April 2021 – Bensenville Community Public Library

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Picture Books for Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 9! Mother’s Day is a celebration honoring the mother of the family, as well as motherhood, maternal bonds, and the influence of mothers in society.

Celebrate mom and all things motherhood with this list of our favorite Mother’s Day picture books, hand-picked by our Youth Services Department staff!

All of the titles featured here we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother, Too?

by Eric Carle

Meet the little joey bouncing in mother kangaroo’s pouch. Watch little cubs prance around mother lion. Swim with a baby dolphin calf in the deep blue sea. Eric Carle’s classic, colorful collages of baby animals and their mothers will delight and comfort young readers.

Just Like Mama

by Lesléa Newman

A young girl enumerates all the things that her mother does in inimitable fashion, from scooping her up in a hug in the morning to tucking her in at night.

Mommy Hugs

by Karen Katz

A loving mother counts the hugs she gives her baby throughout the day.

My Mama is a Mechanic

by Doug Cenko

View a mother through the eyes of her son as they play, cook, and imagine together.

Bedtime for Mommy

by Amy Rosenthal

In a reversal of the classic bedtime story, a child helps her mommy get ready for bed, enduring pleas for one more book, five more minutes of play time, and a glass of water before the lights go out.

My Mother's Sari

by Sandhya Rao

A little girl is fascinated by her mother’s sari and finds many uses for it.

Mother's Day

by Anne F. Rockwell

The students in Mrs. Madoff’s class share how they will celebrate Mother’s Day with their families.

I Love You With All My Heart

by Jane Chapman

Little Bear has broken Mommy’s favorite sunflower plant. What if her mom won’t love her anymore? Luckily, Mommy knows just what to do… “Put your paw on your heart,” she smiles, “and you’ll feel my love going on and on forever!”

I Love Mom with the Very Hungry Caterpillar

by Eric Carle

Join The Very Hungry Caterpillar as he honors Mother’s Day and celebrates incredible parents everywhere.

Everything is Mama

by Jimmy Fallon

A lot of babies’ first words were Dada. However, everything after that was Mama. Readers take a look from a baby’s point of view as different animals try to teach their children that there are other words in addition to Mama for familiar objects and activities.

Runaway Bunny

by Margaret Wise Brown

A little rabbit who wants to run away tells his mother how he will escape, but she is always right behind him.

Want more recommendations?

You can check out all of our online booklists (for kids and for adults), or reach out to us! Our staff is ready and willing to make reading, listening, or viewing recommendations to you! Email us at reference@benlib.org or contact us via our online form!

Celebrating Shakespeare’s Birthday!

By bcplweb Booklists, Booklists

Happy 457th birthday to Mr. William Shakespeare! William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover (glove-maker), and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning family. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was baptized on 26 April 1564. His date of birth is unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George’s Day. This date, which can be traced to a mistake made by an 18th-century scholar, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on the same date in 1616.

Here we’ve gathered up some the Bard of Avon’s most famous works!

All of the titles featured below we have in our collection or within the SWAN consortium.
To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image.

The 1948 the powerful black & white film production by Laurence Olivier.

The stunning 1968 feature film from Franco Zefferelli.

Shakespeare's history plays comprising the 'Henriad'. The plays chronicle a period in British history from the end of the 14th century to the aftermath of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Together, the plays comprise a compelling story with recurring themes of power struggle, redemption, family conflict and betrayal.

The concluding cycle of The Hollow Crown… continues the history of this exceptionally turbulent period in British history. These exhilarating and emotionally charged films feature some of Shakespeare's most eloquent and powerful language.

Audio CD version… featuring performances by Kate Beckinsale and Michael Sheehan.

Though composed over 400 years ago, the sonnets of William Shakespeare connect us with timeless imagery and emotion.

Contemporary Chicago Authors

By bcplweb Booklists, Booklists

Severance

by Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. The subways screech to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

by Michael Zapata

In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers. What results is a brilliantly layered masterpiece—an ode to home, storytelling and the possibility of parallel worlds.

