Upon learning that the books with kids who look like her have been banned by her school district, Kanzi descends into fear and helplessness. But her classmates support her, and together—with their teacher’s help—they hatch a plan to hold a bake sale and use the proceeds to buy diverse books to donate to libraries. The event is a big success; the entire school participates, and the local TV station covers it in the evening news. Prodded by her classmates to read the poem she has written, Kanzi starts softly but finds her voice. “You have banned important books, but you can’t ban my words,” she reads. “Books are for everyone.” The crowd chants, “No banned books! No banned books!” and the next week, the ban is reversed. Aya Khalil appends a note about how The Arabic Quilt was briefly banned from the York, Pennsylvania school system, and the backmatter also includes a recipe for baklawa, the Egyptian pastry that Kanzi prepares for the bake sale.

We celebrate firemen and soldiers-and rightly so. But let's also celebrate teachers, bus drivers, shop keepers, postmen and the others who keep the world spinning around every day. And let's give a nod to children, too-children who are kind and brave and help each other. They're heroes too. In structure, flow and pitch, very much like Pat Brisson's Before We Eat (ISBN 978 0 88448 652 7).

That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a "quilt" (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi's most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one. This authentic story with beautiful illustrations includes a glossary of Arabic words and a presentation of Arabic letters with their phonetic English equivalents.

Sensory issues are a difficult challenge for many children and their caregivers. In this picture book, Hartley Steiner shows the experience of Sensory Processing Disorders (SPD) from the point of view of the child, bringing awareness to how they feel in the moment through humor and giving adults the rare opportunity to view the situation from the child's perspective. Children will be introduced to ways they can begin to ask for and accept help, and adults will learn how to scale reactions during situations of upset. This book covers a large range of situations addressed and resolved. In each scenario the child is having a big reaction, and the adult is able to solve the issue through simple answers, compassion, and humor.