Books published by publisher Tilbury House Publishers

*2016 EUREKA SILVER**2016 LIVING NOW AWARD, Books for Better Living**RIF Multicultural Collection**Skipping Stones Honor Book**CBC Recommended Reading**Santa Monica Public Library Green Prize for Sustainable Literature*In a Guatemalan village, students squished into their tiny schoolhouse, two grades to a classroom. The villagers had tried expanding the school, but the money ran out before the project was finished. No money meant no wall materials, and that meant no more room for the students. Until one boy got a wonderful, crazy idea. The idea not only solved both problems, but also inspired others. Why not use soda bottles, which were scattered all around, to form the cores of the walls? Never underestimate the power of an idea!Laura Kutner, the real-life “Seno Laura” in The Soda Bottle School, wrote this book because she wanted to “inspire young readers to believe in themselves and work together to make the world a better place, and have fun at the same time.”Sometimes thinking outside the box—or inside the bottle—leads to the perfect solution.

AWARDS: *Moonbeam Silver*, *John Burroughs Association Riverby 2016 Award* Estuaries form where river meets sea and fresh water mixes with salt. Teeming with life, these places of salt marshes, mudflats, and tidal backwaters serve as nursery areas for oceangoing fish, migratory stopovers for shorebirds, and homes for an amazing diversity of snails, bivalves, fish, mammals, horseshoe crabs, fiddler and blue crabs, terrapin turtles, plankton, and many others, all of whom we meet in the pages of this delightful book.Narrated in the poetic voice of the estuary itself, and accompanied by natural-history sidebars about estuary plants, animals, and cycles, THE SECRET BAY is another topnotch nature book from the author and illustrator of the award-winning, bestselling The Secret Pool.A stand-alone book and a stunning companion volume to Ridley and Raye’s award-winning Secret Pool.Ridley deftly augments the estuary’s lyrical narrative voice with sidebars about the plants, animals, and natural processes of an estuary.Raye’s gorgeous watercolors reveal new features and hidden treats with each reading.Back matter includes The Estuary Food Web, Great Escapes (how estuary animals avoid predators), and an author’s note about the challenges facing estuaries.A perfect book for the budding naturalist and for his or her parents and teachers.Fountas & Pinnell Level SLexile 1180 Color Throughout

NOW IN PAPERBACK Mia and Tayja pretend to be princesses on a perilous journey, but there’s one thing they don’t have to pretend. They know in their hearts that they’re real sisters despite being adopted. Playful and sweet, Real Sisters Pretend celebrates the wonderful variety of modern families, in which the only essential ingredient is love. full color

The role of venoms in nature … and in human medicine Why are toxins so advantageous to their possessors as to evolve over and over again? What is it about watery environments that favors so many venomous creatures? Marine biologist Paul Erickson explores these and other questions with astounding images from Andrew Martinez and other top underwater photographers.GREAT for teaching STEM Marine BiologyScorpions and brown recluse spiders are fine as far as they go, but if you want daily contact with venomous creatures, the ocean is the place to be. Blue-ringed octopi, stony corals, sea jellies, stonefish, lionfish, poison-fanged blennies, stingrays, cone snails, blind remipedes, fire urchins―you can choose your poison in the ocean. Venoms are often but not always defensive weapons. The banded sea krait, an aquatic snake, wriggles into undersea caves to prey on vicious moray eels, killing them with one of the world’s most deadly neurotoxins, which it injects through fangs that resemble hypodermic needles. color photographs

* 2016 Maine Literary Award Winner - Best Children's Book ** Selected as Notable Social Studies Trade Book For Young People 2016, a cooperative Project of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the Children's Book Council** Gelett Burgess Honor Book *Emma doesn't really like hurricanes. After a busy day of school and activities, Emma likes to sit still and rest. Her little brother, Henry, does everything but. She calls him The Lemonade Hurricane.Henry is a lot of fun when he's not storming through the house, so Emma decides to teach him how to be still. By showing him how to sit, bow, and breathe, Emma is able to calm the hurricane within Henry.A perfect introduction to meditation for young readers, presented in a captivating story.The illustrations bring the story to life with delightful whimsy.Includes a back-of-book presentation of simple mindfulness techniques that can be shared at home and in the classroom.In Planting Seeds, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teaches that by sitting still and meditating, the mind can become clear. Like Hanh's apple juice story, when a glass of lemonade is stirred, the pulp swirls around. When it sits quietly, the pulp settles and the liquid becomes clear. In this way, a glass of lemonade is a metaphor for how meditation and mindfulness work. That is why this book is called The Lemonade Hurricane. Practicing mindfulness and meditation helps us tame the hurricane within.Fountas & Pinnell Level L

*Winner, Best Book Award, Language Arts Picture Books, Society of School Librarians**The Camellia Award*“You are one of us,” Carmen tells Roberta on her first day at a new school, and Roberta gladly sits with Carmen’s group―until she learns that they don’t play on the monkey bars. Roberta loves the monkey bars, but the kids who play there don’t carry flowered lunchboxes like she does. She moves from group to group, but it seems that she doesn’t fit in anywhere! Then Roberta discovers some kids just like her everyone's different and they like it that way!

