Charming. Parents and kids alike will enjoy making all the fun sound effects. A wonderful way to teach kids about constellations and groups of stars. A delight in its unapologetic diversity. In addition, has the aspect of discussing math and rotation of objects that helps introduce this concept at an early age.

Have you ever looked up at the constellations in the sky and scratched your head because you can't possibly see how the ancients saw Cassiopeia and her chair in those bunch of stars up there.

That is Usha's problem. Because she is lying a different way than her sister, she doesn't see the Big Dipper, but a Big Digger, with the scoop part of the constellation, being the the body of the digger.

Then, when her cousins come out, they see a kite, because they are lying a different way.

It is all about how viewpoint changes things, although the STEM research says that this is how to learn about geometry and spatial relationships.

<em> Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

What you see is all a matter of perspective. Usha learns this when she and her family lie down to gaze at the stars and each person sees something different. The illustrations are beautiful and help tell the story of the Big Digger. I enjoyed that there were facts about astrology and math at the end.

4 stars

In this extremely adorable and educational picture book, Usha and her big sister, Aarti, do some stargazing and some awesome prep for future careers in STEM! The illustrations are appealing and clear, and the additions to the end of the text provide some good, entry-level insight into math and astronomy.

I do wish there was a bit more character development happening here, even considering the genre, but this is a wonderful and entertaining read nonetheless!

OH. MY. GOSH. SO. FREAKING. CUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE. Every single page of this book was just so filled with joy and dance and cartwheels and stars. The artwork in this kind of reminded me of She's Charmed and Dangerous, a card game I played when I was really little. Which is to say that I *adored* the artwork in this.

A great book about stars and perspectives for young kids!

This book is beautiful. This book is fun. This book is clever. I loved it. I loved little Usha wanting to cartwheel and trying again and again. I loved her love of trucks. And I loved the girls learning to see things from each other's point of view (and the mathematics lesson on the importance of perspective that lead into). This is the absolute perfect book to sit and read with small kids whose spatial reasoning skills are in development because the fun and entertaining story and illustrations will keep them engaged through the more detailed educational matter in the last pages (after seeing the Big Digger with Usha who wouldn't want to learn about how other cultures around the world see the same stars?)

This is a charming picture book about a three girls making stories out of the stars - which is in itself, a story as old as time! This would be a lovely book for teachers or parents teaching about shapes and constellations, or simply imagination.

I reviewed a copy made available by the publisher via Netgalley - Thank you very much for that!

First of all:
I love the fac that Usha is a brown girl with an obsession for daggers, considering that in many Asian cultures there are strict gender roles that sometimes even apply to children - so seeing Usha loving daggers can be empowering for girls that are just like her.
I also love, that both the author and the illustrator are in fact brown!

All in all this story is about children using maths and science in their daily adventures.

Usha is a little girl who lives in her own world and likes diggers..
One night she discovers her sister on the gras, who is looking at constellations and shows Usha one of them.
But Usha sees something completely different in the constellation and insists that she is right.
In the course of the story it teaches us that every person has a different view of things and that this sometimes depends on where the person stands at the moment.

I love the authors note at the end, that many cultures in this world see different motifs in the same constellations and also names some individual ones and what they see.

Usha and the Big Digger is one of the cutest children's books I've read so far.
The illustrations are wonderful and always go very well with the short texts, which, by the way, are very child-friendly and also accessible. Children would be able to follow this story.

I hope this beautiful story will be translated into German at some point, I would definitely like to read it to my future children.

There are hardly any books I like to rank more than the highest. If I could, I’d give this one 5+ stars. Why? I love, love, love the illustrations. The purple sky, the big-eyes Usha with her top knot, Aarti and Gloria with their cute hairstyles are just too good to describe.
I’ve been hoping for the publisher to approve my request ever since my friend reviewed this book. Finally, I got my hands on it and didn’t even wait for a second to read it.
Being a children’s book, it comes with a moral about how different perspectives see the same thing in a different light. Math is also involved but only towards the end.
The best part is the recurring attempts by Usha to master the cartwheel. Flippety Thump! Lol. I knew a kid who did the same in my house every evening. Boy, how she tried to get it right! Usha reminded me of the kid (now all grown up) and made me smile even wider. Do I need any more reasons to say that I love this one?
Thank you, NetGalley and Charlesbridge Publishing, for the ARC.

Okay, I LOVED THIS! I’m half Indian, and I never had kids books that featured someone who looked like me. I love the story and the illustrations so much!

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a cute storybook about a little girl that likes cartwheels and trucks. She discovers the big dipper with her sister as they gaze at the sky. While I liked the concept of the story, I felt a bit confused with how distracted the little girl became as she attempts to find the big dipper while cartwheeling and playing with trucks. I couldn't tell what the author was trying to tell us until the end. Overall, a nice storybook with plenty of bright pictures.

This is a beautiful book with a science-loving group of girls at its centre. If your child is interested in space, this would be a particularly good choice. The illustration style is bright and detailed, perfect for the story.

This ranks among the cutest books ever in terms of illustrations. And when the story matches the graphics, what more could you want!

Little Usha tries her best to see the Big Dipper as shown to her by her elder sister Aarti, but all she sees is a Big Digger. Another thing Usha tries hard to accomplish is a cartwheel. The entire story moves with her valiant attempts at conquering the cartwheel and convincing Aarti that what is in the sky is actually a Digger and not a Dipper.

The blurb states that the book involves the idea of math but it comes out very subtly. What you can actually see in the story is the idea of spatial sense and rotational mathematics. But regardless of whether there is explicit math or not, the book is perfect! I loved the three little girls (the third being their cousin Gloria), I adored the illustrations, I loved the sound of Usha’s attempted cartwheels (“Flippety Thump!“ :D :D :D ), I loved every single thing in the gem of a book.

The icing on the cake? Indian-American characters. Yippee!

Heartily recommend this to all the little ones out there. Go attempt cartwheels, discover your own versions of constellations, enjoy the magic of math, and read this book!

Thank you, NetGalley and Charlesbridge, for the Advanced Review Copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Part of a series well-constructed in the way it uses simple stories of kids from around the world to show off mathematical lessons, this one has some girls star-gazing from their garden at night. One sees the Big Dipper, but our heroine does love her plastic dumper trucks, and is insistent that it's the Big DIGGER. A third sees something else. Once again there's almost a sub-plot, which is quite remarkable considering how brief these books are – here, our main character's inability at doing cartwheels. The lesson is once more worn very lightly, and rotation, patterns and suchlike all come into play if you want to keep up the educational side. The biggest lesson for me was the multiple ways the world's cultures have seen the same seven stars. And here's four more dazzlers from me, too.