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Here it is, laid out before us, a brand, spanking New Year. What’s in store for 2025—sweet honey days or sour, thorny times that dampen our spirits? There’s bound to be a mixture of both, but Queen Been urges us to copycat hive-life, to view the future with “Hope and Humor.” Clover’s picking up on her positive vibe, suggesting three wonderful reads to help us greet 2025 with bravado!
Page On, good Buddies!
The Community Literacy Foundation, in partnership with Neighborhood Reads and with support from its sponsors, provides these books to 37 school and public libraries in Washington, Union, Pacific, St. Clair and surrounding communities.
Learn more at CommunityLiteracyFoundation.org.
Youngest Read
Laugh it up with “Lefty: A Story That Is Not All Right,” by Mo Willems, of Pigeon fame, and Dan Santat, who contributes zany, colorful pictures in a book that elevates being left-handed with off-handed humor.
Facts and fun are found in the covers of this creative offering, an energetic conversation between two narrators, a right hand and left hand. Together the hands, each with its own personality, lay bare the history of how left-handed folks were viewed in ancient times.
“You might be told you were born wrong. You might be fired or arrested or teased or thrown out of your village.” This information shocks the right hand, who replies, “Wazzza-Wassa-Why!?!”
In time, people began to realize being left-handed wasn’t so awful. Being a lefty started to be viewed as A-okay—as just one hand among many, not a stand-out negative trait to mark you for life.
Though “Lefty” is a light-hearted read, it has a serious message about inclusion and fitting in. It’s final statement is a powerful, “… You can’t be born WRONG.”
Middle Read
Starlings might look plain, not as flashy as Cardinals or Blue Jays, but they have a unique talent that sets them apart. Starlings can mimic sounds with precision. “Star and the Maestro: How a Musical Bird Made Melodies with Mozart,” by Thor Hanson, is the story of a special bird who made a lasting impression on a famous musician, providing the composer with pure joy and inspiration.
Mozart lived in Vienna, Austria, (1756-1791), a time when unusual pets were all the rage with the wealthy. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to see monied people clamoring to own everything from peacocks to aardvarks. No one, however, would consider a starling a worthy pet.
“In a crowd of such uncommon animals, Poor Star felt uncommonly plain.” Raised on a farm, the starling was believed to be a “pest in the grain.”
That all changed the day Mozart happened to walk by a shop and hear a bird singing one of his piano concertos, with a chirp, Star’s life changed drastically. Star’s role was elevated to superstar status—the feathered country bumpkin becoming Mozart’s bestie, “… a starling who captured his heart.” Winning illustrations help tell this amazing tale, one delivered in verse that’s musical in its own right.
Oldest Read
Readers meet the charming, but anxiety ridden Zoey in the fabulous, fantastical read “The Forgotten Magic of Zoey Turner,” by Erin Stewart. To say 12-year-old Zoey has ginormous worries is an understatement.
Since her father passed away, Zoey’s world has gotten smaller as she tries to control negative events from happening to her or those she loves, like her mom or her best friend, Lena, “her only friend.” Zoey has a fixation with numbers, constantly uses hand sanitizer, won’t ride a bus and suffers panic attacks. Zoey’s anxiety has gotten so severe she’s dropped out of school and has to see a “feelings” doctor to learn tools to deal with her fears.
Naturally, Zoey is embarrassed to be so anxious and keeps her dread mostly to herself. Until she meets a boy nicknamed Tuna at a book signing for Zoey’s favorite fantasy series by Raven M. Wells. It turns out that Tuna has some real problems with anxiety too, a shared affliction that bonds them.
Another thing that helps Zoey is her passion for reading and writing. She constantly visits the neighborhood bookstore, located near her mother’s bakery. At the bookstore, Zoey is consumed with a magical series about a character named Kat, who seems to have no fear, a girl Zoey longingly wishes she could be like. When Zoey is gifted a special pencil at the book signing, she has reason to believe it has magical powers that allow her to write stories with happy endings in which only good events happen to people she cares about.
There’s plenty of magic, humor, humanness and wisdom in Zoey Turner—a character readers will come to love in a new book that reminds us we are not alone in a world that sometimes seems fearsome and cruel. Zoey gives us hope.
Written by Chris Stuckenschneider.
Copyright 2025, Community Literacy Foundation.
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