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The STEM Encyclopedia of Wildlife Words: An Illustrated a to Z of 100 Animal Terms for Kids to Know by Jenny Jacoby designed by Vicky Barker

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 31 March 2026

Publisher: b small publishing limited
ISBN: 9781916851689

 

 
 
 
 
 
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An illustrated encyclopedia covering the top 100 animal-related words that children ought to know. Organised in alphabetical order with each term beautifully and humorously illustrated, the essential concepts will fascinate scientifically minded animal-lovers.

There is a contents list at the front and a full index at the back, plenty of extra words and definitions … plus fascinating facts. 

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Jenny Jacoby is an experienced and respected non-fiction author of non-fiction titles for children. Here are some of her other books:

 

Grandpa Kuma by Michelle Maiden

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ACHUKA Book of the Week 29 May 2024

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This is an outstanding picture book about communication across language barriers with charming illustrations and great page designs. The title includes a scan code for a free Read Along audio book. There is a Glossary at the back with a list of the Japanese words used, with a guide to their pronunciation and an English translation.

Kuma means ‘bear’ in Japanese. “I call him that because he looks warm and cuddly in his picture, like a big bear, ” says Miko as she travels to the airport to welcome him.

Grandpa Kuma has travelled a long way to meet his granddaughter and everyone is excited about the visit. But it soon becomes clear that things may not go to plan. Kuma has plenty to say… but no one understands him. So is it possible to get along and have fun before he has to fly home?

Grandpa is depicted as a polar bear wearing a red tie throughout the book, until the final page which shows a man with white hair and white eyebrows dressed in a white shirt and a red tie.

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Michelle Maiden grew up in Queens, New York in a creative and ethnically diverse household, her mother a Japanese artist and her father a Jewish American poet.  They had lots of weird and wonderful pets roaming around the house throughout her childhood, including raccoons, ferrets and a skunk.  Many of her memories of these creatures are depicted in her work. 

 

Word Trouble by Vyara Boyadjieva

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 16 Jan 2024

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ACHUKA has been drawn to Vyara’s illustrative style before:
A Day That’s Ours [ACHUKA Book of the Day 26 Aug 2022]

This one, her first as author-illustrator, is based on Vyara’s personal experience of moving to a school where a different language was spoken when she was aged 9:

 

 
 
 
 
 
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When Ronnie moves to a new house, in a new country, he’s excited to make friends. But when he introduces himself to everyone at nursery with, “My name is four, I am Ronnie years old,” the other children can’t help but giggle. His words are all mixed up! 

This is a beautiful, moving and sensitively told picture book about language barriers, communication and a very young child’s immigrant experience.

Just look at the storyboarding work that went into bringing the book to its final state of perfection.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Away With Words by Sophie Cameron

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 12 May 2023

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Sophie Cameron is a Scottish middle grade and young adult author based in Spain.

Gala and her dad, Jordi, have just moved from home in Cataluna to a town in Scotland, to live with Jordi’s boyfriend Ryan. Gala doesn’t speak much English, and feels lost, lonely and unable to be her usual funny self. Until she befriends Natalie, a girl with selective mutism. The two girls find their own ways to communicate, which includes collecting other people’s discarded words. They use the words to write anonymous supportive poems for their classmates, but then someone begins leaving nasty messages using the same method – and the girls are blamed. Gala has finally started adapting to her new life in Scotland and is determined to find the culprit. Can she and Natalie show the school who they really are?

The following is extracted from an interview with the author on the publishers website.
Read the full interview…

What was the inspiration behind Away With Words?

I really love learning languages – I think I’ve studied around 15 over the years, though unfortunately I’ve forgotten most of them too! I often find producing different sounds really difficult, though, so the idea of speech having a physical dimension came from feeling like words were literally stuck in my mouth and unable to come out. I was also inspired by children’s books that use language in interesting ways, such as Sophie Someone by Hayley Long and Crongton Knights by Alex Wheatle.

How has Scotland and Spain influenced your writing?

Settings are really important for me, which is why all four of my published books so far take place in Scotland – it’s the place I know best, and being able to visualise the locations and include small, real-life details brings the story to life for me. Away With Words is set in Fortrose on the Black Isle, where I grew up, so it was really nice to be able to include some of my favourite places and weave them into Gala’s story. I’m finding that Spanish elements are cropping up in my writing more and more, though, and I have a few ideas for stories set here too.

Where and when do you do your best writing, and what are you working on at the moment?

I work best in cafes, preferably in the morning. Something about the noise and movement around me gives me a better focus on what I’m working on, and I’m far less likely to get distracted if I’m out of the house. Right now I’m hopping between a few projects: a contemporary MG novel, a YA fantasy, and what will hopefully be my first book for adults.

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Worser by Jennifer Ziegler

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One of The Best Children’s Books of 2022 – New York Times

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“A precocious logophile learns that the spaces between words are as important as the words themselves in this funny, clever, compassionate novel. A bullied 12-year-old boy must find a new normal after his mother has a stroke and his life is turned upside down.” New York Times
“The author has developed her main character so well it’s hard to believe it’s not biography—but it can certainly pass as the most entertaining… crossword artillery you’ll ever read. A lexical story of emotional evolution.” KIRKUS

William Wyatt Orser, a socially awkward middle schooler, is a wordsmith who, much to his annoyance, acquired the ironically ungrammatical nickname of “Worser so long ago that few people at school know to call him anything else. Worser grew up with his mom, a professor of rhetoric and an introvert just like him, in a comfortable routine that involved reading aloud in the evenings, criticizing the grammar of others, ignoring the shabby mess of their house, and suffering the bare minimum of social interactions with others. But recently all that has changed. His mom had a stroke that left her nonverbal, and his Aunt Iris has moved in with her cats, art projects, loud music, and even louder clothes. Home for Worser is no longer a refuge from the unsympathetic world at school that it has been all his life.

