Hello, I'm Patrick Adams. And I'm Caroline Legere.
And this is Librarians of Littles, a podcast
where we discuss books, give makerspace ideas
and tips and tricks for working with our youngest
learners in the library setting. Today we will
be discussing two books that come from the Texas
2x2 list. The Texas 2x2 list is a list that is
created annually by the Texas Library Association.
It is a list of books that are perfect for children
between the ages of 2 and 2nd grade. And so today
we'll be discussing two of the books that come
from the 2025 Texas 2x2 list. The first book
is The Man Who Didn't Like Animals. It is written
by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by LeUyen
Fam. It is published by Clarion Books, an imprint
of HarperCollins Publishers in 2024. This book
has won a couple different awards and been on
a couple lists including the Texas 2x2 list.
The awards that it's received include The Children's
Favorite Award Grades K -2 Selection for 2025.
The Golden Kite Award Picture Book Text Winner
for 2025. Librarian Favorite Award Grades K -2
Selection 2025. The New York Times Best Illustrated
Children's Book Selection for 2024. And the Teacher's
Favorite Award Grades K -2 Selection for 2025.
And for our author history, Deborah Underwood
grew up in Walla Walla, Washington. As a child,
she had dreams of being an astronaut, a singer,
and a writer, and she now writes children's books
and sings in a choir. Her father is a math professor
and her mother is an English teacher. After college,
she worked as a street musician and then writing
memos for accountants. She eventually began to
write kid stories. She jokingly admits that the
first stories she wrote were pretty awful, but
she kept trying. She has a group of author friends
that all help each other by reading manuscripts
and giving suggestions. She has written over
30 children's books and has a pet cat named Bella
that is a great help to the writing process.
And she, as we've said, she's written 30 children's
books, so she's got a plethora of books. But
some of her other books include The Quiet Book,
illustrated by Renata Luska. Outside Inside,
illustrated by Cindy Derby. The Panda Problem,
illustrated by Hannah Marks. Part -time princess
girl by day princess by night illustrated by
Cambria Evans and Bernard writes a book illustrated
by Misa Saburi and the cat series Illustrated
by Claudia Ruda And the illustrator of this book
is Lee Nguyen Pham, the award -winning and critically
acclaimed illustrator of more than 100 books
for children. Born in Vietnam, LeUyen and
her family left the country in the final days
of the Vietnam War. Growing up in Southern California,
Lee Nguyen always loved to doodle and draw, but
her mother insisted she become a lawyer. For
two years, Lee Nguyen attended UCLA, where she
majored in political silence. Fortunately, the
head of the art department spotted her artistic
talent and helped her change course. Li Wen got
an interview at the prestigious Art Center College
of Design in Pasadena, won a scholarship to pay
the tuition, and spent the next three years in
an accelerated program and earned a degree in
illustration. Following school, Li Wen worked
as a layout artist for DreamWorks feature animation
and illustrated books on the side. These days,
Li Wen lives in Los Angeles with her husband
Alex, who is also an artist, and their two sons,
Adrian and Leo. She also has a cat named Sardine
and a gecko named Kumquat. She adores traveling
and speaking, but given her way, she would spend
all her time making Star Wars -themed birthday
cakes! I think I love her. Yes. Seems amazing.
And she is another one that has done so many
amazing books. She's been a part of a ton of
books, including Lunar New Year Love Story written
by Jean Luen Yang. She has done All of the Friends
books by Shannon Hale, including Real Friends
and Best Friends. She did the illustrations for
all of the Princess in Black series written by
Shannon and Dean Hale. She did the illustrations
for Grace for President by Kelly DiPuscio and
the Itty Bitty Kitty Corn series by Shannon Hale.
and the Blackberry Farm series by Adele Griffin.
Also, she did the illustrations for the Alvin
Ho series by Lenore Look. She was the author
and illustrator of a book called Outside Inside.
And for this book, the summary, there once was
a man who didn't like animals, or so he thought.
As animals show up on the man's doorstep, he
finds that he has different hobbies in common
with each of them and slowly learns to like them.
More and more animals begin to gather. First
he starts with a simple cat and then a second
and then a dog and a second and then pigs and
goats and cows and more begin to collect in the
man's tiny home. the man's neighbors begin to
complain the man realizes that his tiny home
is not the place for these animal and turns them
out as the animals leave his heart breaks as
he realizes even though he loves his tiny tidy
home he loves the animals more he reunites with
the animals and starts a rather famous farm as
we find that this man is old MacDonald so I thought
this was an incredibly cute story. I love how
well written it is. The text is pretty simplistic,
but it just tells such a warm and wonderful story.
