On Saturday, Sept. 1 we will be hosting a special morning event with children's book author Michael Leannah! The event will run from 11am-12pm, and Michael will read his latest book Goodnight Whispers, about the positive effect a father's encouraging words has on his daughter's life and development. Bring your children - the book is an absolute treat that they won't want to miss.
Afterwards, Leannah will be on hand to sell and sign books and chat with people about the book-writing process.
Leannah is also the author of the acclaimed children's book Most People, which explains that even though your town or city contains many different kinds of people, most of them have the same likes and loves as you and me. The book had a very favorable review in the New York Times as part of group of children's books that help teach empathy: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/books/review/why-am-i-me-paige-britt-empathy-children.html
A review of Goodnight Whispers from Kirkus.com:
A dad-side complement to Love You Forever. As the book opens, the unnamed dad tucks his wee infant daughter in and whispers, "You are the most wonderful girl in the world," in her ear. He whispers like loving affirmations every night as the baby grows to toddlerhood and beyond, adapting his statements to her developmental stage and her activities. But where Robert Munsch and Sheila McGraw's mother's helicopter tendencies achieved pathological status, this dad seems to support his daughter's maturation. When she moves "far away," he is present only as a photo in her apartment and his remembered voice encouraging her through the inevitable difficulties of independence. But when he ails, she returns with her own babe in arms to care for him, whispering affirmations first in his sleeping ear and then her own infant's. Torrent's naïve-style illustrations are suffused with warm hues, visually reinforcing the paternal love the book expresses, though at times compositions are a little hard to decode. The dad presents white while the daughter has East Asian features; there is no other parent in evidence, allowing readers to see a single dad, a transracial adoption, and/or an interracial family with another parent simply out of the frame. Will this book have grown adults breaking down in tears in children's sections as Love You Forever is wont to do? That remains to be seen, but at least it offers a storyline without breaking and entering. (Picture book. 4-7)
Review of Most People from New York Times Book reviewer R. J. Palacio:
There’s a similar big-picture approach to diversity in “Most People,” written by the first-time picture book author Michael Leannah and illustrated by Jennifer E. Morris (“May I Please Have a Cookie?”), but the art wisely introduces repeating characters that weave in and out to form a separate narrative that aligns beautifully with the text. “Most people,” we are told, love to smile and laugh. Most people want to help other people. Most people love the sunshine. Most people are good. There are some people who aren’t good, of course, but if you could line up all the good people and all the bad ones, the line of good people would be much, much longer. That simple reasoning is perfectly pitched for its young audience, who will enjoy piecing together the story-within-a-story of the two main characters as they illustrate the messages of the text within the context of their own lives. “Most People” works especially well because it doesn’t just tell children to “be” good. It shows them how to “do” good.
And just for good measure, a couple of links! One to the publisher's page for Goodnight Whispers: http://familius.com/goodnight-whispers and for the page for Most People https://tilburyhouse.com/book/education-and-teaching/by-subject/multicultural/most-people/