Books like At the Drop of a Cat
By Élise Fontenaille
For the kid who'd rather learn from a grandparent's hands and stories than from any worksheet, this is a garden-grown love letter to that kind of teaching. Tender, earthy, and quietly wondrous — like a warm afternoon spent outdoors with someone you adore.
A parent shares a string of tender wishes for a child — to find wonder in flying birds, to know love as vast and constant as the moon loves the sky.
A boy and his father fish before dawn at a Minneapolis pond, not for sport but for food, while stories of a different pond back in Vietnam quietly surface between casts.
A boy named Eli grows up on his grandparents' farm, learning to love the barn, the fields, and the river that surround him — then shares those same places with his baby sister, Sylvie.
Twelve poems follow one family through a full year, from January sledding to July fireworks to autumn leaves underfoot, finding wonder in each month's particular light and weather.
After their father dies, six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother move into a run-down tar-paper shack deep in the Wisconsin woods and slowly turn it into a home.
A gentle tour through nature at dusk, as mother animals — owl, fox, whale, and more — each tell their babies just how deep and boundless their love runs.
A family leaves the comfortable, familiar house they love and moves somewhere new, discovering that home is really the people you share it with.
A young boy visits his grandfather, but neither speaks the other's language, leaving them stuck in awkward silence — until they sit down together to draw, discovering a way to connect without words.
A young man leaves Japan to explore California, falls in love with both places, and spends his life torn between two homelands he can never fully choose between.
A young girl emigrates from Taiwan to America with her family, leaving behind her beloved popo, and stays connected across the ocean through visits, calls, and memories as she grows up.
A great-grandson wanders through his grandfather's topiary garden, where hedges shaped like a farmboy, a soldier, and a chickenpox-covered kid retell a whole lifetime one memory at a time.
A gentle retelling of the Nativity story, set among barn animals who witness a quiet, extraordinary birth on a cold night.
