Beautiful, bright folk-art illustrations capture the reader right off the bat, setting the scene for this simple tale set in West Africa.  The story tells of a young girl who is trying to bring a bowl of milk to her father who is watching over his sheep in the grasslands.  The journey from her home to the grasslands takes her through over dunes, across a river, up a mountain, past camels, a parade, and a herd of giraffes.  All along the way she is concentrating hard not to spill any milk, and then just as she arrives, a mango falls and lands in the bowl, splashing the milk all over.  Disappointed that she has failed in her task, her father comforts her, by explaining that the bowl held not only milk, but all her love, and that didn’t spill.  They share the mango, leaving some for her to carry back to her mother, with all her father’s love.  Together, the text and illustrations evoke a far-away land, so different in so many ways for American school children, yet the efforts of a child to do something to show her love for her father are universal.

It’s an okay little story, with a nice lesson about coming together to help someone in need, but there seem to be a few holes in the thread tying the story together.  A giant, magical ball of yard shows up one night in the hedgehog’s quills, the spider teaches him how to knit, he knits an assortment of gifts for various forest animals, and every time the gift mysteriously turns into something else that animal likes best.  Finally a crab comes inland to find the hedgehog and ask him to knit something to help a beached whale, but he’s all out of yarn, so all the critters return their gifts, which the hedgehog is able to unravel and reknit into a single string which turns into a giant butterfly that is big enough to lift the whale and return him to the ocean.  We are never told where the yarn came from, why the transformed gifts are better than the hand-knit ones, how the hedgehog is able to unravel things that are no longer made of yarn, or why a giant butterfly was the best way to get a whale back into the ocean.

The design is really nice:  shiny cover, sturdy binding, color photos with color blocks setting off the captions, text broken into small enough chunks not to be overwhelming, and labeled diagrams providing visual support for the text.  The information is well-organized, clearly explaining the differences between different types of muscles, and substantive enough that I learned things I didn’t know.

The text is clear and concise, with chapters dedicated to describing different kinds of jobs police officers perform, what kind of training they need, the equipment they use, etc.  The color photos are well-chosen to support the text and are clearly captioned.  This is a high-interest topic for elementary students, and this volume provides plenty of substantive information, while breaking up the flow of information with enough photos, so as not to over-whelm young readers.  Solid, sturdy binding, too.

A lot of solid, scientific information, presented in very readable, comprehendible text, and illustrated with beautiful paintings.  It discusses the inter-connectedness of living things on planet earth, the fragility “The Real World Wide Web,” problems that come from introducing non-native species into new areas, or from over-harvesting, or from climate change.  It presents a variety of arguments for the importance of preserving biodiversity, describes efforts underway to keep the earth healthy, and offers suggestions for how individuals (even kids) can make a difference.

I’m sorry.  I’m just not a fan. The same publisher puts out a similar series of early chapter books based on classic super heroes, of which I really am a fan.  But this pet spin-off seems pointless.  The characters are a speedy turtle who is meant to be the pet of The Flash, and two newts who want to be pets to the villain Professor Zoom.  After hiding in Zoom’s bag, the newts find their way into his laboratory and start mucking around with his giant robot, but they’re in over their heads and set it loose on the city without really having it under control.  Speedy comes to the rescue by causing the robot to crash into some electrical lines and fry itself.  I found the characters undeveloped and the story line a bit lame.  Maybe I’m a purist, but there didn’t really seem to be a point to the whole pet angle.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a necessary addition to every collection, but if you’ve got students who exhibit particular interest in the Presidents of the United States, this could be a nice addition.  As one might expect there is certainly more known about the mothers of some presidents than there is of others, but taken together, these snippets  offer an interesting glimpse into the varied backgrounds of the men who became President.  One of the sad things this book brings home is how many mothers didn’t live long enough to know that their sons had became president.  The illustrations are rather cartoonish, adding a bit of levity, while helping to make clear the different personalities of the women who raised presidents.

The illustrations are the real lure of the book — they’re charming!  The story basically tells of the day in the life of an octopus, as he uses his powers of camouflage and ink sprays to escape some annoying seahorses and seek some solitude.  It tells of her encounters with jelly fish and crabs and a whale and clownfish on her quest for peace and quiet.  When she finally finds herself in a quiet place, she finds herself missing the bustle of the reef and returns home.

