Latest news with #picturebook
NHK
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NHK
Ohtani shares spotlight with pup in children's book
Major League Baseball star Ohtani Shohei's dog will be the protagonist in a picture book for children. The Japanese two-way player's dog, Dekopin, known as Decoy among US fans, drew attention after appearing in the first-pitch ceremony for a game at Dodger Stadium last season. Decoy gripped the ball in its mouth and delivered it from the pitcher's mound to Ohtani, serving as catcher behind the plate. Bobble-head dolls of Ohtani holding Decoy were distributed at the game. The picture book will be titled "Decoy Saves Opening Day." It tells the story of a dog tasked with the ceremonial first pitch for the opening game. But the animal leaves its favorite ball at home, then must struggle to make it in time for the event. Ohtani will be among the authors of the book. It will be released in February next year in eight countries including Japan.
BBC News
24-06-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Wolverhampton author creates ADHD picture book to help others
An author and illustrator with ADHD has called for her new picture book explaining the condition to be made free to local schools after being inundated with Dempsey, from Wolverhampton, said an online poll she started, offering free copies to three local schools, had received hundred of votes."That went quite crazy," she said. "I was expecting it to be just like five or six locally, but loads of people kept tagging their school on... It's something that could really help."She is now seeking funding to make it more widely available and has approached her local MP's office and councillors for advice. Mrs Dempsey, who creates social media content and blogs as The Dempsey Diaries, was diagnosed when she was 27, during the Covid had felt "different" growing up, but assumed it was because her family were Jehovah's Witnesses and her dad worked as a busker performing as a tap-dancing when she had her own children, she struggled to cope with the demands of motherhood, such as organising packed lunches and getting to school on time."I felt like I was getting worse and couldn't understand why," she said. She described her diagnosis as an "oh, that makes sense now" moment but subsequently found the "novel-sized books" about ADHD too daunting to is now passionate about helping others understand it in a "short and sweet" format."I've made this book specifically for people like me who haven't really got the capacity to sit and read through but need all the information," she said. 'Learning acceptance' So you've got ADHD, NOW WHAT? was written with adults and teenagers in mind and explains topics such sleep problems, masking, and differences between men and women with the hopes to access about £2,000 for all Wolverhampton schools to receive three free copies, then will look at funding to distribute the book further afield."If I'd known this 20 years ago, would my life have been completely different?" she asked."If kids at 12 or 13 realise there's nothing wrong with you, it's just a different sort of brain, they might learn acceptance."She next plans an ADHD book specifically for younger children, and to then focus on something for people with both autism and ADHD. Follow BBC Wolverhampton & Black Country on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Wall Street Journal
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Children's Books: ‘When I Became Your Daddy'
A baby sea otter frisks with his father through Britta Teckentrup's pastel illustrations in 'When I Became Your Daddy,' a rhyming picture book by Susannah Shane. Designed to be read aloud by a father—ideally at bedtime, perhaps on Father's Day—the text consists of mild, amiable words of support on the theme of paternal steadfastness. 'If you ever lose your way and everything feels wrong,' the listening child will hear, 'remember that I'm here for you—to help guide you along.' Ms. Teckentrup's stylized pictures give buoyancy to this gentle and sedate exercise for children ages 2-7. The writer Fran Nuño evokes more sophisticated ideas in 'The Vase With the Golden Cracks,' a picture book about a Japanese father who passes down to his son a love of Japan's language and culture. Zuzanna Celej's pale watercolor-and-collage illustrations bring a sense of hushed elegance to the son's narrative. We learn that the father keeps a vase full of snippets of paper with Japanese words that lack simple corollaries in English (or in Spanish, from which Jon Brokenbrow translated the original text). Through the fictional father, children ages 5-10 will learn words and concepts including ikigai, which means 'our mission in life, the one that makes us wake up every day full of joy.' An afterword contains other charming, untranslatable examples such as zanka, 'the flowers that still stay upright in a flower arrangement when all the others have gone floppy,' and amaoto, 'the sound of rain falling.' There is a minor error in the first sentence—a superfluous 'that'—but such a solecism is easily forgiven in a book as unusual as this one. The writer David Elliott and the illustrator Eugene Yelchin pair their talents to droll and beguiling effect in 'Boar and Hedgehog,' a picture book for children ages 4-9 about a prickly friendship. Boar is a sour, solitary fellow who, in Mr. Yelchin's illustrations, glowers out at the world from hostile and heavy-lidded eyes. Hedgehog is a perky little character who cannot keep from meddling in the boar's affairs. Hedgehog suggests that Boar make his den in a sunnier spot, for example, and that he avoid living too close to a rising river. When Boar gets a stomachache, having 'overdone it in the strawberry patch,' it is Hedgehog who trots along with the makings of herbal tea. Boar takes the remedy and, we read, 'sooner than you could say dyspepsia, he was feeling right as rain.' The hedgehog's acts of kindness add up until even the supremely antisocial boar can no longer ignore them, giving rise to a spirit of real (if grudging) amity.
