Author Elly Berke reads from Listen, Wonder, Ask

When Nadine asks a new friend if she has a coming-here story too, she topples the first domino in a community-wide chain of neighbors and new friends listening to those around them, wondering about their perspectives, and finally asking thoughtful, curious questions.  Listen, Wonder, Ask explores child-like curiosity, and how to handle it with thoughtfulness.

Elly Berke has always loved children’s literature and the power of asking good questions. Her earliest influence was Barbara Cooney whom she met in 1991 at a book signing in Damariscotta, Maine. The characters in this story are inspired by people she has met on her professional journey through public education: leading programs at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, teaching ESL in bilingual schools, and studying Arts in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Outside of writing and teaching, she is a professional actor involved in many projects around her local Somerville, MA and virtually through her home voice over studio.

Luciana Navarro Powell has created art since childhood and became a full-time illustrator in 2001. She moved from watercolor and acrylic paints to the digital brush―loving the freedom and the possibilities of experimentation with textures―and then to mixed media, incorporating photographs and scanned objects with traditional techniques in a digital melting pot. The colors, vibrancy, and warmth of her native Brazil infuse her work with a sunny optimism, humor, and warm human-animal-landscape interactions. As an immigrant, she makes sure that kids can see themselves in her art.