Café Corner Bookshelf

Dev Studies Café FAQ

Welcome to the Café Corner Bookshelf where you will find all the picture books featured in our monthly Dev Studies Café. 

June 2025

Book: A Sleepless Night
Author: Micaela Chirif
Illustrator: Joaquín Camp
Year: 2024
Publisher: Transit Books
Originally published in: Spanish, translated by Jordan Landsman

In centers all over the city, I have been hearing the phrase “no bathroom words, please”. Sure, I can understand that a detailed discussion about bowels while trying to eat snack poses some appetite challenges. But still, I keep wondering about this phrase. Every human I have ever met - young, old, or something in between - uses the bathroom multiple times a day. On top of that, children, from infancy to preschool, have a particularly bathroom-forward relationship with the world. Through the diapers and potty learning alone, it makes so much sense to me that bathroom words would be, well, interesting.

In A Sleepless Night we have an immediately-relatable tale of a baby who cannot be consoled. When little Elisa starts crying one night, she can’t stop. In fact, “she cried so hard you could hear it on the other side of the planet. Fortunately, it was daytime there and everyone was awake” (p. 10-11). Her wall-shaking cries wake the neighbors, who come one by one, bearing outlandish solution after outlandish solution; treasures, sweets, walking, telling secrets, even dressing up like fruit. Nothing works. Just what is the matter with little Elisa anyway?!

Have you guessed it? Poor baby Elisa feels immediately better- and goes right to sleep- when she finally lets out “a colossal fart”. The illustrations (Camp) in this book are rendered in inky marker and reminiscent of saturated notebook paper. It is hard to imagine children will not delight in this tale of insomnia, chaos, family and flatulence. In Chirif’s A Sleepless Night, I have found a book I hope educators will use to consider a different way to live with bathroom words in their classrooms. After all, the bathroom words can be silenced, but colossal farts cannot.
 
Until next month,

Catherine

May 2025 

Book: Everybelly
Author & Illustrator: Thao Lam
Year: 2025
Publisher: Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press
Originally published in: English

Bodies. We all have one. No matter if it is tall, brown, tanned, bald, thick, big, able, one-footed, near sighted, wrinkly… bodies of some sort are a universal. If you are here, you have one. If you work with children, in any capacity, chances are you talk about bodies daily. I hear phrases such as “is your body hungry?” or “if your body tired?” in many classrooms, and I think a picture book that brings us to the body without being didactic or moralizing is something we should all consider including on our classroom bookshelves.

In Everybelly author and illustrator Thao Lam gives us Maddie, a young protagonist rendered in colorful cut paper collage, headed to the pool and narrating every belly she sees. We get bellies in all their guises, but the words of the book themself are Maddie’s narration of her neighbors and their notable characteristics. The book delightfully takes Maddie’s point of view - narrating from the line of sight right around the belly. Visually and in text the book offers us many points of conversation and consideration as we wonder aloud about bellies with the children in our care.

When my belly is full, it’s nice and round. But an empty belly goes flat.
Mama works hard to keep our bellies full.
[…]

If I had room in my belly, I would fill it with ice cream topped with jelly beans, donuts dipped in sprinkles, har gow, gimbap, mochi, mangosteen, onigiri, croissants, bubble tea […]

Until next month,

Catherine

April 2025

Book: We Go to the Park
Author: Sara Stridsberg
Illustrator: Beatrice Alemagna
Year: 2021 (original) 2024 (translation)
Publisher: Enchanted Lion Press (under Unruly Books)
Originally published in: Swedish, translated by B.J. Woodstein
 
Some spaces, regardless of language, design or culture, immediately harken to children. A park is one of these. They are old, new, metal, colored, safe, scary, rickety, sparse, overgrown… the list of adjectives to describe these spaces is long. A humble patch of grass with a long see-saw is a park. So is an elaborate technicolored climbing structure with rubber substrate underneath. A park is a powerful symbol worth interrogating.

