This week at school I read Willow Finds a Way by Lana Button to all the primary classes. It is a nominee for the Blue Spruce award in the Forest of Reading program. This is the story of a girl named Willow who is very shy and has a hard time finding her voice to speak up. In Willow Finds a Way Kristabelle is having the best birthday party ever and everyone in class is invited. But to stay on the invitation list everyone must do everything that Kristabelle says. Kristabelle is very bossy and everyone is upset but eventually Willow finds a way to fix the problem. In each of the classes that I read to we assigned a happy face, a neutral face or a sad face. In every class the majority was a clear happy face.
The only little complaint I have about this book is that the cover looks very similar to Willow's Whisper. When I brought it out to read a lot of the students insisted that they had already read the book and I had to convince them that I was pretty sure they hadn't, since that was the first time they'd seen it at school. On the other hand, it was really positive that everyone remembered Willow from the Blue Spruce nominees last year.
It's a great book to have in a school library. It deals with shyness, a bully, problem solving and more.