Weekend Pick for April 5, 2024
Are you looking for something to read?
Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
For the picks from 2023 click here
For the picks from 2022 click here
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
For the picks from 2023 click here
For the picks from 2022 click here
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
| Meet Jen Nails, our April contributor of the Weekend Picks. Jen Nails is a teacher/librarian/author in Las Vegas, NV, her hometown. She has published middle grade novels One Hundred Spaghetti Strings (2017) and Next to Mexico (2008) as well as dozens of poems and short stories in various anthologies and online spaces. Jen is an avid hiker and yogi, and she loves playing amateur flag football. Check out the Number S#gns Poetry Project which she and 30 fellow poets created in celebration of National Poetry Month, 2024! Here is to April, full of awe, flowers, and poetry! |  Jen Nails |
 | Perhaps, early spring will always bring back Friday, March 13, 2020, the day that things officially started to shut down. Remembering COVID through Archie’s narrative in Hummingbird Season brought back the anxiety and uncertainty during that time, the hope in small things (like takeout), and the profound awakening to nature. Archie is nine years old, fidgety, and a little impatient about most things, and this is pre-pandemic. When his family goes on lockdown, he begins his struggles with isolation from friends at school, staying indoors with his family, and learning online. He misses the everyday interactions with his peers and at first understands that the lockdown is temporary, that he'll be back at school "soon." Of course, this is not the case. Months pass. Seasons change. |
| Though he shares a bedroom with his older brother, Archie has never felt more alone. The two are constantly bickering, misunderstanding, and isolating within the isolation. Archie finds himself longing for connection on some days, and on others, avoiding his sibling. He finds solace and relief in spending time climbing trees and observing nature in his yard. Online learning proves disastrous as he continually feels ignored and unmotivated to fully participate. When his mom supports his plan to build bird feeders, he begins to feel hopeful again. |  Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic |
A hummingbird that he names Ruby begins to visit his feeder. He and his brother eventually reconnect, and through the support of his family, he begins to find joy again. In one of the final scenes, his teacher allows him to share with the class all of the information about Ruby and the process of building his bird feeder, and for the first time in a long while, he feels seen.
The novel is suited to middle grade readers and readers young at heart, and to those readers who enjoy realistic fiction in verse. Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic lives in San Francisco with her family and writes award-winning picture books and middle grade novels.
See you next next Friday!
RSS Feed