It will definitely keep the kids' attention.
The illustrations are a beautiful, warm, soft
kind of illustration that... it just makes you
feel just really kind of comfortable. That's
how I would describe it. It's just like comfortable,
beautiful artwork. The twist at the end of the
story where we find out that the man is Old MacDonald
is just a clever kind of way to introduce the
students to this idea that before Old MacDonald
had a farm, maybe he did something different.
So it's a cute kind of twist on the story and
it's... just a heartwarming story of a man who
finally decides you know what animals aren't
so bad and he really does have a heart for them
i think that our students will really love that
because so many of our students love animals
as well and so that will really grab their attention
and then just the fact that throughout the book
there are a lot of like animal noises being made
so i think that will be just oh it's just such
a sweet and cute story I love it a lot and I
think my students will love it as well. I think
I'm going to give this one a five out of five
bookmarks. I think this is just really a perfect
story. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I agree. I
love this book a lot. Yeah, when you picked this
one, I thought it was interesting because I didn't
realize it was on the two by two list at all.
But when I was I was putting together a book
order this last week and this was definitely
on it and I went ahead and like picked it for
order for my library and Because I just all the
things you said like I just fell in love with
it right away and I love that It's kind of it
also encourages kids to kind of try something
new like yeah, you think you don't like animals
right now but Maybe if you give it a chance you
might end up liking it you never know and kind
of encourages kids to have an open mind a little
bit and then like with it being old McDonald
at the end, I think that's a rather clever plot
twist there where the kids can can just relate
to it a lot more actually, because it's just
something that's so very familiar to them. But
anyhow, I yeah, I put this on my order list independently
of all this. And because it's just an adorable,
fun book. So it really is a good choice. Thank
you. Yes, this was like such a great story. And
Like you said, yeah, I think that a lot of kids
will realize hey, you know, I I'm not really
that kind of a animal person But that's what
the the man in the story does to he's like I'm
not an animal person and then like the first
Animal that shows up as a cat and he's like go
away. I don't like you and then it talks about
well he likes to sleep in the Sun and he likes
to watch the rain and eat at a certain time and
the cat does all those things and it's like oh,
maybe we do have a little bit more in common
and So you can use that for a lot of things,
like whether you're a cat person or not, but
it can also be used as a, well, you know, I might
not know this other person, but maybe we have
something in common. You can kind of use it as
a lesson where you can be like, you know, getting
to know people or things, you might find that
there's some more commonalities there that you
can connect with and make connections to people.
as well as animals that way and so having some
conversations like that would be a great way
to use this book also yeah so yeah as far as
a makerspace activity i was going simple with
this one i just think this is such a great book
that it doesn't need a a ton of stuff to go with
it but using some legos having some toy animals
and having the students build their own farm
for all of the animals and making their own old
McDonald's farm using some Legos would be a fun
way for the students to be able to connect to
this story. If you wanted to create kind of have
them do it sequentially based on the animals
as they're introduced in the book you could have
you could add that into it and they could do
some sequencing with it so start with a place
for the cats and you could have them build some
plate an area for the cats to build on and then
an area for the dogs and then an area for the
the pigs and the cows and goats and all those
things. So you could have each student build
a full farm or you could have groups of students
build a portion of the farm and then kind of
put them together to make the whole farm. So
you can do a lot of different team building and
kind of cooperation. activities with them to
introduce this, which would be a lot of fun to
see what they could come up with. I know, like
if you gave somebody the cat section, they could
build a bunch of places for the cats to climb
and hide and all that kind of stuff. And like,
so if you gave them a specific area and told
them maybe some of the needs of that animal,
then they could build specific portions of the
farm that way. because like a goat is definitely
going to need a different kind of area than a
pig and or a dog or a chicken you know and so
having them having them kind of think about the
animal and the needs of that animal you could
actually have them start thinking how they could
decide design the space for that specific animal
and then put them all together at the end and
let the kids kind of look at what everybody created
be a fun fun little activity It is. It's a really
fun makerspace idea where kids get to be like
truly creative and it has just enough direction
for them to kind of be successful but then be
really independent and creative with it. Yeah.
