It's Afghan schoolgirl Aria's first day back at school since her accident. She's excited, but she's also worried about sitting on the hard floor all day with her new prosthetic "helper-leg." Just as Aria feared, sitting on the floor is so uncomfortable that she can't think about learning at all. She knows that before the war changed many things in Afghanistan, schools like hers had benches for students to sit at. If she had a bench, her leg would not hurt so much. The answer is obvious: she will gather materials, talk to Kaka Najar, the carpenter in the old city, and learn to build a bench for herself. In A Sky-Blue Bench, Bahram Rahman, author of The Library Bus, returns again to the setting of his homeland, Afghanistan, to reveal the resilience and resolve of young childrenespecially young girlswho face barriers to education. Illustrator Peggy Collins imbues Aria with an infectious spunkiness and grit that make her relatable even to readers with a very different school experience. An author's note gently introduces an age-appropriate discussion of landmines and their impact on the lives of children in many nations, especially Afghanistan, which has the highest concentration of landmines of any country in the world. Don't missThe Library Bus,also by Bahram Rahman Winner of the Middle East Book AwardFinalist for the Governor General's Literary AwardFinalist for the Florida Literary Association Children's Book AwardFinalist for the OLA Forest of Reading Blue Spruce AwardWinner of the Northern Lights Book Award: Multicultural Category

 

 

This book is the winner of numerous awards

This book is aimed at children at US 1st grade-3rd grade.

This book has been graded for interest at 5-8 years.

There are 32 pages in this book.

This is a picture book. A picture book uses pictures and text to tell the story. The number of words varies from zero ('wordless') to around 1k over 32 pages. Picture books are typically aimed at young readers (age 3-6) but can also be aimed at older children (7+).

This book was published in 2021 by Pajama Press .

Peggy Collins is a veteran illustrator of over a dozen picture books, both fiction and non-fiction including In the Garden and In the Snow , both of which were included in the CCBC's list of Best Books for 2010. Though she has dabbled in all sorts of media, she now works primarily in gouache, pencil crayon, and ink.