Thank you to all the readers that have stopped by this week. It’s been a pleasure bringing you all of the different children’s books. All of the participating authors really appreciate you exploring and learning about their books.
Below, I’ve recapped each book and its author and linked back to its review. If you missed any of the book reviews, or maybe, you’re stopping by after the first week of October, you can catch up on any of the books you’d like.
Thanks again for stopping by. Submissions for the 2027 Back to School Blog Tour starts in the beginning of the summer in 2027. Plus, I take submissions for book reviews and author interviews all year round. Please feel free to submit if you’re a children’s author.
Welcome to Day 4 of the Back to School Blog Tour. Today, I have a helpful book for those children going through a trauma with a parent that is doing drugs. As a retired teacher, it is sometimes part of teaching to try to help support children with trauma at home. It is also helpful to let other children know some of the difficulties other children might be experiencing in their daily lives.
The book, “It’s Not Your Fault: A Child’s Story of Drug Addiction” is a picture book that goes through the process of a child saving her mother from a drug overdose and what happens after. It’s a great read for any classroom during Red Ribbon Week to help understand the process of drug addiction and how it affects children.
Cindy is a third grader with a family that might differ from others. She tells her story about her mother’s addiction to drugs and how that has affected her. It’s a brilliant telling of how she calls 911 when her mother overdoses. She talks about the steps she goes through and all the people that help her and her mother along the way. From the police officers, to the judge and child services worker, Cindy relates her point of view of all that happened, including finally going to live with her grandparents. The message of it not being her fault is skillfully described through character dialog and personal thoughts from Cindy. It’s a beautiful depiction of what a child struggling through this kind of trauma might experience and want to share with others.
I would recommend this picture book as a great read-aloud during Red Ribbon Week to illustrate what illegal drug use does to families. Told through the sensitive point of view of the daughter of a drug user, children will relate with the protagonist and understand that this kind of situation is not the fault of any child. Plus, it opens up the classroom or home to discussions about this topic, whether there is a family member or friend going through a similar situation.
“It’s Not My Fault: A Child’s Story of Drug Addiction” is a read-aloud that tells the point of view of a child of a drug user and how it affects her family and life. It will be an asset to any classroom or home library to help explain how drug use isn’t the fault of the child related to the user, and that there are a lot of helpful safety nets available to help through this type of trauma.
“It’s Not My Fault” is available on the Wildfire Rose Book Company Website.
Welcome to day 3 of the Back to School Blog Tour. Today, I have a fantastical, magical surprise for you. It’s Ellie’s Magical Surprise, a picture book that will help beginning readers with their phonics and imagination. Written by Erin Davenport, this beautifully illustrated picture book will sparkle in the minds of any child that wanted to own a unicorn, including myself when I was a child.
Ellie is waking up on what she thinks is a normal day. But after breakfast, she discovers, with help from her mother, someone else living in the horse stables on her farm, a magical unicorn. After exploring each stable, she bonds with the new creature living with the other horses. It’s a pleasant surprise that will enchant any horse owner and child that loves horses.
The first thing that stands out about this picture book is the repeated rhyming words that help with phonics identification for beginning readers. This is a picture book that beginning readers will be able to follow along or read themselves. It brings to mind the early rhyming text used by Dr. Seuss to help children with decoding words. But even better. After exploring the stables on her farm, Ellie discovers a new friend, a unicorn. I am sure the adventures that await them will be enchanting.
I recommend this picture book for teacher’s needing beginning reader books in their reading groups or if teaching reading workshops. It also has a little girl protagonist to give variety in storytelling heroes. The rhyming patterning of the text is great for beginning decoding. It will also be a great fantasy picture book read for parent’s that are homeschooling, especially if your child adores horses and would love to own a unicorn.
Ellie’s Magical Surprise is a beautifully illustrated book that will help any horse-loving child with their phonics and decoding.
This Kindle unlimited book is available on Amazon as a ebook or in print.
Welcome to Day Two of the Back to School Blog Tour. I’m sure about now, thoughts are turning to fall and reading unit planning. I’ve got a wonderful picture book with the theme of kindness and sharing to add to any reading unit. Enyonam’s Kind Heart is a beautifully illustrated picture book told from the perspective of a kind Ghana girl that chooses kindness and transforms her neighborhood. It’s a great book to dive into for this new fall season.
Enyonam is a Ghana girl that lives in a wealthy home, but is gifted with a kind heart. When talking with her grandmother, she learns that sharing often leads to spreading kindness. Through actions of buying oranges from the older market woman with no sales, sharing the oranges as snacks, and showing her cousin how to share, love and kindness spreads in her neighborhood. Her cousin, Ale, also learns the lesson when he finally decides to share his locked up toys with his other classmates.
