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Ode to the King

A Place to Land: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation by Barry Wittenstein & Jerry Pinkney (2019)
J  323.092  WIT
Martin Luther King, Jr. was once asked if the hardest part of preaching was knowing where to begin. No, he said. The hardest part is knowing where to end. "It's terrible to be circling up there without a place to land."  Finding this place to land was what Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled with, alongside advisors and fellow speech writers, in the Willard Hotel the night before the March on Washington, where he gave his historic "I Have a Dream" speech. But those famous words were never intended to be heard on that day, not even written down for that day, not even once.

Dolittle

Robert Downey, Jr. has transitioned from a superhero who likes to hear himself talk to a literary classic who talks to the animals.  Dolittle hits the big screen this weekend.  The star-studded cast also includes Rami Malek, Octavia Spencer, John Cena, Emma Thompson, Antonio Banderas, Jim Broadbent, Tom Holland, Ralph Fiennes, and Selena Gomez.

"After losing his wife, the eccentric Dr. John Dolittle, famed doctor and veterinarian of Queen Victoria's England, hermits himself away behind the high walls of Dolittle Manor with only his menagerie of exotic animals for company.  But when the young queen falls gravely ill, a reluctant Dolittle is forced to set sail on an epic adventure to a mythical island in search of a cure, regaining his wit and courage as he crosses old adversaries and discovers wondrous creatures."

If Pluto Was a Pea

Space is so . . . BIG.  It's hard to wrap our heads around just HOW BIG!  This picture book helps compare the sizes of the planets in terms we can more easily grasp.

If Pluto Was a Pea by Gabrielle Prendergast & Rebecca Gerlings
E  523.49  PRE
In this informative and friendly story, two children—one with puffball pigtails, a gap-tooth smile, and a pair of moonboots; the other in a hipster sweater, striped trousers, and tousled hair—spend a night camping in a backyard. The girl enthusiastically reads from a book about space. Observing the stars around them, the two contemplate the relative sizes of the planetary bodies: “Pluto is much smaller than the other planets. That’s why it’s called a ‘Dwarf Planet.’ ” They use familiar objects as reference points to compare Pluto to the other planets (“If Pluto was a pea... Mercury would be a marble”), including measurements throughout.  Prendergast and Gerlings capture the children’s sense of wonder and relatable quest for adventure—both in their camping excursion and curiosity about galaxies beyond. [from Publishers Weekly]

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