Tag

Christian Robinson

The Smallest Girl In The Smallest Grade
by Justin Roberts & Christian Robinson

The Smallest Girl In The Smallest GradeSally is the smallest girl in the school, which means that most of time people don’t notice her. She passes unseen in the school corridors but she is very special because she notices absolutely everything.

She sees the tiny details all around her, but most importantly she sees the people and how they behave with one another. She watches as the children are unkind to each other in the playground, and she notices how this makes the bullied and excluded kids feel. She watches as mean words are exchanged and tears fall.

And then one day Sally decides she’s had enough.

The tiny little girl steps out of the lunch line in the cafeteria, raises her hand in the air to quieten the room and then she opens her mouth and tells everyone what she has observed and how it should change. She expects to be laughed at but one by one she sees hands slowly rise in to the air in solidarity.

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Last Stop On Market Street By Matt De La Pena & Christian Robinson

Last Stop On Market StreetIt’s easy to see why this beautiful book was a New York Times Bestseller. The warm and multi-layered story about a boy and his grandmother gets me every time we read it.

As they do every Sunday, CJ and his Nana go to church then take the bus to Market Street to help at a soup kitchen. On this particular day it is raining and young CJ is cold and uncomfortable. He questions why they have to catch the bus when all of his friends have cars, and even why they have to go to church at all.

Rather than reprimanding him, his Nana uses this as an opportunity to point out all of the things which make their journey together special and the sights and experiences they would miss out on if they didn’t go to church and didn’t get the bus. This includes a host of fascinating, culturally diverse characters including an old lady with a jar of butterflies, a heavily tattooed man and a man with a guitar.

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