It’s fine, but it feels like it’s been done before. It’s your basic, “What do the zoo animals do all night?” book. I’m sure none of us will be surprised to know they have a dance party when no one’s looking. It does a decent job of including a bit of rhythm and rhyme. The illustrations are colorful and fun.

It’s got a reasonable amount of information for a beginning reader. When one glances at the table of content, it looks like it’s got about 5-6 chapters, until you look closely and realize 4 of the 6 sections listed refer to the Non-Fiction text features included on the last three pages (More Facts, Glossary, Index, Online Resources). It really just has the two chapters: Bulldozers, which describes the different parts of the machines, and Different Jobs, which describes exactly what it says. It gets points for including a photo of a young woman as the bulldozer operator, and for including details about why the different parts are designed as they are. And it has a sturdy binding.

It’s got some information. It points out different kinds of bus drivers (some drive passengers to work or to school or on tours). It points out their responsibilities for keeping passengers safe, maintaining their buses (though to all bus drivers do that themselves?), and keeping to schedules. But it makes some cheerfully general statements that make me question: the book starts off with a girl getting on a bus for her first time and states that the driver helps her find friends. Really? Or did the driver help her find a seat, and if she happens to make friends with the others nearby, that’s pretty much dependent on luck. Do all drivers drive the same routes daily? Or do they sometimes cover for someone who is sick or take a tour group to a new destination?

This book is completely weak on information. There is nothing that a student is going to learn from this book if they have already spent a whole day in a classroom. It completely over-simplifies the job of teachers. I realize they are trying to keep things simple for early readers, but by spending 24 pages to tell readers things they already know this book just reinforces the belief some struggling readers hold that reading holds no purpose.

Seriously, this book is just encouraging kids to keep junk. When George starts out to help clean up the neighborhood, he ends up deciding he wants to keep everything he found. When the man explains that a collection is one particular kind of thing, and asks George to choose one particular kind of thing to keep and to throw out the rest, George wants to keep it all, so he just arranges it all by color and and calls it a color collection. It’s still junk: a broken mug is still a broken mug, and a single high-heeled shoe still serves him no purpose, and it’s all still all over the living room floor of their apartment; but somehow we’re supposed to be impressed that he turned trash into something “beautiful”?

If it funds are limited, a book more broadly about volcanoes in general and/or a book more generally about Hawaii seem like more sensible options. But if you’ve got a class studying a unit on either volcanoes or Hawaii, and would like a selection that offers more specific information about these particular volcanoes, this is a good choice. It includes a bit of information about the history of the park, the role of volcanoes in creating the Hawaiian islands, general information about volcanoes, as well as specific details about the history and behavior of these particular ones. And it does it all with a format and simplicity of text that makes it suitable for young audiences.

It’s small, compact, simply laid out, with large font and full-page color photos. All these design elements keep it inviting and non-intimidating for young readers. There are just a few sentences per page, each easily understood, and yet it doesn’t feel skimpy on information. It manages to describe the physics of sound waves and vibrations in terms of tangible things with which young students will be familiar (e.g. stating that though sound waves move through the air invisibly, they do so much as ripples in a pond move through the water). All in all, it’s a solid choice to support the science curriculum.

This picture book biography shares an important but little-known bit of American History. I took American Women’s History in college (admittedly several decades ago), but I don’t remember ever learning about Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the first woman to have her name on the ballot for President of the United States (before women could even vote). We learn the names of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the fight for American women’s suffrage. We should know about Belva Lockwood, too.

It’s a fictionalized picture book biography about a woman who woman who got civically involved in New York City in the 1940s and 50s to protest city planners who were not taking the needs of the local community people into their plans. One of the weaknesses of the book, if the target audience is young children (the typical audience for picture books), is that it depends too much on clues in the illustrations to convey some of the context, clues that young children are unlikely to pick up on. Never during the text of the story does the author ever indicate the time period in which the story is taking place. I was able to get a general sense from the clothes people were wearing in the illustrations, but kids wouldn’t necessarily recognize those clues.