This is the fourth book Wendy Mass has set in the small, unusual town of Willow Falls, and the title seems to imply it is the final book in the series.  As such, it does a really nice job of wrapping together the other books, and explaining the mysterious character that linked her other books.  While bringing satisfactory closure to this delightful series, it also manages to set up the possibility of a companion series to follow.  It brings back well-loved characters and ties together mystery and humor and time-travel as Amanda and Leo (the main characters from the first book in the series, 11 Birthdays) work together to unravel and rescue Grace, who has fallen into a strange trance.

The drawings are cute, but the colors are a bit drab.  The story is similarly drab: it tells of a Mama elephant (whose child is a chicken), who puts on a silly hat, goes to the market, buys some stuff, fixes a flat tire on the way home, and enjoys her purchases.  There’s not much in the way of character development or anything to make the reader care about the plot.  I’m not sure what the point of the story is.

A beautiful book of poems, all inspired by things one might see on a walk through some back-yard woods.  The poems illustrate a variety of poetic forms.  The illustrations are charming and set the poems off well.  A nice tool to inspire young poets to see what inspiration they may find in their own back yards.

The illustrations are bright and vibrant and beautiful.  The words are full of rhyme and rhythm and repetition.  It’s a counting book, counting both up and down as the polliwogs plopping in the soggy bog turn into grimpy-grumpy frogs siting on the mossy log.  It’s got a variety of adjectives.  All-around, it’s a fun book for very young readers, which somewhat reminds me of Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom, for its use of sounds and playing with words.

It’s a very attractive book, with a shiny cover and a sturdy binding and lots of visuals.  I also like that vocabulary words are bolded and defined in the margins, right on the page where they are found.  Unfortunately, I found the text a bit surface-level, with a lot of generalities, and sometimes statements that even seemed contradictory: in the introduction it starts out by telling us how stable the Egyptian government was for 3000 years, and then in the first chapter it goes on to list a litany of wars and changes of dynasties, interspersed with periods of chaos and civil unrest; on page 68 it tells us, “Royalty, the wealthy, and children were the only people with leisure time,” but a few pages later it states that, “Board games were a popular way for both the poor and the wealthy to enjoy family time.”  More than once the book tells us that for a long time experts in Egyptology believed one thing, but that now they believe something else, but the reader is never told what the evidence was that altered long-held understandings. Also, the “timeline” in the back of the book simply lists a series of dates horizontally, evenly spaced, even though some of the time periods cover 2000 years, and others only 300 years — there’s nothing in the spacing to provide a visual representation of the time involved.

I found this series to be very attractive, beautifully designed, but somewhat weak on substance.  The binding is sturdy, the cover is shiny, the text is interspersed with attractive photos and illustrations, and vocabulary words are defined in the margins.  All of these are nice features.  But I thought the information was somewhat lacking in depth.  Right away in the first chapter it tells us that modern historians must rely on archaeology and the written accounts of Spanish invaders and native Incas who were educated by those invaders after the 1500s, because the Inca people left no written records. The author even uses the words “cloaked in mystery” to describe the early history, but then the text goes on to assert as fact many details from ancient times without ever backing up for the reader how we know what we think we know.  I would have liked to have seen more frequently phrases such as, “[such and such] evidence indicates…”  Also, the designers of the book are guilty of one of my current pet-pieves for non-fiction text features:  a “timeline” that is really just a sequence of events written horizontally, where dates are evenly spaced without regard to how much time separated them:  two inches in one place represents 500 years, and in another place along the same line, the same two inches represents only 25 years.  In elementary school, I was taught that the distance along a timeline was supposed to be a visual representation of actual time.

This book was surprisingly readable.  I confess that I put off reading it for a long time, because I didn’t expect it to be interesting, but once I started it, I read it rather quickly. It basically tells the story of how the U.S. Constitution came to be written, including the problems with the Articles of Confederation, the people who gathered to improve upon it, and the many arguments and compromises that went into its creation.  Appendices in the back include the text of the Preamble and the Bill of Rights.  I was rather surprised that it did not include the text of the Constitution itself — that would have made it easier to reference when various articles were discussed.

