Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey and Dow Phumiruk

Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey and Dow Phumiruk was published in 2017 and tells the story of Maya Lin, the young woman who created the design for the Vietnam Wall Memorial. 

She was born to Chinese immigrants who fled China. "Her parents had fled China at a time when people were told what to be and how to think. Her parents never told Maya what to be or how to think." Her mother was a poet and her father was an artist who made art with clay. In college, Maya wanted to be an architect. 

In her last year of college, there was a contest to design a memorial to honor the soldiers who died during the Vietnam War. The rules were that the memorial must blend with a park setting and include almost 58,000 names of those who died fighting or who were missing in action. 

"These rules rang true to Maya. She knew the power of names. Maya believed that a name brings back all the memories of a person, more than a photo of a moment in time." 

When a young college student, unknown to the art world was picked as the winner, some people objected, but her design was approved.

"The first time Maya visited the finished wall, she searched for the name of a father of a friend. When she touched the name, she cried, just as she knew others would."

The art in the book by Dow Phumiruk is beautiful and peaceful keeping with the design of the Vietnam Wall. I'm happy to add this book to my home library. 

Read to a child today even if that child is you. 

Allyson Gilmore donated this book to our NICU. 

Unnati Pandya donated this selection. 

Thank you for your continued support of our NICU book project. 

Link to our NICU book registry to donate books to babies in the newborn intensive care unit so their parents can read to them while they grow. You can also donate gently used books to our project by sending them to me or to Angie. Email me for a mailing address. We can use both English and Spanish books. If you have a graduate of the NICU, or if you have a baby whose life you would like to honor by donating books to this project, let me know, and I can make a book plate with their name for the books you donate.

Kindness to Share from A to Z by Todd and Peggy Snow and Kirsten Sevig

 Kindness to Share from A to Z by Todd and Peggy Snow and Kirsten Sevig was published in 2008. I collect alphabet books, so when this one came up as the $1 book at Scholastic, I had to get it. 

I like that Sevig's illustrations show children and families of many backgrounds, so every child can see themselves in this book. This book is a wonderful way to introduce and have a list of things to bring kindness to the world. "Ask someone to play with you. Bring flowers to a person who needs cheering up. Collect canned food for people who are hungry. Do something nice for another person just because. Entertain the younger kids at a family party."

And speaking of kindness, we've had many wonderful donations to our NICU book project in the last two weeks. 

My friend, Michelle, was pairing down her personal collection and sent us quite a few hardback books. She sent these:

And these:

and these:

Thank you Michelle, for you generous donation. 

Here are more of the books that we purchased with a cash donation we received last year. I've been buying them with my teacher Scholastic account and using the bonus points to get even more books for the NICU. 

My daughter, Caitie Jolley, had an Usborne book party, and got us some difficult to find Spanish hardbacks. These are so appreciated. 

A kind person saw a mention of our project on FaceBook and sent these cute board books to our project. Thank you, Allyson Gilmore. 

Angela Jensen, one of our regular benefactors, sent these fun books. 

In the last year, we've had a regular anonymous donor buy board books in both English and Spanish for our project. They include a bookmark and a flyer about the benefits of reading to your baby. I love that they do this for us. 

We greatly appreciate every single book that is donated to our project as it allows the parents of our NICU babies to feel a little more normal in a stressful situation and environment. Your kindness brings light and helps create positive memories. 

Read to a child today even if that child is you. 

Link to our NICU book registry to donate books to babies in the newborn intensive care unit so their parents can read to them while they grow. You can also donate gently used books to our project by sending them to me or to Angie. Email me for a mailing address. We can use both English and Spanish books. If you have a graduate of the NICU, or if you have a baby whose life you would like to honor by donating books to this project, let me know, and I can make a book plate with their name for the books you donate.