Northwood

by Maryse Meijer

Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre–breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages. The narrator, a young woman, has fled to the forest to pursue her artwork in isolation. While there, she falls in love with a married man she meets at a country dance. The man is violent, their affair even more so. As she struggles to free herself, she questions the difference between desire and obsession—and the brutal nature of intimacy. Packaged with a cover and end papers by famed English artist Rufus Newell and inventive, white–on–black text treatments by award–winning designer Jonathan Yamakami, Northwood is a work of art as well as a literary marvel.

Stateway’s Garden

by Jasmon Drain

Before being torn down in 2007, the Stateway Gardens public housing projects on Chicago’s South Side were ridden with deprivation and crime. But for some, like Tracy, the shy, intelligent young boy at the center of this enthralling collection of linked stories, they are simply home. Set in the mid-1980s and taking readers up to the point of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing projects—a set of buildings similar in design to Stateway Gardens to the south—this collection gives an intimate look at the hopes, dreams, failures, and fortunes of a group of people growing up with the deck always stacked against them. Through Jasmon Drain’s sensitive and often playful prose, we see another side of what we have come to know as “the projects.”

Remembrance

by Rita Woods

Remembrance…It’s a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy…if you can make it there. Ohio, present day. An elderly woman who is more than she seems warns against rising racism as a young woman grapples with her life. Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers. 1857 New Orleans―a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper…. Remembrance.

Borrowed Time

by Tracy Clark

Sitting in cold cars for hours, serving lowlifes with summonses… being a P.I. means riding out a lot of slow patches. But sometimes the most familiar paths can lead straight to danger—like at Cass’s go-to diner, where new delivery guy Jung Byson wants to enlist her expertise. Jung’s friend, Tim Ayers, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, has been found dead, floating in Lake Michigan near his luxury boat. And Jung is convinced there’s a murderer on the loose…

The Children’s Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

The morning of January 12, 1888, was unusually mild, following a punishing cold spell. It was warm enough for the homesteaders of the Dakota Territory to venture out again, and for their children to return to school without their heavy coats—leaving them unprepared when disaster struck. At the hour when most prairie schools were letting out for the day, a terrifying, fast-moving blizzard blew in without warning. Schoolteachers as young as sixteen were suddenly faced with life and death decisions: Keep the children inside, to risk freezing to death when fuel ran out, or send them home, praying they wouldn’t get lost in the storm?

At its heart, this is a story of courage, of children forced to grow up too soon, tied to the land because of their parents’ choices. It is a story of love taking root in the hard prairie ground, and of families being torn asunder by a ferocious storm that is little remembered today—because so many of its victims were immigrants to this country.

The Lucky One

by Lori Rader-Day

As a child, Alice was stolen from her backyard in a tiny Indiana community, but against the odds, her policeman father tracked her down within twenty-four hours and rescued her from harm. In the aftermath of the crime, her family decided to move to Chicago and close the door on that horrible day.

Yet Alice hasn’t forgotten. She devotes her spare time volunteering for a website called The Doe Pages scrolling through pages upon pages of unidentified people, searching for clues that could help reunite families with their missing loved ones. When a face appears on Alice’s screen that she recognizes, she’s stunned to realize it’s the same man who kidnapped her decades ago. The post is deleted as quickly as it appeared, leaving Alice with more questions than answers.

Embarking on a search for the truth, she enlists the help of friends from The Doe Pages to connect the dots and find her kidnapper before he hurts someone else. Then Alice crosses paths with Merrily Cruz, another woman who’s been hunting for answers of her own. Together, they begin to unravel a dark, painful web of lies that will change what they thought they knew—and could cost them everything.

Want more recommendations?

National Poetry Month | A Booklist for Kids & Teens

By bcplweb Booklists, Booklists

Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month reminds the public that poets have an integral role to play in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and, of course, poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.

Our Youth Services Department put together a wide selection of diverse books, from a range of voices and on a range of topics, to help introduce kids and teens to the world of poetry!

All of the titles featured here we have in our collection. To see if an item is available to check out or place on hold, click the cover image or button to the right of the description.

Out of Wonder

by Kwame Alexander — ALL AGES

Newbery Medalist and a Caldecott Honoree offer a glorious, lyrical ode to poets who have sparked a sense of wonder. Out of gratitude for the poet’s art form, Newbery Award-winning author and poet Kwame Alexander, along with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth, present original poems that pay homage to twenty famed poets who have made the authors’ hearts sing and their minds wonder. Stunning mixed-media images by Ekua Holmes, winner of a Caldecott Honor and a John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award, complete the celebration and invite the reader to listen, wonder, and perhaps even pick up a pen.

