September 25 – Math Storytelling Day

About the Holiday

National Math Storytelling Day was established in 2009 by Maria Droujkova, founder of The Natural Math Community at Naturalmath.com, and her daughter to encourage people to share the joys of math with children through stories and games. Having fun with math is one of the best ways to get kids excited about learning and working with this most important subject. Celebrate today with math stories that involve patterns, spatial relations, quantities, logic, puzzles, and numbers. You can even sing math songs and tell math jokes! You’ll find lots of resources for Math Storytelling Day and every day on the Natural Math website. Today’s book comes from Charlesbridge, who early on embraced the power of picture books to get children involved with math in everyday life.

Thank you to Charlesbridge for sending me a copy of this book for review!

Sisters All the Time (Steamworks)

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

By Angela Quezada Padron

For Mari Saturday was the best day of the week because her half-sister Luz came over. “They laughed and played all day [and] giggled and acted silly all night.” But when Sunday came and Luz had to leave, Mari felt sad. She never seemed to have enough time with her big sister. On this Sunday, just five minutes before Luz’s mom was scheduled to pick Luz up, she called to say she’d be two hours late. Excited to have extra time together, Mari and Luz planned out which activities they wanted to do. Mari wanted to do all of them, but Luz knew they didn’t have time for that.

They decided to write down all of their favorite activities and estimate how long each took. First up, they wanted to “try to beat [their] record for the longest domino trail ever.” This would take about 40 minutes to set up . . . “and about 5 minutes to watch them all topple.” They had one hour and 45 minutes left to fill. With the trail built and a new world record accomplished, it was time to have a fashion show. Part way through their preps (including making up Papi and doing his hair), pizza arrived. After lunch, they only had 30 minutes left, so they decided to play indoor Olympics.

Luz and Mari had just gotten started when Papi reminded them that their lunch dishes needed cleaning. Then during their trampoline contest, he told them they needed to pick up the dominoes and hang up the fashion show clothes. All of these ate into the time the girls had left. With only five minutes before Luz’s mom was expected, they jumped into a sock race, but “Ding Dong!” time was up. Mari pleaded for more time. She thought that sisters should not “live together SOME of the time,” but ALL the time. Luz took her little sister’s hand and told her, “No matter where I am, you’ll always be my hermanita, 365 days a year.” Throughout the week, the sisters called and planned their “time to smile together, laugh together, and love together.”

Back matter includes an Author’s Note about her own half siblings and a spread titled “Picking Up STEAM” with English time-related words to know, Spanish words that appear in the story, concepts of time management, basic facts about time, hours from 1:00 to 12:00 shown on an analog and digital clock, and ideas for readers to play with and explore time on their own.

Angela Quezada Padron’s warmhearted story of half sisters who love spending time together provides a perfect frame for children learning about time management and tempering expectations of how much can be accomplished in measured amounts of time. The sisters’ enthusiasm and imagination will captivate readers, and the time spans for each activity on their list are realistic and may prompt kids to time themselves doing each one. Quezada Padron’s inclusion of clean-up time will be appreciated by parents and caregivers and is a good reminder about responsibility for children as well. Her vibrant, action-packed illustrations portray the close relationship between the sisters and eye-catching perspectives on the girls’ activities. There are plenty of scenes to make kids giggle too as they minutes tick down on a fun day.

Education wrapped in engaging fun, Sisters All the Time (Steamworks) and Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) offer an affectionate family story in which concepts of time unfold as naturally as they do at home, in a classroom, or other settings. The book will spark recognition of how time passes and a beginning to better time management of busy days and is a top pick for all libraries, classrooms, and home collections.

Ages 4 – 7

Charlesbridge, 2026 | ISBN 978-1623546779

About the Author

Angela Quezada Padron is a Latina author-illustrator who spent childhood days writing stories and doodling on garage walls of her New Jersey home while enjoying summers visiting family in the Dominican Republic. She writes fiction and nonfiction picture books and novels, and she creates colorful, textured illustrations with diverse characters & heartwarming scenes. Angela won first place in the Portfolio Showcase at the 2023 Florida SCBWI Conference and was chosen as a semi-finalist for the SCBWI Tomie dePaola Award in 2014. Visit her at angelapadron.com.

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

Mari y Luz son un tipo de hermanas especial: ¡medias hermanas! Comparten el mismo papá, pero tienen mamás distintas, por lo que solo pasan los fines de semana juntas. Cuando la mamá de Luz se retrasa un día, las chicas deciden aprovechar su tiempo adicional al máximo, así que planifican sus actividades, estiman cuánto tiempo les llevará cada una y se lanzan a hacerlas. Pero el tiempo se les acaba demasiado rápido, y Mari se siente triste. Luz le recuerda que son hermanas TODO el tiempo, aunque solo puedan estar juntas una parte del tiempo.

Ages 4 – 7

Charlesbridge, 2026 | ISBN 978-1623546779

Math Storytelling Day Activity

Sisters All the Time Activity Page

Kids can have eye-opening fun keeping track of their favorite activities, chores, mealtimes, or other events of the day with this Time and El tiempo y la hora pages from Charlesbridge!

