The Breaking News
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Sometimes the news can be too much. This reassuring picture book helps young children understand difficult news events, process big feelings, and find comfort in community, kindness, and hope—empowering families to have gentle, honest conversations about the world around them.
A “timely text” with “emotions...sensitively portrayed throughout... Affirming the resilience that can result when small acts are focused on community.” - The New York Times
"Appropriate for many situations children face in today’s never-ending news cycle. An absolute-must for...libraries." - School Library Journal
When devastating news rattles a young girl's community, her normally attentive parents and neighbors are suddenly exhausted and distracted.
At school, her teacher tells the class to look for the helpers—the good people working to make things better in big and small ways. She wants more than anything to help in a BIG way, but maybe she can start with one small act of kindness instead . . . and then another, and another.Small things can compound, after all, to make a world of difference.
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Picture Books of 2018
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Something bad really bad has happened in the world. "Mom is glued to the television. Dad can't stop checking his phone," says the narrator, a girl with a little brother. The next day, the school bus feels dark and cavernous, with kids anxiously peering over their seats at their friends. In her picture-book debut, Ruel doesn't specify the nature of the event, but her astutely composed, wonderfully sympathetic cartoon-style drawings capture how kids are impacted by worried and distracted adults, and how it feels to be small in the face of something too big to grasp. Ruel also understands that many readers will yearn to feel some sense of agency; the narrator decides she wants to "help in a BIG way" and tries to cheer up the worried, sleepless adults around her. She soon realizes, however, that while people can't turn off their feelings, small acts of kindness reading to her brother, cheering up the dog, brightening up her block with plants can make a difference. "Small things don't solve everything," she says. "The bad news is still there. But then again... so are we." Featuring a multi-ethnic neighborhood of individuals connected for better or worse through their shared disquiet, this is a wise and timely book. Ages 4 8.
