It’s kind of a reverse of The Little Red Hen. When a wimpy cook applies to be the king’s chef, it turns out he’s scared of every step along the way, so the king keeps offering to help, and essentially ends up doing it all himself. In the end, the king loves the meal so much, the wimpy young cook gets the job. The illustrations are fun, full of details that invite the reader to linger; they add a lot of personality to the book.

It’s a cute spin on the books to help young children prepare for their first day of school. The narrator is telling a young fairy what to expect on her first day of school, and so many of the things she predicts are similar to things a kindergartener or preschooler might experience, except twisted for the fairy world (e.g. flying to school on a school bird, hanging backpacks on dandelion leaves, sitting crisscross berrysauce, raising her wand when she wants to say something…). Fairies seem to be perpetually popular, and even students who are already well familiar with their own school experience will enjoy for looking for similarities and differences within the fairy world.

It’s a beautiful book. The illustrations are absolutely stunning! It’s a poem that follows a repetitive form, in which each four-line stanza requires a page turn to get to the final line, providing opportunities for predicting what might come next. Unfortunately, I found some stanzas more confusing than others. I know I don’t exactly have a poet’s soul, and I admit to getting caught up on the lack of capitalization or punctuation, but some of the stanzas letting me going, “huh?”

The main body of the book is a series of illustrations of different kinds of lizards, with rhythmic, repetitive, rhyming text asking a series of questions about different behaviors exhibited by these different lizards. Informational pages in the back of the book offer additional information about lizards in general, as well as details about the specific lizards and behaviors mentioned in the main body of the book. My one wish for the book is that the informational blurbs about specific lizards could have been in text boxes directly on the pages illustrating the lizard they discuss. Children are so much more likely to ignore the fine print when it’s at the end of the book, separated from the illustrations.

It’s a series of poems, all imagining what assorted toys and household items get up to when all the people in the house are asleep. The illustrations are bright and child-like and support the imagery of the poems. A wonderful spark for activating kids’ imaginations.

Kids love to ask, “What if…?” This story is a series of adventures had by a couple young polar bears whose imaginations jump into high gear to address a series of what-if situations, beginning by finding themselves lost and alone floating on a chunk of ice, and ending with setting off in a rocket made from their backpack. It’s one of those books in which the illustrations really add meaning to the brief text, often offering previews of things to come alluding to past pages. This book would be a great launching tool for a conversation or writing assignment asking the students to generate or complete other what-if scenarios.

This edition is a reprint of a book originally completed in 1982. It’s a poem imagining a world without war. The illustrations are paper-cut images where partial pages turn one image into another, showing the transformation of a war-torn world into a land of peace. It begins with a hawk who transforms itself into a dove; a tank becomes a tractor; bombers become butterflies…etc. I just don’t think young kids are going to get the symbolism involved.

It’s one of those picture books that combine a story with informational text. The story tells of a group of children visiting a neighbor who keeps bees, but the story is just a vehicle for the information the book is sharing about the importance of bees to our ecosystem: their needs and what they contribute. The cartoonish illustrations and story invite the reader in and the non-fiction text is straight-forward and clear, while still offering significant depth of knowledge.

This non-fiction picture book tells the story of the invention of Crayola crayons. Crayons are such a ubiquitous part of childhood, it’s fun to hear the back story of how they came to be. This is a great way to introduce children to non-fiction connected to something they are all familiar with. The illustrations are colorful and inviting and help set the stage for the turn of the twentieth century, when this childhood toy came into being.

There are only three words used to tell this story: ours, yours, and mine. Normally I am a big fan of wordless and nearly-wordless picture books. But this one seems to struggle with making its point. I think it’s trying to say it’s better to share than to worry about what’s yours and what’s mine. It begins by showing a young panda entering the cave of an adult panda asking if it’s theirs, to which the adult panda replies that it is his. After a series of “this is mine; this is yours,” the adult panda sends the youngster off with a kite. As the young panda wanders through the forest following his kite, he keeps running into other woodland creatures who are possessive of their stuff. Eventually the little critters all grab onto the string of the kite and are flying away until the grown panda pulls them back to earth and then they all end up hanging out together in the cave, sharing all their stuff. It’s just a little vague.

Beautiful illustrations and poetic text introduce students to the different types of homes animals build. The vocabulary is rich, the illustrations are lush, and it ends by acknowledging that Earth is the home shared by us all. It really is a lovely book.