You can purchase Sisters All the Time from these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

You can purchase Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition) from these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Picture Book Review

March 24 – National Agriculture Day

Posted by Kath Carroll

About the Holiday

Established in 1973 by the Agriculture Council of America (ACA), National Agriculture Day raises awareness about the importance and wide reach of farming to help people understand how much agriculture contributes to the economy and daily life—from the food we eat to the clothes we wear to the products we use. Today, we celebrate the farmers, ranchers, and all farm workers involved in producing the food, clothing, and even the biofuels we rely on every day.

This year’s theme is Together We Grow and includes activities like farm tours and educational programs for kids that encourage younger generations to consider careers in farming. The work of agriculture is always evolving. Today, farmers use technology to grow more food while protecting the environment. Such sustainable farming practices are a highlight of this year’s celebration.

Thank you to Atheneum Books for Young Readers for sending me a copy of this book for review!

From the Fields to the Fight: How Jessica Govea Thorbourne Organized for Justice

Written by Angela Quezada Padron | Illustrated by Sol Salinas

Every summer morning before dawn four-year-old Jessica and her Mexican-American family joined other families in the fields to pick crops, earning only a few dollars a day while suffering hunger, physically punishing labor, and constant exposure to chemical pesticides. Jessica picked cotton, clipped grapes, and retrieved plums from the ground. As she got older, Jessica became more aware of the struggles in her community for whom education, housing, medical care, and equal treatment were denied “just because they were Latino.”

When her father joined other farmworkers to raise awareness of the unfair treatment and conditions, young Jessica joined him in passing out flyers door-to-door and paid close attention to the growing organization. Jessica was a born leader: beginning in childhood, she began speaking to crowds, learning to be persistent, and even organizing “other kids to petition for a neighborhood park.”

When Jessica was a teenager, their burgeoning organization joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, founded by Filipino farm workers, in a strike for higher pay against grape growers in Delano, California. When the grape growers hired other workers, leaving many farmworkers without a job, Jessica delayed going to college to further help the cause.

Grape boycotts in grocery stores followed the strikes, but many growers began shipping their grapes to other stores and even to Canada to avoid improving wages and conditions for workers. “Putting her fears aside to do what was needed for justice,” Jessica went to Canada with the union. For months she and her team protested at grocery stores and elsewhere, gaining the support of Canadian union workers and increasing numbers of shoppers who stopped buying grapes. Finally, the growers agreed to provide “higher pay, better working conditions, and medical care.” Throughout her life, Jessica Govea Thorbourne continued to stand up for equality, empowering people of all ages to organize and create impactful change and “showed that making a difference can start with just one child.”

Back matter includes a short biography of Jessica Govea Thorbourne’s life, a glossary, pointers on organizing for a cause, and a timeline of the events related in the text.

Angela Quezada Padron writes a powerful biography of Latina activist Jessica Govea Thorbourne, who even as a child made an impact within her family and for her community of farm workers. Through Thorbourne’s example, Padron empowers today’s children to speak out and act when they see or experience injustice and shows them that with determination, passion, and persistence they can influence others and create necessary change. Quezada Padron’s straightforward text clearly outlines the growth of the labor unions in a way that children can understand while also spotlighting Jessica’s emotions, character, and contributions in single, stand-alone sentences sprinkled throughout the pages that will resonate with young readers.

Sol Salinas’s richly hued, layered illustrations take readers from the hot, sun-drenched fields to Jessica and her father’s door-to-door rallying to union meetings and protests to a victory celebration. The workers’ struggles are evident in their facial expressions. One potent image captures 21-year-old Jessica volunteering to join the protesters in Canada, leaving behind her family and everything familiar. Children may enjoy following and talking about the wispy, symbolic vine that emanates from a seed in Jessica’s hand and wends its way from the front cover and page to page, connecting Jessica to her life’s work and community.

Ages 4 – 8

Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026 | ISBN 978-1665946704

Angela Quezada Padron is a Latina author-illustrator who spent her childhood days writing stories and doodling on the garage walls of her New Jersey home and her summers visiting family in the Dominican Republic. In addition to writing From the Fields to the Fight: How Jessica Govea Thorbourne Organized for Justice, she is the author-illustrator of As the Seas Rise: Nicole Hernández Hammer and the Fight for Climate Justice. She won first place in the Portfolio Showcase at the 2023 Florida SCBWI Conference and was a semifinalist for the SCBWI Tomie dePaola Award in 2014. Visit her at AngelaPadron.com.

Sol Salinas is a non-binary artist from San Antonio, Texas. At a young age, they fell in love with history while watching old Hollywood movies with their grandmother. When they aren’t drawing, Sol can usually be found playing Dungeons & Dragons, collecting rose quartz, drinking warm cups of tea, and listening to their favorite music: Fleetwood Mac. Find more at SolSalinasIllustration.com.

You can purchase From the Fields to the Fight: How Jessica Govea Thorbourne Organized for Justice from these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop

Picture Book Review

About the Holiday

Sisters All the Time (Steamworks)

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

By Angela Quezada Padron

Hermanas todo el tiempo (Steamworks) (Spanish Edition)

Math Storytelling Day Activity

Sisters All the Time Activity Page

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About the Holiday

From the Fields to the Fight: How Jessica Govea Thorbourne Organized for Justice

Written by Angela Quezada Padron | Illustrated by Sol Salinas

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