KidLit RADIO: WHEN THE COUSINS CAME Read Out Loud

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Sometimes when we are really excited about something that is going to happen, we picture it in our minds beforehand — what a birthday party will be like, what might be under the Christmas tree, or even how a visit with our favourite people might go. Sometimes what ends up happening isn’t quite how we imagined it!

In this podcast episode of Read Out Loud, join author/illustrator Katie Yamasaki as she reads WHEN THE COUSINS CAME, a book about difference, adversity, and how we deal with things when they don’t quite meet our expectations.

Watch Katie’s Episode of Read Out Loud

ABOUT THE BOOK

WHEN THE COUSINS CAME
by Katie Yamasaki

Lila is excited for her cousins Takeo and Rosie to visit. They’re going to ride bikes, paint, and camp together! But when the cousins arrive, everything’s wrong: Rosie and Takeo are better painters than Lila, have skateboards instead of bikes, and don’t want to camp outside. Lila is terribly disappointed until the cousins make her a surprise: a big banner for their “best cousin” Lila! This sensitive story about insecurity, hosting, and friendship reminds children that negative thoughts and anxiety over exclusion don’t always translate to reality.

ABOUT KATIE

Yamasaki’s mural work has enabled her to travel widely, creating visual dialogues among diverse communities. From schools to prisons, housing occupations to hospitals, Yamasaki sees her art as a vehicle for dialogue, a tool for building platforms for communication. Yamasaki has painted over 80 murals around the world. Another major focus of Yamasaki’s work is storytelling. She has published 3 books: Honda, The Boy Who Dreamed of Cars (Lee and Low, 2007); Lifelines, the Black Book of Proverbs (Broadway Books/Random House, 2009), and Fish for Jimmy, her first book as both author and illustrator (Holiday House, 2013). Yamasaki also has two additional books in the works as author/illustrator, “When the Cousins Came,” (Holiday House, est. 2017) and the biography of her architect grandfather, Minoru Yamasaki, “YAMA,” (Lee & Low, est. 2017). Yamasaki earned BA at Earlham College and her MFA in the Illustration as Visual Essay program from the School of Visual Arts in 2003, where she is currently a member of the faculty.Yamasaki comes from a huge, diverse family, that is full of (among many other things), artists and teachers.

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