I love it. For our Library of Littles management
tip today, we're going to talk about First Book
Marketplace. This is an online resource, kind
of. Well, it's definitely online, but it's a
resource that can be used for schools that are
Kind of title one ish so the name of the website
that you would go to is its first book marketplace
FB marketplace org and this is an organization
that a lot of Publishers will go to when they
have a surplus of books that they're looking
to offload they'll give it to First Book Marketplace
and then people from organizations who qualify
can get books and other educational resources
for very, very, very cheap. I've been using them
for the last four years, I think. So when I qualified,
I went to their page and went to the page that
said that... I filled out a little bit of paperwork
and it was just very simple, easy to do stuff
where it asked me the name of my school and our
address and then some general information about
our demographics. I did have to find like the
percentage of our students who speak English
as a second language and the percentage of our
students who qualify for free and reduced lunch
and things like that, but I only had to do it
one time. Four years ago, and then once I qualified
they were like congratulations here you go, and
I got free access to shop any of their Everything
that they have really because it is kind of stuff
that publishers are looking to offload sometimes
It is stuff that I wouldn't necessarily want
to buy. You kind of have to comb through it and
see what's applicable for your school and what's
applicable for your students. But sometimes they
have really phenomenal deals. Like I've gotten
books like really good like brand new like the
Walmart. Books that they've been trying to sell
at Walmart that Walmart wasn't able to sell for
whatever reason, like the good Disney five -in
-one storybooks for a quarter each. And I don't
have them set up as a vendor. I never use library
money for this one. This is one that I always
use my personal money for. But I've been able
to get, a couple of times, I've gotten a whole
palette of well over 1 ,000 books. that are appropriate
for pre -k for like $250 and all I had to do
was pay for shipping and that was it. They sent
all of them over and it was like a quarter each
and it was fabulous which is I mean it's 250
of my personal money is it's it's kind of significant
but for how much value I got and I was able to
give every student that year got a total of ten
books each to take home to me that was worth
it and then i had enough left over that actually
i think the next year i was able to give each
student four books to take home and just keep
forever because a lot of our students because
they qualify for pre -k there's many students
at my school who live in a book desert and just
will never purchase a book on their own and We
don't have very many returning students at our
school because it's all three and four year olds
and most of them move on to kindergarten the
next year. But of the few that do return, I have
seen, like there are kids that, like if they're
bus riders, I'll see them come back to school
like on the first day and they'll still be holding
that book that I gave them from the previous
year because they have nothing to do on the bus.
and they need something to do so they'll take
that book with them. It's very sweet. I love
it when that happens. That usually happens like
between five and ten kids like on the first day
of school will like be coming back with their
book that they got last year on the last day.
They're coming back on the first day of school
with it and they're like, I don't know, makes
me feel great to see when that happens. but First
Book also has some free digital resources that
I personally haven't utilized because I've only
been in pre -k and our students don't really
use ebooks or anything just yet. Not a whole
lot anyway. I don't, I do give parents some resources
for ebooks if they're going to do it with their
child, but I don't encourage it. of it because
our kids get so so bombarded with screens everywhere
I do try and encourage our parents to read them
physical books at three and four years old but
their first book does have some really great
online resources that might be better suited
for like older children probably is okay for
pre -k2 if I'm being honest I haven't really
looked through it a ton then they also will occasionally
offer grants that are funded through Pizza Hut
and Build -A -Bear. Those are the two really
big donors that I see go through them a whole
lot. So I have my email alerts set up so that
they just every time I see that they like they'll
email me every time they've got like a grant
opportunity that they're Like looking to find
something like they'll say we're looking to find
you know this number of social and emotional
books and you know there's we have you. You can
have a hundred dollars to spend on just social
emotional books and it's just for free right
there and because it's cheaper to cuz it's all
books that have been donated by publishers it's
usually the most expensive I've seen. books get
there is like three or four dollars so if you're
paying only three or four dollars per book and
you get to spend a hundred dollars like that
kind of goes you can get a decent amount of books
for that so yeah that's our tip this week is
using looking at first book marketplace for free
and reduced well i guess very reduced cost books
that that's amazing i have not used this resource
but i'm definitely going to be filling out the
paperwork to see if I can qualify because to
be able to get books that kids can keep in their
hands and they get to keep for themselves is
for such low prices is amazing. And like you
said, I just love the idea of those kids that
otherwise wouldn't have any books get to have
some that are theirs to keep is just amazing.
