It’s okay as a very introductory text, but the information is limited to a sentence or two per page.  On the front and back covers, and on the title page, the Spanish precedes the English, but on the internal pages, the English comes first.  It seems like it would have made more sense to be consistent one way or the other.  The Spanish is a good translation of the English, and it would make a good tool for beginning language learners of either language, but is less useful for teaching much about weather.

The information is shallow, and the graphics detract, rather than add:  the color photos of the birds in question are surrounded by lots of bright neon colors and patterns, sometimes to the extent of having had the natural backdrop of the bird edited out — it’s rather jarring and distracting, and just plain doesn’t seem to fit.

This is one of those instances (biographies of current sports stars or other celebrities of the day), when I figure it’s not really necessary to invest funds in the solid sturdy library binding:  a cheap paperback will probably last as long as their stardom, and by the time it wears out, there will likely be some other latest celebrity of the day.  I do have to admit the Lionel has a pretty good story (involved in soccer since age three, overcoming health concerns, giving back to his community…).   My biggest gripe with the book is the failure of the photos to support the text.  The first half of the book is talking about his childhood, but all the photos are of his adult soccer career:  the text is talking about when he was three or six or eleven, but the accompanying photo on that page is most definitely not a child — it doesn’t fit.

This is one of those bilingual books that definitely work better in English than in Spanish.  In English, it’s told in rhyming verse, listing different kinds of things that might make someone happy and how it might be expressed.  The translation does an adequate job of expressing the same ideas, but it looses the charm of the rhymes.  Double-page color photo spreads support the text, with lots of multi-cultural kids smiling away.

I have been consistently impressed with books in Scholastic’s True Book series, and this one is no exception.  The text is detailed enough to be truly engaging and informative, yet organized and clearly stated so as to be accessible to young readers.  Text is broken into reasonable chunks, in a large enough font so as not to be intimidating.  Diagrams and illustrations and photos support the text and catch readers’ attention/interest.  The graphics/layout support and attract without distracting.  My one gripe is one I’ve had with a lot of non-fiction books lately:  listing facts horizontally by date and calling it a time-line, even though nothing about the line represents the passage of time (everything is equally spaced, whether the events were separated by a year or three centuries).  All in all a solid choice.

First problem:  it’s a lift-the-flap book, and is not particularly sturdy in its construction, which makes it a poor choice for libraries.  Second problem, it’s definitely targeting the very youngest readers, which leaves it a limited audience in a school library.  The biggest problem is that it makes declarations that aren’t necessarily true: the first page says, “come with me to find out all the emotions we can feel!” but the range of human emotions is much more broad/complex than is going to be captured by a simple picture book; the page that describes anger states that if you take a breath and smell flowers then the next day you will feel really glad, but this presumes that all children’s issues are short-lived, which may not be true for some readers.  Yes, it’s a good idea to teach small children about emotions, and yes, the colors in this book are bright and eye-catching, but there are much better choices available:  This one is over-simplified and clunky.

It’s okay I guess.  The text is simple, as it is targeting young readers, and some of the information is so basic that kids don’t need to read it to know it (such as the fact that some jobs are inside and some jobs are outside).  It covers such ideas as needs/wants, the value of money, the differences between jobs that must be done by adults and jobs that kids can do, and mentions giving to charities as well.  It is illustrated with color photos and offers ideas of how some kids might earn money and what they might choose to do with it.  My gripe with this book is that it’s got a decidedly middle-class and up bias:  children who are living in poverty are not going to be paid by their parents to fold the laundry or wash the dog or rake leaves — they’re just going to be expected to help out around the family because it’s needed.  The last sentence of the book states, ” By earning money, kids can buy what they need, save for what they want, and still have money to share with others.” But really the rest of the book is operating under the assumption that kids are being provided with their needs.

A solid informational resource for students/families coping with asthma.  The information is detailed, well-organized and understandable.  It includes chapters that define asthma, discuss causes, diagnosis, treatments and prevention.  Illustrated with color diagrams, photos, microscopic enlargements, and drawings, the layout aids in making the information accessible.  I learned a lot.  Knowing how many children are affected by asthma, this book, or one like it, would be an important addition to any school library.

An informative book about animal behavior that provides various levels of accessibility:  for the youngest students, a rhyming couplet (in large font), supported by illustrations, provides the basic information on each type of tool-using animals; for interested audiences, a paragraph in smaller print goes into more depth to describe the tools mentioned in the couplet; for particularly curious students, the end-pages at the back of the book provide even more details.  On the opening page, as well as in the end notes, it does say that there is no agreed-upon definition within the scientific community as to what constitutes tools and tool usage, and states that for purposes of this book the author was including any object an animal uses to accomplish a goal.  This is a pretty broad definition, which allows the inclusion of several animal behaviors that would be open to debate as to whether or not they really count as tools, but I think it’s good to engage children in the debates of the wider academic community, so that they know science is not completely cut and dried.

It’s cute.  Small children will relate to Tiny Rabbit’s wish to grow as big and powerful as all the things around him.  But as time passes he only grows a little bit, but he does grow two powerful ears, which he comes to appreciate (along with his small size) when they help him hear the approach of the huge hungry lion and escape down his tiny hidden den.  A good tool for opening a discussion about learning to appreciate ourselves just as we are.

With the text limited to a few words per page in voice bubbles, the story is mostly told through the illustrations:  three small children meet a hat-wearing elephant named Phil at the bus-stop and invite him to come home with them.  When they realize that their parents are not likely to approve, they try to hide Phil, but to no avail.  As soon as mom & dad see Phil, Dad insists they need to take Phil back where they found him, but  when they get to the bus stop Mom whispers to Dad, and then Dad announces Phil can stay.  It’s kinda sweet, and the pictures are cute, but there’s not much to it.  I guess it would be good for pre-readers and early emergent readers, but I’m not sure I would invest limited funds on it

A beautiful picture book, sharing the history behind the origins of ragtime music and the Charleston dance moves, this book also shares wider themes of turning bad into good and doing for others where you are able.  It tells of a pastor in the south at the end of the 19th century, who took in young boys and began an orphanage.  To drown out the noises from the nearby prison, he taught the boys music, and in order to earn money to support the orphanage (with dreams of someday buying a farm where the orphans could learn to support themselves), he took his band traveling.  They were so popular they were invited to England to play for King George V.  When WWI broke out, the Reverend Jenkins spent the band’s London earnings to help stranded Americans come home.  End notes in the back offer more detailed information about famous musicians who had connections to the Jenkins Orphanage Band, and how its influence spread.

I really love the illustrations, but the story leaves me a little flat.  It tells of a chicken who lives in a quiet yard on a quiet street, but is picked up on a strong wind one day and dropped into the big city.  After a day of exploring she takes a train and follows some pigeons back to her own yard, where she continues her normal life, with occasional trips on the train.  It’s fine, but it’s just kinda bland.

The illustrations are gorgeous! The story tells of a family reunion in Tanzania, with relatives visiting from America.  In celebration of the grandmother’s 85th birthday, the family goes on a safari together, ending at Bugamoyo, the remains of an old slave-trading post, where the father explains to the children the experiences of their ancestors.  The book ends as the American relatives prepare to return, but the family counts their blessings because they enjoy the freedom to travel back and forth, and Grandma reminds them all that even when they are apart, they are always under the same sun.  While sharing a common family theme of separation and coming together, the illustrations do a wonderful job of providing an authentic look at a distant land that would be foreign to most American students.

An inspiring tale, describing the author’s own experiences growing up as a stutterer.  He shares what it was like being misunderstood by well-meaning adults, his coping strategies, and his comfort being able to speak freely to animals.  All the extra time he spent with animals because of his stuttering led him to discover his passion, and a promise to be a voice for them some day, which eventually led to world travel as a zoologist and conservationist who convinced the prime minister of Belize to open the first jaguar preserve.

The first problem with this book is the biased scope of its coverage:  the title declares it to be about “History’s Most Troubled Eras,” but the other than the opening page about the middle ages, and the final page which mentions world-wide poverty and terrorism creating dangers today, every other era selected is directly tied to U.S. history, and we haven’t existed for most of history.  Even if the retitled to be about America’s most troubled eras, the selection of material is arbitrary: no mention of either of the world wars; the pages describing the dangers of exploration and colonial times don’t even mention the small pox that decimated Native American populations.  Finally, the surface level of information is so vague as to be mis-informative generalizations: it describes the cold war era as 1947-1991, and then goes on to claim that during the cold war students had nuclear raid drills, illustrated by a black-and-white photo from the 1950s.  As someone who grew up in the 1970s & 80s, I can tell you we never once had a nuclear raid drill at school.

A very early chapter book, the first in a new series of twisted fairy tales, this falls into that category of kid humor that us grown-ups can’t appreciate, but they’ll probably love it.  The heroine of the story is named Princess Pink, but she’s ademently against both princesses and the color pink, the anti-girly-girl.  In search of a midnight snack she opens her refrigerator one night and falls through to a mysterious land where she meets Mother Moose and Moldylocks, with whom she visits the home of the three beards.  Instead of porridge, they sample chili in which a spider is taking a bath.  When discovered by the beards, Princess Pink makes her escape, but Moldlylocks is captured.  Guilt-ridden for leaving her new friend behind, Moldlylocks returns, disguised as the beards’ grand-pappy, and rescues Moldlylocks from being made into chili.  I’m not ready to give it a whole-hearted endorsement, but I’m ready to consider purchasing the first few books in the series and see how the kids take to them.

Fabulous book! So good, on so many levels!  First, of course, you’ve got a highly appealing topic (dolphins rank right up there with horses for animals girls instinctively want to read about), and the gorgeous color photos immediately bring out the “oooh!” factor that draws so many people to dolphin tourist sites.  The text flows and is highly readable, and packed with information, not only about the dolphins themselves, but about the scientists and their methods for studying them.  It explains how we know what we know and it recognizes that there’s a lot we don’t know.  I learned a lot, and it left me wanting to know more, not because it left things out, but because it reminded me that there are still mysteries to be discovered by human understanding.  Fabulous book!!

There are way too many really good books about Santa out there to waste time or money on one this poor.  It’s not constructed well:  the binding will never stand up to library usage, and the many items glued into the book to give it three-dimensional character are often misaligned, at times even covering up the words. It’s not written well:  intended to be written in Santa’s voice, it babbles along is a random string-of-consciousness that makes Santa seem annoyingly ADHD (and it’s not punctuated well).  And it’s not illustrated well:  it includes a variety of illustration styles that, instead of coming across as eclectic, just seem disjoined.

Who can resist chicken jokes?  This book includes not only riddles, and knock-knock jokes, but fun facts, limericks and tongue twisters as well.  Besides the fun that makes joke books a good draw for reluctant readers, they also represent a good tool, as “getting” the jokes requires fairly sophisticated understanding of language.  This title represents a good value on several levels:  quality binding, a wide selection of types of jokes, limericks, and tongue twisters, and a significant number.  Besides, some of them a really funny (admittedly, some are groaners).  Color pages would make it more visually appealing, and it would’ve been helpful if the tongue twisters were labeled as such, as some children will be perplexed by them (the limericks and fun facts are labeled, but the tongue twisters are set apart by text boxes only).

Fans of the other Alcatraz books will enjoy spending time with these characters again.  In this installment Moose’s dad has received a promotion, and rumors indicate the cons could be out to get him.  When Moose and his sister are left alone one evening and fire breaks out in their apartment, Moose is left struggling with the guilt that his negligence could have contributed, the worry that someone might have set it on purpose (and the puzzle of trying to figure out who), and the neighbors’ accusations against his sister.  The kids on the island band together to try to solve the mystery, and end up uncovering more than one island conspiracy.  The way things are tied up a little too neatly and too abruptly at the end, without enough clue-dropping along the way, keeps it from getting a higher rating.

The illustrations are really quite charming, and though I’m not really well-versed in Swahili folktales, this one does include some of the classic characteristics of folktales, including providing an explanation for natural phenomena (in this case, explaining why chickens scratch at the ground).  As a general story it’s got some points that would make me question the storyline — why didn’t chicken just use Eagle’s prize needle at Eagle’s house, so the whole mess could’ve been avoided in the first place — but if you’re wanting to expand your multi-cultural folk tales, this would probably fit the bill nicely.

It gets points for a good, sturdy binding, and for clear step-by-step directions with good photo support.  But it completely utterly misses the mark of what its title claims.  The crafts included are not particularly “earth-friendly,” given that most of the materials used in the crafts are plastic; and given that few of the materials used are likely to be found laying around the typical home, it’s hard to qualify them as “recycled stuff.”  I do like that the index categorizes the crafts according to difficulty level — that’s a tool helpful to young crafters.

Stemming from a legend that Domenico Scarlatti’s Sonata in G Minor, known as “The Cat’s Fugue,” was inspired by the sounds of the composer’s cat walking on his harpsichord, this story tells of a cat with a head full of music which she longs to play.  Only her owner’s strict rules that no one is to touch his harpsichord keeps the cat constrained, until one day, in pursuit of a mouse, the cat lands on the keyboard and gives herself up to temptation.  Scarlatti fears what will happen to his own reputation if people find out that even a cat is able to compose such amazing music, so he gives her away to someone who does not own a harpsichord.  If your population has a heavy interest in music, it might be worthwhile, but it doesn’t exactly count as a must-have.

It gets points for a sturdy binding and bright, full-page color photos that support the text, and including e-books as well as print books in both text and photos.  But it lost points for being about a rather boring topic that seems like a waste of money, since I think there are probably better ways to teach the parts of a book.  However, it still might have earned an “Additional Purchase” if it hadn’t also shown itself guilty of one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to books for young children:  over-simplification to the point of untruthfulness.  When describing the spine of a book, it declares, “Hidden stitches hold the pages together.”  Yet that’s not always the case; sometimes staples or glue hold the pages together.  It claims that all books have barcodes on the back and tables of contents in the front, and that facts fill up nonfiction books, yet not all books have barcodes or tables of content, and not all nonfiction is facts.  This book is full of misinformation.