Tag Archives: jenny sue kostecki-shaw

Same, Same, But Different by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw.

My friend Anna recommended this book after reading my post on The Giant Hug and Mail. I’m so glad she did! Elliot in America and Kailash in India are pen pals. Or, more specifically, picture pals. They send art and details of their lives back and forth. Each boy learns how the other boy is different. But also how they’re the same. What a beautiful concept.

Elliot lives with a family of four, Kailash with a family of twenty-three relatives.  Elliot has two pets while Kailash has a courtyard of farm animals. Same, same but different! That’s a phrase book creator Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw learned when she traveled to Nepal and India. There, she set up an art exchange between students in different countries. And that’s how this lovely story was born.

images courtesy of Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

The author/illustrator’s daughter has received her own mail from a friend in India too!

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I signed up with The Snail Mail Collective in September which has a very similar idea. I was paired up with Kate who is from the UK but lives in Germany (and is otherwise traveling the world). We got to know each other through emails and our blogs (hers is Diaries of an Essex Girl) and then each sent a postcard and package to that other part of the world! September’s theme was Back to School and this is the contents of what I sent Kate after sussing out her fondness for certain school supplies.   Imagine my delight when this package below arrived yesterday, all the way from Germany! My favorite detail is that Kate told me a six-year old German girl did the wrap job. And it’s fabulous. Like me, she used washi tape! Same, same but different. 1: notebook; 2: chalkboard pin; 3: glitter pen (oh yes!); 4: mini canvas and easel; 5: postcard.

Kate included a nice mix of papery stuff and picturey stuff, perfect for This Picture Book Life’s blogger. And the yellow bag is pretty wonderful. This exchange was such an affirmation of the joy of snail mail as well as, like the picture book, the ways we live differently while having plenty in common too. Thanks to The Nectar Collective for a bridge-building snail mail experience! You can see the other snail mail exchanges this month here.