Penguin Days
Age range 7 to 9
A 2020 Bank Street Best Book and the second title in the acclaimed Slug Days Stories, now in paperback.
Lauren and her family drive to a farm in North Dakota to visit relatives and celebrate her Auntie Joss’ wedding. But Lauren finds to her dismay that she is expected to do more than meet adults who hug her and invade her personal space. Lauren is going to be — horror of all horrors — a flower girl.
Lauren has Autism Spectrum Disorder, and she sees the world a little differently from other kids. What makes her comfortable are her routines and her strategies to manage her anxiety, which can get out of control in no time. So it is a challenge to deal with her rambunctious cousins, try on scratchy dresses, and follow impossible directions about going down aisles slowly-but-not-like-a-sloth and tossing pretend flowers around. Is it any surprise that Lauren flips her lid more than once? But while having an extended family seems like a lot of trouble at first, she’s about to learn just how much they can care for one another.
In Penguin Days, two award winners revisit second-grader Lauren from the acclaimed Slug Days with equal humour and empathy. Drawing on her experience teaching children with ASD, Sara Leach creates an energetic character who stomps eloquently off the page. And Rebecca Bender's delightful black-and-white illustrations show, in Lauren's fraught situations and facial expressions, all the love and assertiveness that could possibly dwell together in one unique, little person.
Sara Leach hails from Whistler, BC, where she loves to ski, hike and bike. Her middle grade novel Count Me In won the Red Cedar Book Award for 2012/13. In addition to being a children's author, she is also an elementary school teacher-librarian. She has had the privilege of teaching several amazing students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and her experience working with them inspired her chapter books Slug Days, Penguin Days, and Duck Days.
RebeccaBender is awell-loved author-illustrator of children's books as well as an art directorand designer. Her books include the popular Giraffe and Bird collection, HowDo You Feel? And the illustrations for Peach Girl by Raymond Namakura, as well as those for the Slug Days Stories. Rebecca's awards and honors include the OLA BlueSpruce Award, a Cooperative Children's Book Center best-of-the-year choice, anda Toronto Public Library best-of-the-year selection. She graduated from theOntario College of Art and Design at the top of her class, earning the Medalfor Illustration. Rebecca lives in Burlington, Ontario, with her husband and three children.
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