I love that. Such a cool resource. So I'm definitely
gonna have to look into this more. Yeah, and
I've offered it since I qualify for our whole
school. I've offered it to to like, because I
know there's quite a few teachers who prefer
to give their students like for an end of year
gift or a Christmas gift. They like to give their
kids like a specific book to take home. So I've
offered it to my teachers as well. And I've had
a couple of teachers like say that they'll that
they'd like to go through there because Like
Scholastic used to offer like one dollar books
or like real cheap books for teachers, but they
don't really do it that cheap anymore. So this
is kind of a good supplement for that. For those
teachers who are looking for gifting their students
is that's I mean, gifting an entire school of
students with books is a significant undertaking,
but just doing like a classroom for a teacher
like that's. a lot more reasonable so and when
I do give away books like that too I do definitely
supplement with book fair money that's usually
where my the book fair profits go for my school
just because we get we do get a significant amount
of funding or we have in the past um for my library
and I haven't really needed the extra money for
building up the library so I always gave it right
back to the kids and like through gifting them
with books. So that kind of took the sting out
of it a little bit too with not funding for other
things. So yeah, very cool. All right. Well,
the next book that we're going to talk about
today is called Look. It is published by Simon
and Schuster Books for Young Readers in 2024.
The author is Gabby Snyder and the illustrator
is Samantha Cotterill. This book has won a Junior
Library Guild Selection, Outstanding Science
Trade Books for 2025, Kentucky Bluegrass Award
for 2025 for Preschool, Pennsylvania Best of
2024 for grades K through 12, and the Texas 2x2
for 2025. And the author as a child, Gabie absolutely
loved reading and writing. However, she didn't
think it was a practical career choice and first
opted to study psychology at the University of
Washington. After dabbling in writing on the
side for a few years, she obtained her master's
in creative writing at the University of Texas.
She then had a series of jobs that helped others
with writing such as grant writing and instructional
design. It wasn't until she took a break from
working when her kids were little, three and
five years old, that she fell in love with picture
books and began writing for herself. She currently
lives in Oregon with her family. And some of
the other books that she's written are Two Dogs
on a Trike, illustrated by Robin Rosenthal, Listen,
illustrated by Stephanie Gregan. Count on us
climate activists from one to a billion illustrated
by Sarah Walsh and today illustrated by Stephanie
Gregan. and the illustrator Samantha Cotterill
is an award -winning author and illustrator of
children's books. She frequently collaborates
with authors and wrote and illustrated a series
of books designed to teach specific skills to
children on the autism spectrum. And some of
her other books are Look written by Gabi Snyder,
A Grand Day written by Jean Reedy, Thankful written
by Elaine Vickers, The Secret Rhino Society,
written by Jonathan E. Jacobs Just Add Glitter,
written by Angela D. Tirlesi Once Upon a Slime,
written by Andy Maxwell Charlotte and the Rock,
written by Stephen W. Martin Jinx and the Doom
Fight Crime, written by Lisa Manchev and the
books that she has written and illustrated herself
are No More Bows and the Little Senses book series.
The books in that series are The Beach is Loud,
Nope, Never, Not for Me, Can I Play Too, and
It Was Supposed to Be Sunny. And with those four
books, it looks like, I haven't read any of them
personally, but it looks like they're all meant
to be social stories, kind of written specifically
for kids that are probably on the autism spectrum
that need a little bit more guidance with socialization
and things like that. So the book summary for
this book is, in this beautifully illustrated
picture book, the narrator speaks directly to
the reader and encourages the reader to look
closely at the world around them and find all
the patterns and beauty around. This book I thought
was Really the pictures are what make the book
the pictures are so bright and so vivid and I'm
not really sure how she made them I think that
it must have been like a mix of Hand drawing
and collage. I'm not sure but they're just very
bold very bright incredibly vivid and just Rather
lovely. I don't know. So in this book there's
the narrator speaking to the reader is just like
Okay, the world can be kind of crazy and you
might feel overwhelmed sometimes But when you
feel overwhelmed like really just stop take a
moment take a breath and look around you You
can find patterns that can be comforting you
can find beauty everywhere like and it kind of
points out that there's specific things that
kind of keep repeating like maybe a polka dot
pattern or it could be like a shadow that like
you know of a picket fence or something that
were there's like a repeating a b a b kind of
a pattern and it's really just direct it's not
really a story per se but it's directly teaching
mindfulness And patterning but like I said, I
really feel like the it's the The pictures that
make it there's just certain pages where like
I don't even know how she did it like I think
she must have made a collage and like taken a
picture of it I'm not sure but there's certain
pictures where like you can see like a close
-up of a child on a page and like some things
in the foreground like some flowers in the foreground
and then Behind it like the background is kind
of blurry and like you can kind of see other
things too But it's like kind of encouraging
you to focus on the things that are closer up,
you know, I don't know it was just Really pretty
I loved the pictures in this book a whole lot
if you couldn't tell I agree like it was a really
cool book that the colors that are used are just
so eye -catching and I love the pictures in this
book. The colors were so vibrant and eye -catching.
