I want to give a shout out today to Marla Frazee’s Caldecott honor title In Every Life. For being an extremely short “read”, a mere 49 words accompanied by illustrations, Frazee’s art and text takes us through life in its spectacular, heartbreaking and ordinary moments with compassion and love. Written in the form of a series of blessings, each illustrated with ten frameless vignettes followed by a wordless pastel double page spread, this book packs a social emotional punch. From my jaded 5th graders to my preK babies, everyone found a lesson they could emblaze on their hearts in this beautiful book. As a funny aside, the image of potty training amongst the images “In every hope, blessed is the doing” definitively sparked the greatest discussion with my K and 1 students with younger siblings most strongly agreeing that the image represented hope and potty snickering being most prevalent amongst boys in the same grades without younger sibs. My grades 3-4 readers were inspired to build on this book by writing and illustrating their own poems of blessing mirroring Frazee’s pattern. Despite the blessing approach, this is not inherently a religious book, but one that honors the entirety of the human experience and has a place in classrooms and school libraries.