‘Chopsticks’ written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Scott Morgan is a great and witty sequel to the book ‘Spoon’. It tells the story of a pair of chopsticks who’ve been best friends forever.

The chopsticks do everything together. None of the utensils can remember them apart. They had already mastered all of the fundamentals, so now they’re learning fancy new tricks.

However, one day, the chopsticks were practicing, but they make a mistake. One of them splits at the bottom!

Encouraged by his injured companion to go on his own adventures, the other chopstick discovers he can do many things by himself, such as hockey, pickup sticks, and baking. When his friend recovers, and feels ‘fantastick’, they realized that being apart had made each of them even stronger. This calls for a ‘toast!’

The moral of the story is that in life, you have to be able to work independent. There might not always be people to help you, so without this skill, you might not be as successful as a person who is independent. You should never rely on others, instead, you should rely on yourself.

This book is extremely witty, with a lot of play on words. I really liked how it featured many other utensils, such as spoon, fork, and knife, but also had new characters such as sugar and tea bag. Also, the message it gave was quite strong, telling us to always be independent.

All in all, this was a funny book, and had a powerful moral.

 

 

 

‘Spoon’ by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Scott Morgan tells the story of a young Spoon who thinks the other utensils have better lives.              

Young Spoon lives with a large family, including a very fancy Aunt Silver. However he can’t help but being a little jealous of some of his friends. For instance, Knife is so lucky! He gets to cut, and he gets to spread! Spoon can’t do that. Not to mention, Fork gets to go practically everywhere! And chopsticks, everyone thinks they’re really cool and exotic!

Spoon’s mother doesn’t try to change his mind, instead, she answers back in a neutral way. However, young Spoon didn’t know what his friends were saying this very minute.

“Spoon is so lucky!” said Knife. “He’s so fun and easy going. Everyone’s so serious about me; no one’s ever allowed to be silly with me like they are with Spoon.” Meanwhile, Fork thinks Spoon is so lucky to measure stuff, and the Chopsticks thinks Spoon is lucky to be able to function apart.”

At bed, Spoon’s mom tells Spoon that the other utensils will never dive headfirst into a bowl of ice cream. After that, she invites him into the big bed.

The moral of the story is to always appreciate who you are. Everyone has weaknesses and strengths which others don’t have. This story connects with WE Day because some of the performers there talked about how we are good enough the way we are. I understand that Spoon might feel like he lacked a lot of things his friend had, but he didn’t think about everything that he could do that no other utensils can.

Overall, I think this story is for children from ages 6-10, and is a great and creative way of telling them to appreciate who they are.

 

‘Alfred Nobel: The Man Behind The Peace Prize’ by Kathy-Jo Wargin and illustrated by Zachary Pullen is a story about how the Nobel Prize was created. You’ve probably heard of the Nobel prize. But not a lot of people know who it is named after. Alfred Nobel loved science and chemistry just as much he liked poetry. Which is why he invented many things throughout his life. But his masterpiece was the invention of dynamite.

A single drop of liquid nitroglycerin. It could blast away rocks where new roads needed to be built. Currently, gunpowder is used, but isn’t very safe. Alfred Nobel tried many different ways to ignite nitroglycerin safely. He kept testing it until he came up with a wooden plug, and called the blasting cap, which was supposed to ignite nitroglycerin safely. Shortly after, Alfred and his brother Emil began to make fortunes selling their new product. But one day, Emil and a partner were making some new oil when something went wrong. Everything exploded, causing 5 people, including Emil to die. That tragedy made Alfred want to make the nitroglycerin safer yet. His loss made him feel weak some days, and lonely on the others. Two years later, he mixed it with sand. This made a paste that could be rolled into the shape of a rod. Rods could be placed in holes so workers can control where and when it would explode. He called that dynamis, after the Greek word meaning power. Although he was happy with his success, Alfred realized that it was used as a military weapon. It made him very sad. After a newspaper mistakenly announces his death, he realized that others saw him as a man who was greedy for money by inventing ways to kill.

On December 10, 1896, he died as a rich but lonely man. But to remember him, there would be a prize for accomplishment in physics, one for chemistry, one for physiology, and one for literature. Lastly, there was going to be a special prize. Peace.

This book is, in my opinion, intended for children at their teenage age. I realized that there were several words like nitroglycerin that are hard to pronounce. Not to mention, the story had a much more complex storyline than the other ones we have read.

I thought this book can tell us a lot about the history of how the Nobel prize came to existence. Also, it told me that inventing new items isn’t an easy task. Alfred lost his family due to that.

Overall, not only was this book interesting, but it also tells us the history of the famous Nobel prize.

 

‘I Used To Be Fish‘ is an ingenious picture book written by Tom Sullivan. It tells the story of a young boy who imagined himself being a fish, who “evolved” into a human.

He began as a fish, but got tired of swimming, so he grew some legs. Out of the water, he changed even more, and walked around, discovering new things. But there were also predators that wanted to eat him, so he grew some fur to hide.

One day, a volcano exploded, and things got a little crazy. After he calmed down, he changed some more, into a monkey. He swung around trees and enjoyed eating fruit. As time passed, he got taller and smarter as well but lost his fur. And banana’s weren’t cutting it anymore. So he went hunting for meat and drew his adventures on the walls of his cave. But the cave wasn’t cozy enough, so he built a hut, which eventually, turned into a house, and then a building. And the funny thing was, he used to be a fish.

Although this book wasn’t very realistic, it was a simple explanation of human evolution. I believe it was intended for children ages 5-9, as older kids can easily understand this. For people who attend the Grade 7 class at Ridgeview Elementary, this book is great after learning about evolution.

All in all, this is a very educational yet entertaining book and I would recommend it to young children who want to learn about evolution.