Feeling lost, lonely, and overwhelmed, Worser searches for a new sanctuary and ends up finding the Literary Club–a group of kids from school who share his love of words and meet in a used bookstore- something he never dreamed existed outside of his home. Even more surprising to Worser is that the key to making friends is sharing the thing he holds dearest: his Masterwork, the epic word notebook that he has been adding entries to for years. But relationships can be precarious, and it is up to Worser to turn the page in his own story to make something that endures so that he is no longer seen as Worser and earns a new nickname, Worder.

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A is for Bee – an alphabet book in translation by Ellen Heck

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One of The Best Children’s Books of 2022 – New York Times
ACHUKA Book of the Day 12 Dec 2022

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“Beautifully illustrated multilingual book to explore languages with children in such an original way with opportunities to open up great discussions. One for all ages from the very young pre-readers right up to adult…” Just Imagine
“Combining visual verve with a sense of our worldwide connectedness, this both teaches and entertains.” KIRKUS

What letter does the word bee start with? If you said “B” you’re right – in English! But in many, many languages, it actually starts with A. Bee is Anu in Igbo. Ari in Turkish. Aamoo in Ojibwe. And Abelha in Portuguese. Come and explore the gorgeous variations in the ways we talk about familiar things, unified and illuminated through Ellen Heck’s eye-catching, graphic scratchboard details and hidden letterforms.

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Bork by Rhys Kitson

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“A clever premise, a great opportunity for some raucous classroom fun and an important life-lesson delightfully delivered by ten dogs and one bit-part moggy, all courtesy of one playful human author/illustrator.” BfK

There is more than one way to say bark.

Comedy ensues in this not-quite wordless picture book as different dogs, each with a different bark, learn to communicate with each other… and a cat.

This unique and entertaining book teaches children the sound-word for barking in 8 languages — English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Dutch, and Italian — as well as the importance of finding common ground and making yourself understood.

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365 First Words – Little Word Whizz by Dr. Meredith L. Rowe ill. Monika Forsberg

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ACHUKA Book of the Day 6 Jan 2022

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A rich, visual encyclopaedia of first words from a London-based Swedish illustrator.

A companion title to An Interesting Word for Every Day of the Year (which we also recommend), this title introduces first concepts including colours, numbers and shapes, as well as parts of the body, things that go, animals and the world around us.

Compiled in consultation with a Harvard Professor of Early Learning and Development, who is particularly interested in uncovering how variations in children’s early communicative environments contribute to language development, it’s a book that will be valued in all Early Years settings and in households with young children eagerly developing their speaking, listening and observational skills.

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Young Language Learner Award 2014

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The b small Young Language Learner of the Year Award

Next week, on March 11th, independent children’s publisher b small publishing and educational magazine Primary Teacher Update, along with specialist language resource retailer Little Linguist, will be launching The b small Young Language Learner of the Year Award 2014. The award has been designed to encourage teachers, parents and carers to introduce their children to foreign languages in a creative way and to help them develop a passion for language learning – especially significant this year with the introduction of mandatory modern foreign language learning for Key Stage 2 children from September.

The award was first stablished in 2013 with an enthusiastic reaction from teachers, parents and children themselves. Many teachers used the award as a classroom resource to provide an on-going engaging and creative activity for all levels in their foreign language teaching. The quality of entries reflected the ambition and imagination of the young language learners.

“I really enjoyed having the privilege of being a judge and reading the wonderful stories. The stories were clever and appealing, and the illustrations were just right.  Each entrant deserves congratulations for the high quality of work, and the overall winners show such talent that I can’t wait to read the stories they will go on to write in the future.”- Catherine Cheater, Award judge, author and foreign language educational consultant

Due to its success and the positive reaction, the award will become an annual competition with a new name to reflect this.  2014 will also see the introduction of Mandarin, with new judge Liming Guo Barrett, Head of Mandarin Chinese at Hampton School, alongside existing languages French, Spanish, German and Italian.

Children will be provided with a story template and invited to complete their own foreign language book, in the modern language of their choice, with their own words and pictures to accompany their story. The award not only develops language skills but also encourages fun through storytelling.

The Award winners will become published authors with b small publishing making the winning story entry available for free on their website as a PDF e-book. They will also win £100 worth of b small language learning books.

The full public launch will be on March 11th. Closing date for entries is 1st June, with the winner annopunced 1st July.

 

http://www.bsmall.co.uk/competition_results

‘Why the swearing had to stay in When Mr Dog Bites’

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Following the Telegraph’s piece (by Martin Chilton) about the profanity in a young adult novel called When Mr Dog Bites, Bloomsbury’s Director of Children’s Books, Rebecca McNally explains why the publishers decided to allow the swearing

The book isn’t about Tourette’s, but it is very much about language – Dylan’s own curiosity and playfulness with words (not swear words) is part of the joy of the book, what makes it a-mayonnaise-ing, not shizenhowzen; you’ll all be using Dylan-isms by the time you’ve finished reading. The most offensive words in the book are those directed at Dylan and his friend Amir by the ‘normal’ kids in the park (Dylan goes to a special school, which again makes us think about language and the labels those in authority put on people, especially children). They’re offensive because they reduce, humiliate and dehumanise characters we care about. Those words: “Paki”, “spaz”, “mong”, are like verbal IEDs, and they don’t lose their power.

via ‘Why the swearing had to stay in When Mr Dog Bites’ – Telegraph.

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