The story consists of a dialogue between the narrator trying to tell the story and the panda who is intended to be the main character. But when the narrator declares that the panda has a problem, the panda protests that all is well, and turns the table on the narrator, suggesting that perhaps the narrator is the main character and the panda is the problem. The panda suggests a whole series of problems, including raining jelly beans and aliens and a trip to the antarctic, until they are in such a muddle they need the narrator to find them a way home. It could be useful in teaching story elements.

I think maybe I would appreciate it more if I were more familiar with Robinson Crusoe (I keep meaning to read that!). But since my students are probably even less familiar with the famous adventure novel than I am, I suspect they, too, may find the story a bit flat. They would probably relate easily to the uneasy feelings the main character faces when he shows up at a costume party in a costume that gets him teased, and the desire to leave early that results. But when our hero does escape the party to go home to bed and ends up dreaming of a life of adventure on a deserted island, I’m not sure most of my students would get the connection. Though they would appreciate the ending in which his friends show up with apology notes, asking to hear more about the character he had dressed as.

It’s a celebration of the power of imagination. The illustrations are charming and fanciful. A little girl complains to her grandmother that she’s bored, so grandma suggests she go play in the garden, where she’s sure she saw a tiger earlier. Young Nora insists she’s too old for such silly games, so she sets out to prove her grandmother wrong. As she ventures forth, she does find some of the other things her grandmother said she would (dragonflies the size of birds, plants that want to eat her — or at least her toy giraffe — alive, and a grumpy polar bear — which talks, no less), but she keeps insisting there couldn’t possibly be a tiger. When she does indeed find herself face-to-face with a friendly tiger, she asks it if it is real, but the tiger turns the question back at her, asking if she is real, which leaves her puzzled. The two come to a deal to believe in each other, supposing that that will make them both real.

It’s cute. It begins the morning of a big auto race with Mama Lion and Tiger making final preparations before heading out to join the others at the starting line. Just before the race begins Mama Lion takes a look at the prizes on display and notices that second place wins a small cup, which is rather significant, since during their morning preparations she had just noticed that Tigey’s cup at home was leaking. Mama Lion and Tiger get off to a strong lead, so that they even have time to enjoy the ride through the countryside, but just as they notice the Pandinis hot on their tale. Braking in a hurry to avoid hitting a butterfly Mama Lion and Tiger lose a wheel, giving the Pandinis a chance to take the lead, except the Pandini team stops to help. Just as they are ready to return to the race, the shady knitted monkey crew fly past, throwing banana peels into the road behind to slow down their competition. Just as it looks like it’s going to be close, Mama Lion makes the decision to slow her car, letting the helpful Pandini team take the grand prize. She is content with the useful second-place cup and the knowledge that she’s won some friends that day.

It tells the tale of a tiny boy. It never really specifies exactly how small he is, but the illustrations suggest his is maybe an inch or two tall, small enough to sleep in a matchbox, climb a mountain of legos, ride on the back of a grasshopper, and stretch out on a lily pad. It describes the struggles he faced when he started school: being too small for his desk, racing away from being squashed by a basketball, and avoiding being trampled by his classmates. It says he preferred to spend time alone and draw. It says he teacher worried about him, wondering what would become of him. But just as the reader is starting to wonder how would this small one survive and manage in our big world, the story tells us he did grow up “(But not much bigger.)”. We see the house he built himself, under the shade of a tomato plant that stretches over the roof like a tree, and a stool made of a matchstick and bottle cap. And it reveals what job he finds that just suits his size: he draws stamps. The final page declares, “One can never be too small to be a GREAT artist!” It’s fanciful and fun.

It’s a silly, rhyming story about a monster who is picky about his underwear, and doesn’t really want any new underwear, but finally admits, when his trusty old ones completely fall apart, that a shopping trip may just be unavoidable. His mother manages to find a whole, giant emporium dedicated entirely to underwear, but he finds something objectionable about every variety with which he is presented. Until at last he discovers the perfect pair, just like his old ones…he buys 18 pairs. It’s irreverent, full of words like tush and buns and rump that will leave kids giggling over feeling like they are skirting the line of polite society reading about underwear, yet it doesn’t cross the line into objectionable.