In We Go to the Park, Stridsberg (author) and Alegmana (illustrator) have created an exquisite ode, neither sentimental nor sweet, to the park. They celebrate and trace the park as a rich site in which childhood enacts and confronts other systems. This picturebook is printed by a unique imprint (Unruly) which prints picture books that defy age categories and conventions. The artwork is recognizable but contains something of the absurd. By playing with proportions and textures the images bring us into the uncomfortable spaces of childhood. Overwhelmingly we are left wondering what is it about parks that make them such hosts of possibility.

Read this one to your adult self and see how it might influence your observations and thoughts about children’s outdoor spaces. Wonder alongside these authors as “we let it take us where it will”, when We [all] Go to the Park.

Until next month,

Catherine

March 2025

Book: Max’s First Word
Author: Rosemary Wells
Illustrator: Rosemary Wells
Year: 1979
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers

Max is a well-known young bunny, who might have already appeared in many classrooms across Winnipeg. He has a television show, he is a stuffed animal sometimes, he has many titles to his name… but in this classic of Well’s oeuvre, we get Max at his absolute best. When Viking Books reprinted the 40^th anniversary edition of this classic, bringing it back into print for today’s readers, I knew I had to bring it to the attention of our Developmental Studies Café team.

“Max’s one word was “BANG!”, starts this classic, and from there Max’s bossy sister Ruby tries everything to get this toddler brother to say anything else (cup, egg, fish, broom…). In Well’s inimitable style we see the chubby and defiant Max holding his verbal ground. To every prompt he replies simply and confidently: “Bang!”. The final twist, when Max responds to a bite of a crunchy apple, will be so satisfying to every child who has ever felt ignored or pushed toward learning on someone else’s schedule. This is an absolute gem of a board book, perfect for educators of young children who champion their unique and inventive ways of growing into themselves.
 
Until next month,
 
Catherine

February 2025

Book: Brick by Brick
Author: Giuliano Ferri
Illustrator: Giuliano Ferri
Year: 2016
Publisher: Red Leaf Press (North America)
 
Here is the wordless board book that everyone needs. A young mouse, beautifully rendered in soft color and stroke, approaches a large wall where a brick has come loose. In this extended metaphor for finding connection, joy or peace, Ferri brings readers of all ages (birth to adult) into a mouse’s adventure dismantling walls to build bridges.

Do not let the simplicity of the premise fool you. This is a work that will crack open your heart. Ferri has hit on a timeless and timely topic; he has made it immediately recognizable to all who seek to build instead of destroy. Whether your conversations with this text center on the animals it portrays or your own community, I urge you to bring this book into your classroom. If you want to borrow a copy from me, I bought 5! 
 
Until next month,
 
Catherine

January 2025

Book: Let’s go! haw êkwa
Author: Julie Flett
Illustrator: Julie Flett
Year: 2024
Publisher: Greystone Books
 
I must nod vigorously toward Julie Flett. Flett, brought us Birdsong and Wildberries (2019; 2013), has created this new work, Let’s go! haw êkwa, and it pains me with its beauty. Here is the story of young boy watching lustfully as the skateboarders pass his window. One day his mother surprises him with a skateboard from her childhood (she skateboarded too?!). This sparks the beginning of trial, error and, ultimately, community.  In the final pages Flett describes what led her to creating this book. Watching her son and his friends experience a “creative urgency”, an “I have to go” feeling, that skateboarding physically manifested for them, give rise to this incredible text (n.p., 2024).

While books that feature the past experiences of First Nations Peoples are important, I would also encourage us to consider those that give us the visceral experiences of happening-today/playing-today/right-here-right-now First Nations children. Bring this book into your classroom; it is a flashlight.
 
Until next month,
 
Catherine
 
Respectfully adapted from Picture Books to Grow, with the author’s permission, (October, 11, 2024)