There’s no point to this book, no story. A family adopts a puppy and they play in the park with their puppy. The reader just keeps waiting for the climax, the where-is-this-going? But it never goes anywhere. There’s a label on the front declaring that proceeds for the book will be donated to pediatric cancer research, so I thought it might have something to do with cancer. It didn’t.

The city pigeons are feeling unappreciated. They get together and bemoan how the other birds, such as the robin and the cardinals, get people to oooh and ahh, while they get sweated at. They ponder their own great history about which the people seem unaware, such as their ability to carry messages during war time. And so they conspire to all disappear one day, and send a note with their demands to the mayor: removing the spikes off of ledges, no shooing them away or running them down in cars, and in return they agree not to splat on cars or heads. They return with the first annual pigeon day parade, and shower the city with fortune-cookie-sized notes declaring, “when you are loved, you can love in return.”

The illustrations are cheerful and cute. The author plays with words in a fun way as he tells the story of two jellyfish brothers who are close as can be, until one is swept away by a “wave of superior magnitude.” Spencer tries to race to his brother’s rescue, but speed is not really a jellyfish’s strong suit. And so he calls upon his friends for help. With the help of a whale of superior magnitude, a mermaid, and a starfish, he locates his brother and figures how to lure him back out to sea before they both end up on the sand, and Horace once again helps the two find their way home. An author’s note in the back share additional information about jellyfish.

I really like this one. It’s a lovely celebration of the power of imagination and the joy of sharing one’s imagination. It starts by describing for us ways the Eliot uses his imagination to find adventure in his every-day life, then his frustration over how his imaginings must always come to an end. When his grandpa comes to visit, he’s got such stories to tell of his adventures through jungle rivers and sailing the sea in his boat, the Hispaniola. The next day Eliot asks his grandfather to take him adventuring, and after exploring the adventures the city holds, Eliot suggests they take out Grandpa’s boat, but Grandpa says they can’t. Then he shows Eliot why: down on the waterfront there is an old wreck of a boat for sale, with a hole in her side. Once again imagination comes to the rescue and the two set off together on a new adventure. The illustrations are great, and they use subtle shifts in color palettes to distinguish between real life and adventures born of imagination.

I know the Mr. Panda books are popular, so I guess my school library ought to have this one, too. It’s cute. I don’t object to it, but I have to confess I don’t quite “get it.” A bunch of assorted animals tell Mr. Panda good night. He tells each of them something they forgot to do before bed, but they all dismiss his advice. Lemur keeps popping in to say he’s done everything he should. Mr. Panda needs a reminder to tell Lemur good night, then he goes to bed in Lemur’s bed. It’s fine, but somehow I feel like I’m supposed to like it more than I did.

I didn’t like it. I found the illustrations terribly distracting: there is all sorts of extra text throughout the illustrations showing the voices of all the other fleas in the story, but there’s no way to read those without completely disrupting the flow of the story. The main story is pretty much a selfish little flea who wants the limelight all to herself and creates a disruption that she then solves and somehow gets to be considered the hero so she gets her own way. Ugh.

The binding is not sturdy enough to stand up to library usage. The story is fine, but kind of lame. It would maybe be suitable for PreK audiences, but since most of our schools start with Kindergarten, I don’t think the sparkles and glitter on the cover is enough to make it worth purchasing. It tells of a cat who got an ice cream cone dropped on his head and in order to get the other cats to stop laughing at him, he declares it to be his magic hat, and with the help of a couple coincidences he convinces his friends until a dog comes by and he’s not able to magic them out of that jam. They climb a tree and the ice cream cone falls on the dogs head and he runs away, being chased by bees.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I like the message it has about the two sisters finding a way to each have her own space, while still being close, but on the other hand I don’t like the way it endorses the accumulation of stuff. When the book began, describing how the sisters had begun collecting stuff as children, getting two of everything until their house is so overrun by stuff that they can’t function, I was expecting them to end up with a grand yard sale to let go of a lot of unnecessary stuff. In some ways the ending felt like a cop out.