And the People Stayed Home

by Kitty O'Meara — ALL AGES

Kitty O’Meara has been called the ‘poet laureate of the pandemic’ by O, The Oprah Magazine. This illustrated and beautifully produced children’s book will also appeal to readers of all ages. O’Meara’s prose poem, with its hopeful and timeless message about healing of people and the Earth, written in March 2020, quickly went viral on a global level. O’Meara, a former teacher and chaplain, clearly captured an important aspect of the pandemic experience’s zeitgeist while offering a thoughtful and optimistic view of the future.

The Village Blacksmith

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — ALL AGES

The neighborhood blacksmith is a quiet and unassuming presence, tucked in his smithy under the chestnut tree. Sturdy, generous, and with sadness of his own, he toils through the day, passing on the tools of his trade, and come evening, takes a well-deserved rest. Longfellow’s timeless poem is enhanced by G. Brian Karas’s thoughtful and contemporary art in this modern retelling of the tender tale of a humble craftsman. An afterword about the tools and the trade of blacksmithing will draw readers curious about this age-honored endeavor, which has seen renewed interest in developed countries and continues to be plied around the world.

Guess Again!

by Mac Barnett — ALL AGES

For each round of guessing, readers are presented with a page of illustrations opposite a rhyming quatrain. The unexpected conclusion of the verse’s final line is revealed on the next page.

Old Mother Hubbard

by Jane Cabrera

Light-hearted illustrations accompany this version of the familiar nursery rhyme about an old woman and her playful dog.

Octopus, Oyster, Hermit Crab, Snail: A Poem of the Sea

by Sara Anderson — ALL AGES

A journey through the ocean is imaginatively plumbed in words and pictures. Informative, clear, and graphically lovely, readers of all ages who dive into this book will never look at the sea in quite the same way.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

by Shel Silverstein — ALL AGES

A boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale are only two of the characters in a collection of humorous poetry illustrated with the author’s own drawings. Come in – for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein’s world begins. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.

Zen Shorts

by Jon J. Muth — ALL AGES

“Michael,” said Karl. “There’s a really big bear in the backyard.” This is how three children meet Stillwater, a giant panda who moves into the neighborhood and tells amazing tales. To Addy he tells a story about the value of material goods. To Michael he pushes the boundaries of good and bad. And to Karl he demonstrates what it means to hold on to frustration. With graceful art and simple stories that are filled with love and enlightenment, Jon Muth — and Stillwater the bear — present three ancient Zen tales that are sure to strike a chord in everyone they touch.

Lion of the Sky: Haiku for All Seasons

by Laura Purdie Salas — ALL AGES

Haiku meet riddles in this wonderful collection from Laura Purdie Salas. The poems celebrate the seasons and describe everything from an earthworm to a baseball to an apple to snow angels, alongside full-color illustrations.

Big, Bad, and a Little Bit Scary: Poems That Bite Back!

by Wade Zahares — ALL AGES

Bristling with sly humor and just a hint of danger, this irresistible collection of poems pays homage to everyone’s favorite member of the animal kingdom–the villains!

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: The Poetry of Mister Rogers — ALL AGES

Through songs, puppets, and honest conversations, Mister Rogers instilled the values of kindness, patience, self-awareness, and self-esteem in his young viewers. But most of all, he taught children that they were loved, just by being who they were. With classics such as “It’s You I Like” and “Many Ways to Say I Love You” as well as dozens of others that range from funny to sweet, silly to sincere, the 75 songs in this collection deal with such universal topics as difficult feelings, new siblings, everyday routines, imagination, and more. Perfect for bedtime, sing-along, or quiet time alone, this beautiful book of meaningful poetry is the perfect gift for every child-including the child in every one of us.

Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry — ALL AGES

A collection of poems for children with the various themes of self, family, going outside, and when it is time for bed. This exuberant celebration of poetry is an essential book for every young one’s library and a gorgeous gift to be both shared and treasured. Sit back and savor a superb collection of more than sixty poems by a wide range of talented writers, from Margaret Wise Brown to Gertrude Stein, Langston Hughes to A. A. Milne. Greeting the morning, enjoying the adventures of the day, cuddling up to a cozy bedtime – these are poems that highlight the moments of a toddler’s world from dawn to dusk.

The Skin You Live In

by Michael Tyler — ALL AGES

Rhyming text and illustrations celebrate being content with the skin in which one lives, whatever that skin might be.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas on Sesame Street

by Lillian Jaine — ALL AGES

It’s the night before Christmas, and Cookie Monster is dozing peacefully, until a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer land on Sesame Street. Cookie Monster is delighted to have a visit from Santa, but there’s just one problem, he’s already eaten all of Santa’s cookies! Luckily, Elmo and the rest of the Sesame Street friends are ready to help! Includes reading tips for parents and guided prompts to help extend story time and make reading together a more interactive experience.

Writing a Poem

by Cecilia Minden and Kate Roth — SCHOOL AGE

Writing is an important skill that kids use almost every day. The goal of the Write it Right series is to make kids writing experts. Writing a Poem is full of tips and tricks to help kids channel their creativity, from distinguishing rhyme from rhythm to organizing stanzas.

Write Your Own Haiku for Kids

by Patricia Donegan — SCHOOL AGE

In this fun Japanese children’s book, kids will learn to create haiku– elegant and simplistic Japanese poems. Haiku is a uniquely Japanese form of poetry that uses vivid words and imagery to capture a feeling or a moment in just three lines. Short but powerful, haiku poems are easy and fun to write and share with your friends. Haiku has become increasingly popular in school curriculums around the world, particularly among teachers introducing students to the art of poetry as well as Asian history and heritage. The activities in this haiku-for-kids book will show you how to create haiku and will help you to think up meaningful words and images with which you can write beautiful poetry.

Punching the Air

by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam — TEENS

From award-winning, bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam of the Exonerated Five comes a powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth, in a system designed to strip him of both.

Shout: A Poetry Memoir

by Laurie Halse Anderson —TEENS

Bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson is known for the unflinching way she writes about, and advocates for, survivors of sexual assault. Now, inspired by her fans and enraged by how little in our culture has changed since her groundbreaking novel Speak was first published twenty years ago, she has written a poetry memoir that is as vulnerable as it is rallying, as timely as it is timeless. In free verse, Anderson shares reflections, rants, and calls to action woven between deeply personal stories from her life that she’s never written about before. Searing and soul-searching, this important memoir is a denouncement of our society’s failures and a love letter to all the people with the courage to say #MeToo and #TimesUp, whether aloud, online, or only in their own hearts. Shout speaks truth to power in a loud, clear voice– and once you hear it, it is impossible to ignore.

Crank

by Ellen Hopkins — TEENS

Kristina Georgia Snow is the perfect daughter, gifted high school junior, quiet, never any trouble. But on a trip to visit her absentee father, Kristina disappears and Bree takes her place. Bree is the exact opposite of Kristina. Through a boy, Bree meets the monster: crank. And what begins as a wild ecstatic ride turns into a struggle through hell for her mind, her soul – her life.

For Every One

by Jason Reynolds —TEENS

Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds’s rallying cry to the young dreamers of the world.

For Every One is just that: for every one. For every one person. For every one dream. But especially for every one kid. The kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Kids who are like Jason Reynolds, a self-professed dreamer. Jason does not claim to know how to make dreams come true; he has, in fact, been fighting on the front line of his own battle to make his own dreams a reality. He expected to make it when he was sixteen. Then eighteen. Then twenty-five. Now, some of those expectations have been realized. But others, the most important ones, lay ahead, and a lot of them involve kids, how to inspire them. All the kids who are scared to dream, or don’t know how to dream, or don’t dare to dream because they’ve NEVER seen a dream come true. Jason wants kids to know that dreams take time. They involve countless struggles. But no matter how many times a dreamer gets beat down, the drive and the passion and the hope never fully extinguish—because just having the dream is the start you need, or you won’t get anywhere anyway, and that is when you have to take a leap of faith.

Want more recommendations?