And like you said, I was really engaged with
the pictures because there was a lot of layering.
So like there were things that were in the foreground
and things in the background that kind of just
made the pictures just, they felt like they were
popping off the page. It was amazing. I loved
it. It was so cool. And like, The story itself
is relatively simple, but those pictures just
keep you engaged in the story. And I love that
it does teach, like you said, that mindfulness
of being able to just be like, let's take a second,
find something to kind of slow down and be able
to kind of focus on what is important instead
of being just overwhelmed with all of the input
that's around us kind of and that's such an important
thing for a lot of students to learn is that
even though there's a lot of things happening
around you learning how to be able to focus on
what you need so that you're not distracted and
not overwhelmed and like that's hard for lots
of people not just students that's hard for a
lot of people I think that sensory input sometimes
just could be So overwhelming. So this was just
like, it was just a beautiful story. And like,
it was like, the story itself is relatively simple,
but the impact that it can have on students is
pretty amazing. And those pictures, like you
said, just so bright and vibrant and beautiful.
I know this one, I was like, I kind of like,
I don't know how, like if librarians can nominate
something for a Caldecott, but I kind of want
to. Yeah. I loved it a lot. I think if I was,
I think I would probably give this one a five
out of five. I think I would. Yeah. I was going
to say four out of five, but no, I can't think
of why I would knock it down to a four out of
five. It doesn't, it doesn't have a direct story,
which I think is why I was kind of leaning toward
four out of five at first. But I think it does
such a good job with that mindfulness piece and
the pictures are so engaging. Yeah, five out
of five. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't have like
a real full story, but it definitely flows through
the book. So like, even though there's not the
story, you're progressing through the book by
looking for those patterns and everything. So
I think it's still, I think that's what kind
of, even though there's not the story, the progression
feels natural enough to make it through the book
that it's still a good story. Mm -hmm It is it's
a really good book and it kind of like my personal
kids struggle with anxiety a lot and one of the
strategies they use For grounding is that you
know Look around you and name five things that
you can see and four things that you can hear
and all that business so that was kind of A really
great way to kind of tie that in with that Those
grounding strategies as well. So yeah i just
enjoyed it a lot and on the very very last page
of this book it actually has i didn't write anything
specific for the makerspace activity of this
book because on the very last page it has suggestions
on how to integrate it into your curriculum and
what activities that you can do afterward so
and they're Just so many different directions
you could take it in because it does talk about
a whole lot of different kinds of patterns So
it would really depend on I think I mean this
book did win us. It was the science trade book
award right like it just I mean it won that for
a reason like it lends itself to so many different
kinds of like Concepts like that with the patterning
and everything that you see everywhere in there
that it's really You could do pretty much any
kind of patterning. There's a lot of different
art activities that could go with it. Like, it
could be very much tailored to anything specific
in your curriculum at any given time, I think.
Like, that any time of the year. Like, you could
really do it just about any time and just fit
it in perfectly to whatever your curriculum is
right then, as far as like math and science.
Like, it's kind of a perfect steam book. Yeah.
I agree. When I was reading it, I was thinking
of all the different ways you could use like
in the fall, you could do it like patterning
with like leaves in the winter, you could do
patterning with like the designs of snowflakes
in the spring, like flowers blooming, like there's
so many different ways that you can incorporate
it with. different things that are happening
and in nature and just, yeah, there's so many
cool ways that you could use this book. It's,
it's pretty awesome. And I love that the book
gives you a bunch of ideas of how you can incorporate
it and use it with your curriculum, which is
really awesome. Yeah. And because it has so many
different kinds of patterns, it could go anywhere
from pre -K with just like a simple AB pattern
to like a more complex, like upper elementary,
like it had Oh, I don't remember the I'm not
looking at the book right now, but it like it
had like different the names of different kinds
of complex patterns in the world around them
that words like you could do it with like any
age level and really just whatever works for
you. Well, it was kind of great. It's just a
really great book all around and can be used
for a lot of things. It's awesome. Yeah. All
right, y 'all will. Thank you for joining us
today on this episode of Librarians of Littles.
We hope you found some fresh ideas for inspiring
young readers and please be sure to subscribe
and connect with us on social media. Happy reading!
Thank you for listening to this episode of Librarians
of Littles. We hope that you've enjoyed it. Check
back each Wednesday for a new episode. Librarians
of Littles is a podcast produced and hosted by
Patrick Adams and Caroline Ligier. Editor, Patrick
Adams. Our theme song is performed by J .D. Adams.
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