Though some of the older Caldecott winners have become dated over the years, and lost their appeal for young readers, there’s something timeless about this one. Perhaps it is the way the illustrations capture the passing of time and how the world changes over the years. It could be useful for lessons in the younger grades on how we measure the passing of time, by days, by months, by seasons and years. And besides, it’s just a good story. If your old copy could use refreshing, it’s worth updating.

It’s fine. Worrying about growing is certainly a concern of many small children. In this case, it is Muriel’s imaginary friend (small, green, rather alligator-esque) who notices that Muriel is growing and he is not. He tries planting himself in the garden; he tries having Muriel roll him like her play dough; he tries forcing the issue; and he tries tall shoes and hat. Nothing really proves successful, but gee, overnight he does indeed grow (even if he doesn’t actually catch up to Muriel, since she grows too). It’s really intended for the youngest readers, probably best suited to PreK or Kindergarten.

It’s a cute story about animals coming together to help a neighbor in need. When a storm washes away Possum’s brush pile home, he gathers his young and sets off to find a new home. Along the way he meets other animals who offer their assistance, beginning with chipmunk who offers to help dig a new home, which the baby possums love, but is unfortunately to small for Papa Possum. As each animal offers to help, they are of course offering their expertise for their own type of homebuilding, but when put all together, Possum ends up with quite a lovely home, and just as he asks how he can possibly thank them all for their assistance, another storm strikes, so they all hunker down together.

A great choice for readers’ theater! Because so many of the words repeat or are not real words at all, but animal sounds, this book would be a great choice for having partners share reading performances in a less intimidating way. The two-voice formatting is fun and adds to the appreciation of sound in poetry. There is a wide variety of animals included, so it would be useful as an introductory or cross-curricular connection for a variety of science units. Paragraphs in the back offer additional scientific background for deeper understanding of each poem.

It’s a simple concept book, suitable for even the youngest students, yet it doesn’t over-simplify the concepts. Each two-page spread includes four images of shapes opposite the title question. But the first set of four shapes adds the question, “why?” and goes on to explain how each of the four shapes could be the correct answer for different reasons. The important part isn’t which shape the reader chooses; the important part is in discussing why. A letter from the author in the back of the book reminds the reader that what words they choose to describe their thoughts aren’t what’s important either — as long as they are considering they different traits of the shapes, they are thinking mathematically. A great book for divergent thinking.

I like it. Pony Lovers abound in elementary school, and the sweet illustrations both draw readers in and offer support for the text. The poems are short and simple and child-like, which I think make them less intimidating that poetry can sometimes be for young readers. This book makes poetry approachable, inviting students to try composing themselves.

What a sweet story! When Sylvia writes a poem to celebrate the coming of spring, she carries it into he park to read it to a squirrel and tie it to a tree. On her way to school the next day she thinks she sees her poem fluttering in the breeze, but soon realizes it’s a new poem, and she believes the tree is writing back to her. For several days she continues to write the tree poems and find others in return (all the poems are, of course, included in the story). Then one day she finds a boy from school, who she doesn’t particularly like, at the tree and learns that the poems came from him, not the tree. At first she is sad to learn her tree wasn’t really writing to her, but then the two bond over poetry and become friends. The illustrations are soft and sweet and well-suited to the mood of the story.

I’m afraid I didn’t like it quite as much as I had hoped I would. I generally really like when they do picture books to song lyrics, and who doesn’t like The Beatles? But these lyrics maybe didn’t lend themselves so well to illustrations, or to being written as text without the musical accompaniment, because it just felt a little awkward. I was trying to make connections between the lyrics and the illustrations, and though there were times they fit better, there were also times I wasn’t seeing it.