins has created a poem here that dances, springs, swirls and entrances.  Her words capturing movement and dance echo, offering inspiration to children and insight into the meaning of being a dancer.  Here is one stanza that grabbed my attention:

I am a dancer to the

steady drip-blip of rain,

the whisper of trees,

music carried on the air.

What a magical way to bring poetry and symbolism to children.  Using things that they see and hear every day, but making it deeper and stronger and adding meaning.

Graham has created paintings to go with the poem that also dance and move.  For me, the most spectacular is the autumn double-spread where the glory of golden autumn days is captured. 

This enchanting picture book works perfectly.  Highly recommended for children age 4-7.

The Vowel Family: a Tale of Lost Letters by Sally M. Walker, illustrations by Kevin Luthardt.

As Pm and Sm Vwl start their married life together they realize that something is missing.  Vowels!  When their twins Alan and Ellen were born, suddenly A and E entered their speech too.  But something was still missing.  The second set of twins, Iris and Otto, added I and O. But it isn’t until Ursula was born and Aunt Cyndy is around that words suddenly work.

This book must be read aloud (but don’t attempt it in front of a group without some prep time) to get the humor of the missing vowels.  Reading the first few pages is confusing and funny.  Just try to figure out how to pronounce the sentence, "Tlkng s vr hrd." 

Walker’s text adds to the fun and eventually bounces along merrily once vowels enter the picture.  She has selected words that can be pronounced with difficulty and to a certain extent can even be decoded and understood.  Luthardt’s illustrations add to the silliness of the book.  Children will immediately see the humor of the situation, will love hearing a reader stumble over nonsense words, and will even learn something in the process.

Recommended for young readers age 5-7 who will enjoy the joke most of all.

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola.

This
picture book tells the true story of Wangari Maathai, winner of the
2004 Nobel Peace Prize.  When she was growing up in Kenya, the country
was covered in green hills, trees, and crops.  But when she returned
back home after college, she discovered that the greenery was gone,
people were struggling and starving and the trees had been chopped
down.  The entire country had moved from small family farms to large
agricultural plantations.  So she went to work to restore her homeland
and bring back the trees, the clean water, and the food supply.  Change
did not come quickly, but by getting the women of Kenya to start making
small changes at home, they began to plant trees and change Kenya
forever.

Nivola’s language is what really makes this book work. 
She simultaneously moves the book along at a brisk pace but also allows
the words and images to linger momentarily.  So as we learn about how
Kenya used to be, we are given this gem of writing:

In
the stream near her homestead where she went to collect water for her
mother, she played with glistening frogs’ eggs, trying to gather them
like beads into necklaces, though they slipped through her fingers back
into the clear water. 

This isn’t a lecture on how
healthy ecosystems should be.  Rather it is a moment, a captured image,
a time when things were so right that they didn’t need explanation. 
Readers, especially children, will know that intuitively.  If you have
the wonder of frog eggs, you have clean water and a healthy ecosystem. 
Also notice Nivola’s grace with phrasing.  Her words beg to be read
aloud and when they are, they glide smoothly and tell the story
effortlessly.

Her art is also winning.  Featuring primarily
large vistas of Kenya, they demonstrate just as much as the words the
damage done to the environment.  Again and again we are shown Wangari
Maathai as part of that expanse, part of the community, one of many
workers, never alone, isolated or individual.  Nivola manages with her
art to set her message in stone about the power of change, of heart, of
womanhood.

Highly recommended for classroom use in grades 3-5.  
The perfect book to take out for Arbor Day, Earth Day, or any day when
vistas, trees and hard work are needed.  It works well as a read-aloud
for older children who will start to ask themselves about the clearing
of land in our own country and the damage it may be doing.