Just Help!
How to Build a Better World
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Ask! comes a fun and meaningful story about making the world--and your community--better, one action at a time, that asks the question: Who will you help today?
Every night when Sonia goes to bed, Mami asks her the same question: How did you help today? And since Sonia wants to help her community, just like her Mami does, she always makes sure she has a good answer to Mami's question.
In a story inspired by her own family's desire to help others, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor takes young readers on a journey through a neighborhood where kids and adults, activists and bus drivers, friends and strangers all help one another to build a better world for themselves and their community.
With art by award-winning illustrator Angela Dominguez, this book shows how we can all help make the world a better place each and every day.
Praise for Just Help!:
"Generosity proves contagious in this personal portrait of community service by Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor." --Publishers Weekly
"For use in civics units or in lessons on being a good neighbor, this provides wonderful encouragement to show that children can help in big and small ways." --School Library Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Generosity proves contagious in this personal portrait of community service by Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor (Just Ask!). Young Sonia's mother, a hospital nurse, asks her before school each morning, "How will you help today?" Seeking to "have a good answer for Mami's question," the light-skinned child has gathered personal supplies for American soldiers serving overseas. As Sonia and her classmates assemble care packages in the school gym, the work cheers a child whose mother is "stationed far away," and who in turn gives the plastic shopping bags to a kid who started a plastic bag recycling program at school. Sonia's classmates, shown as children of varying abilities and skin tones, generate still more ideas via a domino effect of good deeds. Sotomayor concludes by emphasizing the importance of voting: "When I was young, I was part of a great struggle to get the right to vote," an older Black man tells a pupil who pushes his wheelchair; "Now I never miss the chance." Digital illustrations by Dominguez (I Love You, Baby Burrito) portray the children and their actions with simplicity and clarity. An author's letter explains why it's crucial to understand the world as "one very large neighborhood," and that's just what young Sonia and her classmates do in this inspirational volume. Ages 4–8.