Selected for the 2018 Bank Street College of Education Best Children’s Books of the Year2017 NYPL Best Books for Kids List*2017 IPPY Independent Publishers Gold Medalist**Starred Review School Library Journal**Starred Review- Booklist**Brazil's 2015 Jabuti Award for best children's illustration*How does a fastidious old man with bowler, umbrella, suspenders, and a Salvador Dali mustache come to live on a deserted island? How does a boy come to live alone in an apparently deserted city? Are they separated by distance or by time? Does the man dream the boy? Does the boy dream the man? Is a blank paper in a floating bottle an invitation to imagine our futures? Is the man’s flying boat an encouragement to the boy to dream? Are the man and the boy the same person―the boy dwelling in the man’s memory? Is a message in a bottle the earthbound dreams of the elderly? Is a flying boat the unconstrained dreams of the young? This wordless, many-layered 80-page picture book invites all these interpretations and more. The intricately detailed illustrations reveal new wonders with each viewing. Neither children nor adults will ever tire of this wonderful testament to imagination, memory, and dreams. Color throughout

CCBC Choice Book 2018 : The Annual Best of the Year List of the Cooperative Children's Book CenterThis is my busy green garden. There’s a surprise In clever disguise, That hangs in my busy green garden. This is a ladybug dawdling so, Near the surprise, in clever disguise, That hangs in my busy green garden. This is a honeybee buzzing below The red spotted ladybug dawdling so, Near the surprise, in clever disguise, That hangs in my busy green garden.So begins this lyrical tribute to the bugs, bees, and birds that make the garden such a busy place. With each turned page, more visitors appear, and all the while the “surprise”―a chrysalis―changes unnoticed until, on the last page, a butterfly emerges and flies away across the garden’s well-tended borders. Back-of-book notes about the natural histories of the garden’s denizens complete this lovely and lively portrait of backyard nature, which is also a gentle meditation on the rewards of paying attention. A chipmunk hides on every page to divert and engage young readers.Fountas & Pinnell Level O Color throughout

*Notable Social Studies Trade Books Selection for Young People 2018*“I was six years old the day we left the farm in Mississippi,” remembers Cassie in this richly textured picture book. “Between the boll weevils, the floods, and the landlord, there was no way a family could scratch out a living there anymore.”Packing themselves into an old jalopy―with Daddy, Uncle Vern, and Mama in the front seat and Cassie and her two brothers in the back―they joined the Great Migration from the impoverished Deep South to Chicago, where there was work to be had in the stockyards. Across the kids’ laps lay Daddy’s prized possession, a six-string guitar. Daddy worked hard to put food on the table, but what he really loved was playing the blues. This evocative tale of the African-American odyssey in search of a better life is also a homage to the uniquely American music that developed from African music and American spirituals, work songs, and folk ballads.In the book’s backmatter, Garland relates how he first heard and fell in love with blues music, beginning a lifelong fandom. Portraits and thumbnail biographies of great blues musicians and landmark songs complete this tribute to the great American music and the yearnings that produced it.Fountas & Pinnell Level S Full Color

At this school, there are some children who push and tease and bully. Sometimes they hurt other kids by just ignoring them.The girl in this story sees it happening, but she would never do these mean things herself. Then one day something happens that shows her that being a silent bystander isn’t enough. Will she take some steps on her own to help another kid? Could it be as simple as sitting on the bus with the girl no one has befriended (and discovering that she has a great sense of humor)? Resources at the end of the book will help parents and children talk about teasing and bullying and find ways to stop it at school.One child at a time can help change a school.Since its release in May 2004, this book has sparked Say Something weeks in schools from Maine to Shanghai. It has been turned into plays, distributed to hundreds of kids at conferences, read by principals on large screens, and rewritten by students in several schools (Do Something! is a favorite title). Most importantly, Say Something has helped start countless conversations among kids and adults about teasing.We’re celebrating with this new edition, updated with a new cover and an author’s note. Fountas & Pinnell Level O

2016 EUREKA SILVER2016 LIVING NOW AWARD, Books for Better LIvingCBC RecommendedSkipping Stones Honor BookIn a Guatemalan village, students squished into their tiny schoolhouse, two grades to a classroom.The villagers had tried expanding the school, but the money ran out before the project was finished. No money meant no materials, and that meant no more room for the students. Then one person got a wonderful, crazy idea: Why not use soda bottles, which were readily available, to form the cores of the walls? Sometimes thinking outside the box―or inside the bottle―leads to the perfect solution.Fountas & Pinnell Level Q Color throughout

Are you ready to snuggle down for the night in your very own bed? This bushy-tailed gray squirrel is ready for bed, but he's wondering where he will sleep tonight.When dusk comes, gray squirrel needs to find somewhere safe to sleep. He finds a cozy den, but a big black bear is already sleeping there. On his way up a tree, he sees a family of bats, but sleeping upside makes his head ache. Everywhere he looks, he finds another animal has already had the same idea!Rebekah Raye's wonderful watercolor paintings take us along on the gray squirrel's search for the very best bed as the moon rises higher in the night sky. This charming tale of persistence is now augmented with four new pages of back matter about the animals that squirrel encounters.First time in paperback for this Tilbury House Classic.A charming read-aloud for bedtime or anytime.Includes additional information about each animal in the story.For animal lovers of all ages. Fountas & Pinnell Level M Color throughout