I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book which I received from the author. All views expressed are only my honest opinion.
Book Details:
Book Title: MIA AND THE HUMMINGBIRD by Nancy Carlisle
Category: Children’s Fiction (Ages 3-7), 34 pages
Genre: Juvenile fiction/social themes or animals/birds
Publisher: Sage Green Press
Release date: March, 2021
Content Rating: G. There is nothing that even comes close to PG.
Book Description:
Mia and the Hummingbird is the story of a young girl who immigrates to a new country and learns to accept a new life.She sees the hummingbird building her nest for her babies and thinks that she and the bird are similar as they learn to adapt to their new homes. Mia and the Hummingbird includes information about environmental and social reasons for immigration, the struggle to adapt to a new home and information about hummingbirds. Included is a glossary about these issues, a bibliography, and references
Buy the Book:
Amazon
add to goodreads
Guest Post
How book writing is similar to my past profession of architecture?
Good question! I like to think about ideas—in designing a building the ideas might take the form of questions such as, what do you want your space to look and feel like, how do you want to use the space, how do you want the spaces to connect to one another, how much natural light do you want in each space, etc. As an architect, from these questions, and data collected from interviews, I could propose options for the shape of the building. Writing a kid’s book, I start off in a similar way thinking about the book concept, and what are the key messages, how might the pages be designed, what emotions will the book evoke, what are the two or three key story points. In both cases, I start with the big ideas.
Coming up with the big ideas is one of the interesting parts in both processes then the detailed part begins. For a building design, it is getting the drawings completed correctly with all the details for space plus structural, pluming heating and cooling. For a book there are so many details as well, the facts and drawings need to be accurate, the words need to convey the right emotions and be age appropriate, the text and pictures must be well integrated, and the drawings need to be consistent from page to page.
Just like a building design, a books image (the illustrations) must be well integrated with the function of the book (the story). Both a building and book should evoke an emotion. For a house, the emotion might be cozy, monumental, or well-integrated into the natural environment. For a children’s book, the emotion might be funny or scary or comforting. In terms of the steps in the process, both architecture and children’s books involve synthesizing a lot of data and ideas to clearly express the final product. Both processes involve many steps and the use of specialists. For books the specialists are the editors, writers, layout designer, illustrator, sales, web designer, etc. In a way a children’s book author is like an architect because they also orchestrate a complicated process to reach the final product.
Meet the Author:
Nancy Carlisle is an author, illustrator and retired architect and manager. She writes hopeful books for kids that interweave facts and fiction about the environment and global responsibility.
During her 38 year career, as an architect and researcher, her focus was on the environment. She led work nationally and internationally on sustainable and energy efficient buildings and communities and won awards for collaboratively designing award-winning sustainable buildings, a laboratory campus, and as part of a team to develop a program to improve the energy efficiency of laboratories in the U.S.
connect with the author: website
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My Review
Mia is a girl who has moved to live with relatives in America after a tropical storm destroyed her home in the Caribbean. She loves school, but it’s challenging to learn a new langauge and culture. She is diligent and adapts to her new home and school and begins to learn more and more of the language and gains friends.
She is a climate refugee, because she had to come to the US because of natural disasters. The book is very interesting the way it shifts from Mia’s story to the story of a hummingbird. The hummingbird’s characteristics are also included in small sections on various pages, which is very interesting. This will make the book a good learning experience about birds, but also about people.
I love how the explanations of refugees vs immigrants is presented, so that young people can learn for themselves. This will help children better understand their new classmates and how to befriend them and learn from them. The artwork is charming and very colorful. There are also additional-reading resources at the end of the book, which can make the book useful for school or homeschool.
Enter the Giveaway:
MIA AND THE HUMMINGBIRD Book Tour Giveaway
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Thank-you Lisa for the nice review of Mia and the Hummingbird! I like the way you described the story and appreciate your time to review. Sincerely, Nancy
Thank you. It was my pleasure. 🙂
Sounds like a good read.
Such a great topic for a children’s book.
I love the morals that this book teaches. Thanks for sharing!