Cover Image: The Extraordinary Pause

The Extraordinary Pause

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Member Reviews

The Extraordinary Pause by Sara Sadik is a lovely book for children that explains what happened in the worldwide pandemic and shutdown. This book encapsulates all the good that came with the world coming together to fight this virus and protect each other. It is a lovely remembrance of those early days and I think kids and adults would like this book. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

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This beautifully illustrated book provides young readers with a simplified version of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Overall, I though the book missed the mark on how this could have been shown to the target audience. The book is incredibly bleak while at the same time feeling like it glosses over most of the awful things happening during the pandemic. It balances it by having a hopeful note, which didn't seem justified giving the fact that there is still not an end in sight for COVID-19.

Further, it is mostly targeted towards children from a very specific social-economic backgrounds and doesn't acknowledge how their situation is different from the children's' from all around the world.

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A beautiful, thought provoking book which explores how life has changed for so many people in the past year. Considering both the many hardships people have suffered, but also the way that lockdowns allowed many people to slow down and appreciate what they have a little bit more.
This will be a great health and well-being resource to help children understand and speak about what they have experienced and how they feel after this time of massive upheaval.

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The Extraordinary Pause gives a look into the world during the covid pandemic. It looks at both what has been taken from us during these times but also the things we gained. A great book to encourage kids to talk about how they feel about covid and the changes it brought with it.

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A really beautiful and thought provoking book. Read this to my 7 and 5 year olds and although there were a few big words I needed to explain they were very receptive to it and it provoked a good discussion about the past year or so. The illustrations are perfect. I felt very thoughtful and a bit emotional after reading - a little like how I feel after reading some of Oliver Jeffers more recent books about planet earth. Lovely book, hope it does well.

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"For some, life s-l-o-w-e-d down, while for many others, it had never moved faster."

This book is the life in the pandemic through the lens of a child. I like how the authors help children understand that, while the pandemic was terrible, it did allow us to slow down and "really notice each other". The illustrations are just great and are able to convey the full message of the story.

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I am so happy I came across this simple yet meaningful book about the pandemic/coronavirus/2020!!

Even though it is a children’s book, I appreciated it as an adult because I felt so much meaning behind each statement.

I truly think this could be a book teachers use in the near future when referencing how this virus affected the world.

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The Extraordinary Pause is an excellent picture book. I think it would help younger audiences connect with and understand their experiences from 2020. I think it would help parents talk with kids and help them process what we all went through.
A very touching book, I liked it.

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I enjoyed The Extraordinary Pause. A short, quick read that reflects on the current pandemic. The illustrations are adorable and the book explores some of the positives and hardships of the pandemic. I think this book could have been longer to explore daily life during the pandemic more, but overall a great little read.

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Children’s non fiction about parenting and children. I really loved this. It was a beautifully written non fiction piece of literature and I really enjoyed it. It was everything I wanted in a book and will for sure keep an eye out for more from this author in the future!

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This book is great to explain what happened in 2020 and to open up a discussion about it with kids. Our world changed so quickly from what we knew and made us appreciate it so much more when we weren't able to do the things we typically did in our daily lives.

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I absolutely love this and will be buying it for my nieces. I love the creativity of viewing the pandemic from a. Child's eye and the illustrations are gorgeous! This is such a good idea to bring that this is a strange situation to light and talk about it rather than e to make children just look past it.

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I thought this was a very cute book that emphasized what was (and is) difficult about the pandemic . I appreciated the illustrations and how it was written through a child's perspective. The language is appropriate for young children but I'm sure a wide variety of ages could relate to the story. The only complaint I have is that on one page it says "kisses were illegal". Kisses were definitely not illegal and that's sort of a flippant use of the word "illegal".

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This will be one of those books I will say will definitely help children understand the pandemic in the near future because it broke everything down piece by piece so it’s adaptable to understand. It was a pretty good book to follow as you read and continuously follow the story. I would say that the author and the illustrator did an amazing job at the book itself because I loved it. Again a very easy 5 out of 5 star I’ve given. It was pretty thought provoking as I tend to love in books!

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Every book I read and review starts off with the full five stars and I'm always hopeful that it'll end with them all too.

The first thing I notice is that the author has said the reading age is "Baby - 11 years" and it's got 38 pages, so I'm thinking it's a picture book, in which case a child over 5-6 years old just wouldn't be interested and such young children wouldn't know what "pause" meant, let alone "extraordinary" I get that the author wanted to incorporate the "pause" symbol but such a young audience wouldn't appreciate it, so the first star is already coming off and I haven't even opened the cover yet!

Judging by the vocabulary choices, I'm guessing that the author is aiming it at the top end of the reading age group, but didn't have enough inspiration/motivation to make it into a longer book. I realise that it's a non-fiction book, but surely that should have even more words and a better, more carefully chosen language in it? I personally feel, at the moment, that the author has had the idea to write this book, but didn't have enough words to say what she wanted to say, so said it was suitable for younger children so that she felt able to get away with a smaller word count and number of pages? That's the second star gone already unfortunately.

The author is definitely confused about her audience because she's using less than a sentence on every page, which is suitable for younger children, but she's also using words that are more suitable for the older age group. Younger children would be restless in frustration and older children would have stopped reading by the second page. The third star is coming off already unfortunately and I'm only half way through the book!

Thankfully I've just finished the book and it was hugely disappointing but many of the graphics were good, so that stopped me from knocking off the fourth star. Unfortunately the only recommendation I can make about this book is to avoid it unless you want to be as hugely disappointed as I am.

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I can't imagine how kids are making sense of the past 18 months, but they've shown wonderful resilience and ingenuity. This book is a lovely resource to give them a framework and vocabulary to talk about what has happened to them as a result of the pandemic. It's especially valuable because it prompts an examination of both the good and the bad, acknowledging that things are rarely all one or the other.

This has a very thoughtful, soothing tone and would be great as a classroom read and especially appropriate for small groups where kids can discuss their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with each other. I would definitely recommend it for pre-K through at least mid-elementary.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

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The Extraordinary Pause by Sara Sadik and beautifully illustrated by Karine Jaber examines the pandemic through the eyes of a child. With brief, simplistic text and complementary illustrations, the book successfully conveys the enormity of the impact that Covid has had on us all, both young and old, the world over. Unfortunately, the file I was sent did not download properly, and I was unable to view the pages in their entirety, but I was able to ascertain a strong sense of the timely message that is so effectively conveyed.

Many thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an ARC.

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