This is a beautifully told story highlighting Ghana culture, vocabulary and traditions. The culture is reflected in the story and illustrations with loving details. We’re taken into Enyonam’s neighborhood and shown aspects of Ghana that many readers will enjoy learning about. There are very helpful discussion activities and questions at the end of the book which will help any teacher or parent with home schooling.
I found this to be a great introduction to morals and themes in a story as well. Plus, this would be a great picture book to start with the social morals that have to be emphasized in creating the classroom community each school year.
I highly recommend Enyonam’s Kind Heart as a beginning of the year read-aloud or literature circle story to heighten the community building in a classroom or at home.
To purchase the book at the Bright Love Learning Hub website, please hit the button below.
Welcome to the 2026 Back to School Blog Tour event. This year, I’ve decided to heavily focus on book reviews to give a fresh look at books that can sweep your child into the world of reading. Each day this week, I’ll be featuring a new book and review ranging from picture books to middle readers. Please bookmark and check back each day to find out about a new book. Like what I’m talking about? Please subscribe!
For the first book review, I’ve chosen a beautiful drawn picture book with a mermaid at its center. “Penny Lane in Florence” is a journey of a mermaid dreaming to become an artist. It’s written and illustrated by the author, Sarah Arias.
Penny Lane has heard the legend of the magical hat given to any aspiring artist in Florence that has real talent. But trying to find the hat is the hard part. Along her journey, she’s helped by flamboyant Italians, a mysterious mouse, her animal friends and her own intuition. Will she be able to find the hat? Or is it something to be earned?
The one thing that strikes me about this book is the beautiful, whimsical artwork. It is amazing! A whole world of fantastical friends and creatures accompany Penny Lane on her adventure. The artwork keeps you anchored in her quest. I really enjoyed seeing the interactions and comical betrayal of her animal friends. It creates a fantastic world of fantasy to dive into.
The book is also divided into chapters to make it easy for beginning readers to join in. It’s a great way to help introduce the chapter structure in stories. There is the strong theme of finding the artist within which goes well with combining literature and art for reading units.
Sarah Arias is the author & illustrator of the picture book, Penny Lane in Florence.
As far as the plot, Penny seems to find the hat within herself and her artwork which the whole story leads to easily. It is very predictable, which any children’s book should be to an extent. But I think the moment of the discovery could have been more dramatic then nonchalant as it’s shown in the book. A magical moment of self-discovery might have been lost, or it just became less important to her at the end, maybe symbolizing the journey being more important than the hat itself.
Overall, I found it to be a fun, fantasy story to help inspire children to not give-up on their artistic impulses. It does lend itself to the idea of exploring your artistic side and less to trying to find the recognition of being a real artist. I did relate to the action of burying myself in pillows when feeling the artistic rejection or failure. That’s relevant at any age. But that drive to keep going has to be intrinsic, which is delightfully illustrated and told throughout the book.
Children with artistic interest will enjoy this mermaid led adventure in self-discovery.
“Penny Lane in Florence” is available at Amazon.com as a print hardcopy or ebook. It’s recommended for ages 4-8.
Bookmark this blog and return tomorrow for another book review. Please leave in the comments if you enjoy this week of reviews. It is truly a labor of love to help connect teachers, parents and readers to fabulous Indie children’s authors and their books.
-Tiffany Turner
Editor/Head Writer of the Indie Children’s Authors Connection Blog
I have a surprise for everyone. I have written a picture book to help support all the parents and teachers during these strange times. It’s called “I Don’t Want to Wear a Mask!”. It helps children validate their feelings with all the strange routine changes, and models a parent lovingly supporting and validating their little one’s emotional turmoil. With all the different return-to-school programs through out the country, structure and safety is what kids need to help them right now. I wanted to help reassure them, and support their emotional needs.
“Back to School” has never been so difficult. Some school districts are returning to in-person school, some are remaining online with distance learning, and others are doing a combination of both depending on their communities. With so many changes, parents and children need support in adapting to these new structures. So, I wrote a loving and supportive book to help children understand the changes around them.
I targeted the preschooler and kindergartener, even though the book could be read up through third grade. It will hopefully lead to discussions and communication with parents, teachers, and the children that are going through this huge, educational upheaval together.
Tiffany Turner is the author of “I Don’t Want to Wear a Mask!” and head editor/writer of this blog.
I am an elementary teacher that has been writing and self-publishing for children since 2007. I’ve also been a teacher for 20 years. I have a middle reader series, and another self-published picture book called “Pumper the Pumpkin.” For this new book, I hired a fabulous illustrator from Columbia, Natalia Cuno. She captures the beautiful warmth and caring that I wanted to convey with this book.
