Books like All the Ways to be Smart
By Davina Bell
For the kid who isn't the fastest reader or the best at sums but lights up a room some other way, this book says that counts too. Tender, playful, and quietly reassuring, with a gentle rhyming bounce.
A wave sweeps ten rubber ducks off a cargo ship, scattering them across the sea to meet a dolphin, a whale, and other creatures, while the last little duck drifts alone until nightfall.
A warm, direct address to a girl reader, moving through everyday moments — muddy puddles, freckled faces, tabletop dances — to remind her she's powerful, valued, and worthy of love just as she is.
A girl who loves acting out every story she hears sets her heart on playing Peter Pan in the school play, then hears a classmate say she can't — because she's a girl, and because she's Black.
A giraffe named Gerald longs to dance but his crooked knees and thin legs keep tripping him up, until an unlikely friend offers just the encouragement he needs.
A parent looks at a child and wonders aloud, in rhyme, about all the different people they might grow up to be — brave, clever, silly, wise — no matter what.
A gallery of animal families — ducks, pandas, hippos, tigers, and more — appears in framed portraits, each one showing a different way to be a family, from two moms to a kid with just a pet plant.
A little girl and her daddy spend a day at the beach, facing small mishaps — a lost shoe, a ball drifting out to sea, a melting ice-cream cone — that he patiently fixes, one by one.
A poodle growing up among three talented bulldog brothers isn't sure what makes her special — until Gaston's sister Ooh-La-La goes missing in the park and Antoinette feels a pull to find her.
A girl convinced she can't draw jabs an angry dot onto a blank page just to prove her teacher wrong — and that single mark becomes the start of something unexpected.
A zookeeper spends every day visiting his animal friends — racing the tortoise, sitting with the shy penguin, reading to the owl — until he wakes up too sick to come, and they decide to visit him instead.
A little boy named Dave loses his beloved stuffed dog, Dogger, and is heartbroken — until Dogger turns up at the school summer fair, with someone else buying him first.
A young Asian girl notices her eyes look different from her friends' — then realizes her eyes match her mother's, grandmother's, and little sister's, and learns to see them as beautiful.