The whole book is a poem celebrating that time after the sun sets before dark fully settles in. The illustrations are full of the colors of sunset and twilight. Each two-page spread includes two stanzas describing how different animals behave in the twilight. Repeating lines that come back on each page is one way it ties together in continuity; also the last line of each page gives a foreshadowing of the page to come. Sometimes the illustrations do likewise. An author’s note in the back offers further scientific information about what defines twilight and the animals who are active at that time of day. It really is a beautiful book.

This book is well-designed as a bedtime story. The illustrations are soft and full of dark, soothing colors. The text is poetical, full of rhyme and repetition. Each two-page spread describes what a different animal dreams of, always in sets of three, and always ending with a dream that includes the listener. In the end the reader encourages the listener to dream of what animals do and when they awake to remember those sweet animals are dreaming of him/her too.

It’s a collection of poems, each written by a different author. In the past I have sometimes found such collections inconsistent in quality, but I thoroughly enjoyed all of these. Each poem honors a different role within a school, from bus driver to crossing guard to principal to lunch lady, etc… And it begins and ends with a poem dedicated to the school itself. A wonderful tool to celebrate the start of a new school year as well as all those who make it what it is.

The illustrations are full of bright, vivid colors and friendly personified tools. The text is full of rhythm and rhyme and more than one good message. The tools each start with a verse to introduce themselves, then they sing together about their excitement and joy over starting school. They’re all excited to get started at building time, but find that working on their own they’re not getting very far; when they cooperate, with each contributing his/her own specialty they have a lot more fun and success. Mistakes are still made, and they have to try, try again, but they discover that though sometimes it’s fun to work alone, some jobs take teamwork.

I really like the cover, and many of the illustrations. They evoke a sentimental mood celebrating the grand landscapes of our world and the grand gesture of a small mouse traversing the globe to bring a single crumb to his love. But the text just doesn’t quite hit the mark. It alludes to the sentiment it’s trying to convey, without really managing to make clear what it’s actually trying to say. It’s fuzzy and garbled and falls flat.

Admittedly, I am prejudiced, because I am a fan o David Wiesner’s work. In this nearly wordless picture book, he uses his art to tell the story. It opens with an illustration of a boy standing outside a fence at a baseball field, watching the kids within getting a game going. Then he’s on the edge of the crowd, then approaching the boy who seems to be the leader, who sends the new boy off to the field. After the batter swings, we see our protagonist racing out with his glove outstretched, and with a joyful look on his face the only words in the book repeat the title, right before the boy trips on a root, falling flat, missing the ball while everyone looks on in dismay. Then in the true “Do over” spirit of playground sports, we see a series of fanciful repeats in which the sequence returns to the point where he’s about to catch the ball, with other(s) coming up behind, also with glove(s) outstretched: in one version the root that tripped him is now a full tree; in another the ball grows to the size of an incoming jetliner; in another the whole team goes after the incoming ball while our hero shrinks to the size of one of the others’ shoe, yet still manages to overtake the crowd and actually catch the ball. In the end, he has become part of the crowd of which he was once an outsider.

I’m not sure it lives up to the hype printed on the gold sticker on the cover which proclaims it, “A natural successor to Dr. Seuss’ Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” but it does share a similar philosophical bent on the nature of growing up. The text is fairly repetitive: a series of rhyming “before the X…” statements. The point is made via the illustrations, which use a page-turning format to show the struggles that come before each accomplishment/joy/milestone in life. They follow a sequence from the messy kitchen preceding the first birthday cake, to practicing as a student driver before becoming an independent driver, to the studying that leads to graduation. It does point out in the end that for every try you may fail, or you may fly, but what is important is what you learn in the trying.

It’s a fun spin on the old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” which also exposes children to a variety of animals of which they may be unfamiliar.  The rhyming text and Scheffler’s familiar big-eyed illustrative style make the book fun and inviting.  An author’s note at the front gives readers a context, as the author explains her experience of being on Safari in Africa where others were focused on spotting The Big Five animals, while she found herself more intrigued by The Ugly Five.  In this story, the wildebeest, the hyena, the lappet-faced vulture, the warthog, and the marabou stork each sing about how ugly they are, banding together to form The Ugly Five.  But eventually they come to a gaggle of their own babies, who declare that to them, The Ugly Five are really the The Lovely Five.  A two-page spread in the back shares a variety of other animals that readers might want to investigate, grouped as to The Big Five, The Little Five, The Shy Five, and The Ugly Five.  Throughout the book, illustrations include a variety of other African animals.  One thing I would have liked to see would be another set of pages in the back that named the other animals included in the book, so that curious students would have a starting place for further exploration.