#SunflowerChallenge

Dear Schools,

With the release of our next book, Graduation Day by Piotr Parda, Ripple Grove Press has created the Sunflower Challenge.

Here are the rules:

1. Read Graduation Day and discuss how you can create something positive from the negative actions of others.

2. This spring, plant as many sunflower seeds around your school yard as possible. Look for space in any school garden, cracks in the sidewalk, chipped concrete, around the playground, and anywhere a seed can grow your school yard into a forest of sunflowers.

3. Send us photos by August 31, 2017. We will post and share your photos!

4. We will randomly choose a winning school to receive a signed copy of Graduation Day for your school library.

Let us know you're participating and please share this contest with others and start spreading beauty!

#SunflowerChallenge #KindnessMatters #SpreadtheLove

Graduation Day Review!

Many thanks to Mrs. Ferraris from Reading 32 Pages for this beautiful synopsis and review of Graduation Day!

Brief summary: First scene. There is a student dressed in a graduation gown and mortar looking out of a school window smiling. The wordless story continues with the setting through a bird’s view of a city block all in gray with a school yard in the center. Closer look. There are cracks all over the school building and concrete grounds. Next is a large graduation day banner. Then we see where the plot begins. The student is a victim of a group of children jeering at her, and one shoots a sunflower seed through a straw hitting her in the neck. She picks up the seed. They all go to the graduation ceremony, hear the speech, and  throw their hats in the air. Kids are happy and go home with family members.

She walks alone down the school’s gray halls to her locker one last time where there is a jar full of sunflower seeds revealing to the reader just what type of life this young lady endured. She takes the jar and goes about the empty school grounds planting sunflower seeds in the cracks creating a beautiful bright yellow space.

Comments: Wow. So many words and emotions for a story without words. Not the usual happiness on someone’s graduation day.  This is a story of a person who has been bullied many times made evident of all the sunflower seeds collected in her locker’s jar. She was able to take that hate and meanness and loneliness to create the only bright color in the book…a sunflower garden.  This is a resonating story without words that is not a preachy bullying message of “do not bully; it’s wrong.”  This is about a victim who, despite it all, is able to create hope and beauty where there must have been a lot of heartache. The symbolism of the sunflowers can be understood by even  younger readers.

Graduation Day Review: "Sunny disposition despite bullies"

Many thanks to Book Page for this lovely review of Graduation Day:

Graduation days are supposed to be joyous occasions, so readers who enter the wordless Graduation Day, Piotr Parda’s debut picture book as both author and illustrator, may be surprised to see a bleak, gray cityscape and a school suffering from abandon. Despite the school’s cracks and holes, one young, wide-eyed girl with oversize glasses and dressed in her graduation cap and gown is smiling. She’s still smiling when some ugly bullying classmates, both in character and appearance, laugh, point and shoot a round object at her.

Undeterred, the girl pockets the object and lines up with the rest of the multicultural students. After the obligatory speeches (met with students yawning), tossing of the caps and parental hugs in the parking lot, the girl walks alone down a drab hallway to empty her locker. Once it’s open, readers now see what was shot at her: a seed. Inside the locker is a jar brimming with these same seeds.

Seeds often represent change, and the symbolism is not lost in this context as the girl begins dropping seeds in cracks around the school. Wherever she plants the seeds, sprouts—and eventually, color—burst upward. The sprouts give way to luscious yellow flowers that fill up the school courtyard. A return to the initial city scene now shows a cheery school and yellow flowers spreading beyond its walls. While the messages of bullying, change and peace are clear, the thought-provoking artwork makes this a book to be savored and discussed by readers of all ages.

Sunflower Challenge

Dear Schools,

With the release of our next book, Graduation Day by Piotr Parda, Ripple Grove Press has created the Sunflower Challenge.

Here are the rules:

1. Read Graduation Day and discuss how you can create something positive from the negative actions of others.

2. This spring, plant as many sunflower seeds around your school yard as possible. Look for space in any school garden, cracks in the sidewalk, chipped concrete, around the playground, and anywhere a seed can grow your school yard into a forest of sunflowers.

3. Send us photos by August 31, 2017. We will post and share your photos!

4. We will randomly choose a winning school to receive a signed copy of Graduation Day for your school library.

Please share this contest with others and start spreading beauty!

Graduation Day is on sale now!

Sometimes beautiful things can sprout from the most unlikely circumstances.

Piotr Parda is a human who does human things. He eats, sleeps, and makes things. Blah, blah, blah... 

He is also the illustrator of The Gentleman Bat, written by Abraham Schroeder. Visit his website www.piotrparda.com

Interior artwork from Graduation Day

Reviews

"The author/illustrator's solo debut, Graduation Day clearly demonstrates Parda's genuine flair for visual storytelling, making Graduation Day highly recommended for family, elementary school and community library picture book collections." -Midwest Book Review

"A subtle reminder that education is a gift no amount of bullying can spoil." -Kirkus Reviews

"Though this is a tale about bullying, Parda (The Gentleman Bat) resists the urge to moralize. Instead, he creates a character who responds to aggression with quiet resourcefulness, and without involving grownups or attempting vengeance. His watercolor and monoprint spreads recall Satoshi Kitamura; they’re built on warm, expressive black lines, making even the girl’s dreary school, with its cracked tiles and metal doors, worth a closer look." -Publishers Weekly

Mentions

Read about Graduation Day, and depictions of children living in poverty, in Jules Danielson's More Than One Kind of Mirror on Kirkus Reviews blog.

Read an interview with Piotr and Lauri Fortino on Frog on a (B)log.

Graduation Day Review: "...Parda's genuine flair for visual storytelling."

Many thanks to the Midwest Book Review for their recent review of Graduation Day:

Through simple, full-page, engagingly charming illustrations by Piotr Parda, Graduation Day, without any text or dialogue, shows a day in a life of a girl who takes the actions of others and grows something beautiful. This imaginative and original story delivers a simple but powerful message that sometimes great things can sprout from the most unlikely circumstances. The author/illustrator's solo debut, Graduation Day clearly demonstrates Parda's genuine flair for visual storytelling, making Graduation Day highly recommended for family, elementary school and community library picture book collections.

Graduation Day Sneak Peeks

Want a little sneak peek into Graduation Day by Piotr Parda?

Check out Jules Danielson's blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast