In this first-day-of-school story, young Migs learns lessons about over-coming shyness, respecting others’ space, making amends, and making friends.  At first he’s so shy he doesn’t want to go to school, but the dress-up corner helps him create a super-hero costume that helps boost his nerve.  Unfortunately, he feels so powerful he starts racing around the room, ends up crashing into another student and destroying his artwork.  His first attempts to fix the tear just make things worse and worse, and Migs resorts to hiding again, but then he enlists the help of other students to bring the ruined artwork to life, breaking the ice with all, so that in the end he’s eager to return.  The illustrations are bright and cheerful; the problems are ones many kids can relate to.  The rhyming text is occasionally stilted, but generally works.

Like other books by this pair, it’s got cute illustrations to draw the kids in and a good message delivered through a story appealing enough to make the message palatable.  The message in this one: the perils of being a slob.  Sentenced to his room until he’s willing to pick up after himself, young Angus quite contentedly continues making messes, until a mountain of mess begins to grow on his bed, requiring him to use his climbing gear to get to the top to sleep each night.  But as the mountain of mess continues to grow, Angus finds himself approaching the surface of the loch, bringing him into range of scary land-monsters, which finally gives him the motivation to tidy up.

Chronicling the last five minutes of playground time, the illustrations flash back and forth between what is going on in Zoe’s imagination (trekking through the jungle as a great explorer in search of the Addiebeast) and scenes of the playground, where she is chasing her best friend, Addie, as mom offers the minute-by-minute count-down before it’s time to leave. There’s a good parallel between imagination and playground: walking across a log in the jungle shows up as walking on a bench in the playground, etc.  It’s cute.

I like the story:  Amelia and her doll are best friends, and it lists all the many things they would do together, until the day of Princess Sparkle-Heart’s “accident;”  then it goes on to describe the process of putting the doll back together (adding stuffing, choosing new buttons for eyes, etc.) until in the end, she’s better than ever.  I like how the illustrations expand on the text to add dimension to the story:  through the illustrations we see the dog growling at all the things Amelia and her doll do together, we see the “accident” amounted to the dog chewing the doll to bits, and we see that when she’s put back together, she’s been transformed into something that scares the dog away.  But I still find the garishness of the illustrations a bit off-putting, which keeps it from getting a full recommendation.

A very sentimental selection with soft watercolor illustrations with a father waxing poetical about the red shoes he tied on his child, pondering all the things they may do together while wearing those shoes, and how long it’s been since the first steps taken in those shoes.  The real audience seems to be the parent, more than the child, but perhaps suitable for very young children sharing that loving read-aloud time with mom or dad.

It’s aiming for sentimental but it just comes off as dull.  The illustrations look sort of washed-out and the story is just as bland: a girl and her grandma making pancakes, but Grandma is disappointed by the jam that doesn’t live up to the jam she remembers from her youth.  Granddaughter asks if they can go together and get some from the old country, but it is too far, so she makes a label for their new jam that says it’s for grandma, “made with love and sunshine.” And somehow the new label makes everything better.

The simplicity of both illustrations and text make it best suited to very young readers.  The illustrations are both sweet and artsy in their simplicity.  The story tells of a girl who gets on a bus with a red balloon, but accidentally let it go.  The bus continues on, picking up a variety of animals, each of whom is asked if they’ve seen the balloon.  Just when they reach it, a bird pops it, but the group cheers up when they notice the bright red setting sun, which looks like another red balloon, which they will get to see again tomorrow.

I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.  I think this author has got some real potential, and a little more careful editing could’ve made this a really good book.  The general flow of the writing was engaging, and it drew me in, so I started out enjoying it, but part of the problem is that the author wasn’t real clear on what age child she was writing for:  in many respects it felt like a book for upper elementary, but then there were elements of romance and pranks and alcohol that would’ve been better suited to a more middle-school audience.  And then at the end of the book it wrapped up too quickly without fully concluding all the subplot lines that had felt like they were leading somewhere, but apparently didn’t.

This is a good, solid little series.  The basic premise is a brother and sister who have a magic mirror in their basement that lets them slip through into the land of fairy tales.  While there, in an effort to make things better, they realize they’ve actually interfered in some way that will get in the way of reaching happily-ever-after, so they’ve to to work to put things back on track.  In this one they climb up Repunzel’s braid to visit, but Jonah forgets he’s wearing his soccer cleats, which shred her hair.  I like that the stories are accessible to young readers: enough background explanation is woven into the text so that readers can pick up any book in the series and not worry about reading them in order, and the basics of the original fairy tale are included in case they’re not familiar with it.

It’s fine I guess.  The pictures are cute. The story is a bit flat, though.  It basically tells what a little mouse does when he comes up out of his hole in spring, summer, and autumn; but then when he pops out in winter he just goes back down and snuggles in, making use of the things he’s gathered in the other seasons.  The mouse is personified, making bread and soup and reading in his hole, but there’s nothing about it that makes the reader care especially, either about the mouse or about his adventures.

The girl in the sparkly tutu on the cover will be sure to draw a lot of readers, and the story will offer them a good lesson about giving new things a try.  Tallulah is excited about attending dance camp because she’ll get to enjoy her beloved ballet lessons every day, but she’s put out that campers are also expected to take tap lessons, too.  At camp she meets another girl who loves loves the tap classes but hates ballet, which Tallulah just can’t understand.  When the girls get to comparing notes it comes out that they both like the classes at which they excel, but have been turning their noses up at that which was a challenge.  Together they decide that maybe not being the best doesn’t mean they’re the worst either, and that’s okay.

I think this is an important book to have available so that students facing similar circumstances (and there are a lot of them out there), can know they are not alone, that other families are coping with the same struggles.  Told from the point of view of a young girl, it tells of her feelings after her mother has been taken away to stay at a “prison for women without papers.”  It doesn’t sugar-coat things:  when she asks Papa when Mama is coming home, he can’t tell her — only reassures her that Mama loves her very, very much and would never stay away too long if she could help it.  It tells of Papa spending his evening writing letters to judges and politicians and reporters that go unanswered.  It tells of visiting her Mama and how hard it was to leave, and of the tapes Mama is able to send with bedtime stories recorded, which give her comfort.  It does offer a happy ending, which may not be what all children will get, but offers a sense of hope.

I love these books!  This is the third one by this pair I’ve gotten, the others being A Leaf Can Be… and Water Can Be…, and I have loved them all.  The illustrations are fabulous and support the text, which is poetical.  With just a couple words per page, the text serves to list different forms and contexts in which we encounter rocks, from mountains to paving stones to the moon.  In order to make the rhyming work, the words are often figurative, and just in case the illustrations aren’t enough to aid the reader in deducing the author’s meaning, pages in the back of the book offer further explanation for each of the names given to rocks in the main body of the book.  An excellent resource to accompany a unit on rocks, as well as a beautiful choice for casual reading.

It’s got cute illustrations, but the text left me a little flat.  Told in rhyme, it is the story of a mouse who finds a shoe, wanders around trying to find who it belongs to, and when it finally is offered to him by the kangaroo who tossed it because it hurt his feet, the mouse turns it into a bed for himself.  The rhyming seemed a bit forced at times, and lacked the rhythm that makes it easy to read aloud smoothly.

This is a such a natural addition to the Sheep in a Jeep and Sheep in  a Shop collection that I can’t believe it took them this long to create it.  It’s got all the rhyme and alliteration that make the other books such great tools for having emergent readers study word construction.  And the rhythm and rhyme give aid in naturally fluent reading.  And the illustrations are sweet and add to the telling of the story.  It’s a counting book as the collie’s efforts help one more and then one more sheep fall asleep.  And besides, with the reputation sheep have for helping us sleep, it makes a perfect bedtime story.

Written in the form of rhyming questions, and accompanied by delightful illustrations that capture the word-play of the text, this book teaches the collective terms for groups of animals while imagining what these groups might be getting up to (e.g. “Does a pack of wolves load up bags for vacation? Does a cast of hawks get a standing ovation?”).  I learned a thing or two reading this book: I knew a group of crows was a murder and a group of tigers an ambush, but I had never heard of a crash of rhinos or a shiver of sharks or a parcel of penguins.  A glossary in the back provides the common-usage definitions for all the collective terms included in the book, in case young readers didn’t understand the illustrations or word play.  I just wish it would have had (if anyone knows) reasons for how these collective terms evolved (a prickle of porcupines seems obvious enough, but why a rumba of rattlesnakes?).  This could be an excellent discussion topic for students after reading.

Utterly charming! Sure to be a classic! A beautiful story on many levels!  The large format sets off the fabulous illustrations wonderfully.  The characters and the circumstances of the story are very believable and relatable, with a bit of adventure thrown in to get the message across.  Three bear siblings, up to mischief while mom is away, accidentally break her favorite shell, and rather than face her wrath, decide that if they can replace it she’ll never have to know.  And so they set off in a small row boat on their quest.  After venturing far from home and searching high and low, with still no shell to be found, they start quarreling over who’s at fault for getting them into this mess, but when a big storm kicks up they stop worrying over fault and they each own up to the part they played, and head for home ready to confess.  Back home they bask in mom’s forgiveness, in the form of hugs and kisses and a warm supper, but they don’t get any dessert.  What kid can’t relate?  I think it’s fabulous!

I know some math teachers who would be disgruntled with this book, for some the artistic license that it takes with the precision of shape definitions:  apples, pumpkins, and balloons may be more or less spherical, but not exactly so, and as three dimensional objects, using the two-dimensional term “circle” to describe them would be even less accurate; some of the checks and seed packets that are meant to represent squares are a bit wrinkly & wonkey, which really makes them not exactly squares, and there’s no squares included on the recktangle page, even though squares are technically rectangles… But if you’re just trying to get a general idea of shapes across to preschoolers, and get them looking at the world around them, the illustrations are bright and the rhyming story of the trip to the farm is fun, with lots of hunting to be done on each page to see how many different things they can find to represent the shape in question.

There’s nothing on the book proclaiming it to be part of a series, but I kinda got the sense it was, so I did an online search and did indeed find many Tashi books by the same author.  I think the reason I suspected it was part of a series was that there wasn’t really any character development, and it read kind of like we were already supposed to know who Tashi was.  If you’ve got students who already know and like this character, this might be a good addition to your collection, but as a stand-alone book I didn’t find it very strong. One year when the rains don’t come as usual, Tashi sets off to try to find the dragon who causes them and ask him why; he meets a tiger along the way who points him in the right direction, explaining that there’s a young dragon who hasn’t learned to control his powers yet; upon finding the young dragon, Tashi discovers he’s sad and lonely because he ate his sister and his mother’s been put to sleep by a demon and won’t wake up; Tashi convinces the young dragon to sing to comfort himself, which wakes Mom, who explains how to unswallow Sis and agrees to send the rains, so Tashi was a hero.  I thought it was rather long and rambly, but maybe I would have appreciated it more if I know more about the main character.

The story opens with a coat that feels disgruntled at being left as a scarecrow, feeling he’s meant for better things.  When a young man comes strolling along the road, he seems to agree that the coat is too nice to be left in the field, and he puts it on.  The coat takes over from there: the wind catches in its sleeves and carries the man off to a restaurant where he enjoys a fabulous meal, and performs for the patrons in payment, even though he’s never played before.  As the music plays, the brown tones of the opening illustrations begin to fill with color. It’s okay, but I’m not sure I agree that it’s worth of the “short-listed book” award that the Children’s Book Council of Australia gave it.

It’s basically a pep-talk/lecture with cute illustrations.  The basic theme is there’s no wrong way to paint: it starts by insisting any idea is fine, then goes on to describe different methods different painters use.  It assures the reader that it’s normal to feel cross if it doesn’t turn out as you hoped, and insists that the important thing is to have fun.  The bright colors in the illustrations will lead children to pick it up, but many will be disappointed when they read it: it’s a bit preachy. But it does have a good message.

It’s one of those books that’s meant to help parents talk to their children about where babies come from.  The story opens with a young boy getting the news from his parents that they’re going to get a new baby.  Wondering just where they’ll be getting this baby from, he spends his day asking everyone he knows where babies come from, including his baby sitter, his teacher, his grandfather, and the mailman, but he’s not satisfied with any of their answers (babysitter says you plant a seed and a baby tree grows; grandpa says the stork leaves ’em on the doorstep; teacher says hospital; mailman says eggs).  So at the end of the day he asks his folks, who give him a basic clinical answer.  When he thinks over their explanation, he decides all the other folks had a piece of the puzzle except grandpa. The back of the book offers parents some suggested answers for when kids start asking for more details.  All in all, it’s a good tool for opening conversations between kids and adults, but be prepared for some parents who are not happy with information being available that they maybe aren’t ready to share yet.

I liked it.  This is the first book in this series that I read, and one thing I liked right off is though it is book five in the series, it provided enough background about characters and previous events that I was able to pick up in the middle and understand just fine.  Elementary school kids often pick up series books in the middle, and it’s good if reading them in order isn’t too important.  This one recounts the adventures the Spence Mansion trio face when their heads get turned by Hollywood promises and sign dastardly contracts with a producer who wants to butcher their story as he makes his own film.  The characters are fun. The writing is witty.  The illustrations are mixed with letters in a format that makes the book not too intimidating for reluctant/young readers.

I didn’t like it as well as I liked the other books in this series that I’ve read.  I rather felt it was misnamed.  In the first chapter, setting the scene for the paths the reader will have to choose from, the book describes the Great Migration as the time when so many black families were moving north to escape the unfair treatment in the south, and I think “The Great Migration” would’ve been a more accurate title, as many of the story lines tracked the decisions and experiences folks encountered in getting to Harlem at this time, but many of them ended with their arrival, without really going into much about what happened when they got there.  Also, though I like the interactive nature of these books for drawing student interest, they walk a fine line between non-fiction and historical fiction, and I think this one really falls more into the second category than the first.

Strictly for the youngest readers, this spin-off from the Llama Llama books brings a familiar character her own book, full of the same brightly colored illustrative style, they rhyme and rhythm and repetition that are so good for emergent readers.  The story is a simple one of sharing a day one-on-one with a father-daughter project, building a play house from some large cardboard boxes.  Young kids will love it, and be begging their dads to help them build their own similar houses.