My Cousin MoMo

The 2018 Pennsylvania One Book, Every Young Child is My Cousin Momo by Zachariah OHora


So what is Pennsylvania One Book?  Direct quote taken off the back cover of my book is a program that "encourages adults to read daily to the young children in their lives and to engage children in conversations and experiences around the story and illustrations."

I love this.  Each year they pick a new book and many of the preschools, and libraries have the book, do story times, meet the author, and have special activities.  The whole point is to bring about more reading to children, get them excited and relating to books.  I know Pennsylvania isn't the only state to do this so check your state to see if they have a "One Book"  if you want more information about this program,  and about the author check out their site www.paonebook.org

Zachariah OHora has gotten the PA One Book before, in 2012 with his book Stop Snoring, Bernard!.  He clearly is a great story teller for small kids. My Cousin MoMo originally came out in 2015 and from talking to librarians it was already a well liked book and everyone was excited to talk about MoMo.

The story is about MoMo who comes for a visit, he's a bit shy at first and has his own way of doing things.  His cousins make him feel weird for being different and feeling like they don't want him there.  Then when they realized how they hurt MoMo's feelings they try things his way and they all have a great time.

Photo take by my 5yr old

The book is super easy to read, each page only has one or two short sentences.  It's easy to keep the attention of younger kids.  Wednesday I got to go into my daughter's Head Start and read this book to two groups of preschoolers.  Now I love curling up and reading to my daughter but it was so much fun reading to a large group of 3-5 year olds.  I had them "help" me read by filling in the blanks, predicting what would happen, and telling me the emotions they saw.  I started off asking them if they liked the book to put their hands on their head.  Then I'd say "My Cousin ...." they all yelled "MoMo." It was adorable.  One little boy even told me the author!  It was so much fun reading to the class.


The illustrations are also my Mr OHora and are colorful, large, and engaging.  They tell just as much of the story as the text does.

Part of the PA One Book program is to engage in conversation and activities about and around the book.  My Cousin MoMo offers so much to talk about as you're reading the book, emotions, where do they live, what did they find while playing hide and seek, have you ever felt like MoMo did, and so on.  But the learning and lessons don't end once the book is finish.  We watched videos about flying squirrels.  Part of my daughter's homework was to make a squirrel out of a paper bag and use whatever we wanted to make it unique.  My older daughter thought that was fun so we made a family night out of this with each of them making their own squirrel and I had my older daughter make up a story to go with hers that we talked about over diner.  It was a neat being in the school and seeing how different each squirrel was.  You can go out and play hide and seek MoMo style (which being a fan of hiking and photography I love MoMo's way!)  You can talk about cousins, how is a cousin related to you? Family tree.  How many cousins do you have, and where are they from?  The best part of these activites? They don't require anything you don't have already.  You can make up your how superhero too!  MoMo was Muffin Man.  What does Muffin Man do? Have kids tell a story about Muffin Man.

While at the school I also joined in a game with the kids. The game taught them to take turns, collect different color acorns and try to be the first to fill their log.  It was cute and would make a cute additional game to go with this book if you're interested you can find it here:

The Bottom Line: 

The Story: Was simple, engaging, and had depth.

The Illustrations:  Colorful, and aided the text.

The Lesson: Be Kind to one another, try new things, and it's okay to be different

In the comments tell me something you and your kids tried after reading My 

Cousin MoMo.

On a side note, my daughter dressed up as a superhero and I had to share.  She is Aqua Girl, with the power to make rain for grass to grow, and shoot rainbows from her eyes.