I invite you to check out the book on Amazon.com. It is available as an ebook for many tablets and the Kindle phone app as well as a print edition. I welcome feedback in its many forms, such as reviews or as comments below in this post. I would love to hear what you think and how your child reacts to the book.
We can all get through this together, and remember to wear a mask.
“Mozzi Presents: Love and Other Values” is the first in a series of heart-warming picture books.
I always like to find the hidden gems that can brighten up anyone’s day. I think a book about a dog is a great way to do this, especially with the current pandemic. We are looking back to family values, nature and the best addition to any household, pets. The lessons we can learn from our pets starts when we are children. I think I’ve found a wonderful picture book that shows the values of pets, love and family in “Mozzi Presents: Love and Other Values” by Merav Gamliel Boschan.
We meet a wonderful dog, Mozzi, and his family. From a puppy to growing up to full doghood, we read about all the different challenges of life and lessons learned by Mozzi the dog with help from his family. They also learn from him in turn. It’s a great read aloud during these hard times of lockdown and isolation. The one thing that always seems to help during these hard times seems to be sharing a book with the family. This will make a wonderful read-aloud at bedtime or shared as an activity.
What’s behind door number thirty-two? That’s the question that leads a reader through this marvelous counting picture book called “Don’t Ever Look Behind Door 32” by B.C.R. Fegan. Illustrations are by Lenny Wen. Through visiting the fantastical Hoo Hotel, your introduced around by the owner to all the rooms, each time warned not to open room number thirty-two. Fairies, trolls, mad scientists, vampire mermaids and other magical amusing creatures await to greet you behind each door. Just don’t open door number thirty-two. By the time you get to the door, the surprise is a logical laugh to end the book.
B.C.R. Fegan is the author of “Don’t Ever Look Behind Door 32”.
I enjoyed reading through this book thinking about all of the teaching applications possible. It is the beginnings of Math at its best combined with a journey through the imagination. You are curious to see what awaits behind each door. The illustrations are a treat for the eyes lending to the creativity of the story.
This book would be a great read-aloud for beginning counting and looking for patterns in literature. With all the fantastic creatures, it lends itself as a Halloween read as well. I’d recommend this book for beginning readers and preschool age children. Parents will enjoy reading this book over and over to help their child enjoy the process of counting.
If you are looking for a read-aloud at home or in the classroom, here is a great picture book for you on social morals. The Little Book of Character Strength by June Rousso, Ph.D. is a page-by-page summary of basic, good moral principles to instill in students and your child. Subjects include: love of learning, courage, perseverance, honesty, humanity, kindness, social intelligence, justice, fairness, leadership, temperance, humility and prudence just to name a few.
Each moral trait is defined and expressed in rhyming lines and beautiful anime-like watercolor illustrations. Each trait can be read daily to inspire a child or taken in groups to help with building vocabulary and character in school. They could also be used as writing prompts to get children to think deeper. I found it to be an interesting book that could be read a page at a time or in sections. It would make a great instructional tool for the classroom or at home.
I’m always on the look out for a good nighttime picture book. I think I found one that is realistic and captures the imagination. Billy, go to bed!by Pamela Malcolm is a fun repeating bedtime adventure.
Billy is having trouble falling asleep. He follows his parents’ instructions to go to bed, but each time, something disturbs him. First, there’s a ghost. Then, he can’t sleep because of a skeleton in the closet. Lastly, a vampire stalks him under the bed. Each time, his parents patiently explain away his fears. Finally, aliens land in his room and take him on an adventure. In the end, he finds out he was dreaming about his new alien friends realizing he could visit them the next evening in his dreams.
If you have trouble getting your child to sleep, here’s a fun picture book that will make them laugh and try to make friends in their sleep like Billy. This will make a great read-aloud every night and maybe convince your toddler they’ll make friends while they sleep. Plus, there are a slew of other Billy books that your child will enjoy. This will make a great addition to your nighttime read-alouds.
What’s behind door number thirty-two? That’s the question that leads a reader through this marvelous counting picture book called “Don’t Ever Look Behind Door 32” by B.C.R. Fegan. Illustrations are by Lenny Wen. Through visiting the fantastical Hoo Hotel, your introduced around by the owner to all the rooms, each time warned not to open room number thirty-two. Fairies, trolls, mad scientists, vampire mermaids and other magical amusing creatures await to greet you behind each door. Just don’t open door number thirty-two. By the time you get to the door, the surprise is a logical laugh to end the book.