There was no department of children’s services in the middle ages.  After being threatened by the innkeeper his dad sold him to for beer, Will Sparrow runs off and must make his own way in the world any which way he can.  He meets (and often finds himself cheated by) many interesting characters along the way, as he fills his belly by foraging, thieving, and teaming up with assorted hucksters at market fairs.  I love Karen Cushman’s books in general, and I would count this one among her better ones: there’s something about rooting for a kid on his own, wondering what it would be like to find yourself in such a situation, that works as a great way to draw young readers into the genre of historical fiction.  The depictions of the setting will draw students in and help them imagine a time period far-removed, about which they may know little.  I’m a fan.

This is a fascinating little book, explaining a lot of very complex ideas in clear, understandable text.  After a brief explanation of the history of exploration, it goes on to describe the many challenges that must be tackled to achieve interstellar exploration within the next 100 years.  The team that has gathered to study this possibility includes scientists, engineers, doctors, businesspeople, etc. The book manages to make clear just how difficult such a prospect, while still inspiring confidence and hope that it will be achieved someday.  My only gripe with the book is something I’ve been noticing in a lot of non-fiction lately: a “timeline” that really isn’t a proper timeline at all, but just a list of dates of significant events.

This is a good, solid little book, which sticks to it’s focus.  It describes the many different types of public office for which candidates must be elected, and explains all the things involved in running a campaign, from fundraising and getting petitions signed to political parties and rallies and commercials.  It did a very deliberate job of making sure to balance photos of Democrats and Republicans, famous candidates and candidates for smaller, municipal offices.  It did state that, “The first U.S. president elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland in 1892,” which leaves the reader wondering, how were they chosen before then?

As a general rule, I like this series of books.  This one did have a lot of good solid information, clearly explained, but I found it’s definition of minerals somewhat unclear/contradictory: in one place it defines minerals as inorganic substances found in the earth, which are not alive and “do not come from plants or animals.” Yet elsewhere in the book it states that many foods contain minerals, including fruits and vegetables, eggs and dairy products.  No where does it offer an explanation for this contradiction.  I’m afraid students will find it confusing.

I guess it’s adequate, but I was not overly impressed with anything other than the binding.  I didn’t like the textbook style assignments/questions given throughout, interrupting the text, and I thought the text could have been more clearly stated.

This series seems to be some misguided attempt to morph library books with text books.  It really is a clearly written book about a topic of high interest to many students.  I would recommend it if they hadn’t gone and stuck a bunch of textbook assignment questions at the end of every chapter.  These will be a turn-off to students, and are unlikely to be used by teachers — they don’t enhance the book, but instead detract from its appeal to recreational readers.  Another thing: I’m tired of books that list a sequence of dates along a line and call it a timeline — when I was taught to make timelines in elementary school, it was a requirement that the distance along the line be representative the of the time it was attempting to illustrate — when the same distance might represent one year or seventeen years along the same line, it’s missing the point of a timeline.

I’ve been a fan of this series for years: the cartoonish illustrations, and the short blurbs of information make history accessible, and non-threatening, and the way the series emphasizes all the miserable, unpleasant aspects of history, putting the reader into the position of first person, is a draw that hooks a lot of otherwise resistant readers.  As much as I like the series in general, there have been some titles over the years that I thought failed to live up to their titles.  This one did a great job of showing just how difficult life was for pioneers heading West.  Plus, I love the sturdy bindings on these books.

Every kid who has ever had the dinner-table show-down with their parents over some vegetable they refused to eat will enjoy this tale.  Even when Martha’s parents insist that green beans are good for her, Martha knows they’re really bad.  She’s proven right one day when a gang of personified green beans dressed as hoodlums from the wild west arrive in town, reeking havoc on anyone who ever said, “Eat your green beans.”  When they take Martha’s parents hostage, she’s delighted at first with her new freedom to stay up late and eat whatever she wants.  When she decides she really does miss them, and decides to rescue them, the only way to set them free is to eat all the marauding beans.

What a fun, fabulous book!  Fifteen different fairy tales have each inspired two poems, representing different points of view, focusing on different elements of the story.  For example Cinderella laments in one poems about how much smarter it would have been to wear more comfortable shoes, while her step-sisters brag in the other about how they taught her everything they knew.  A variety of poetic forms are used, and paragraphs in the back provide background on the different variations in these familiar folk tales. This would be a great tool for helping teach students not only about poetry, but about point of view and expanding on familiar tales.  It’s sure to inspire some fabulous creations by the children who enjoy it.

The whole premise behind this book is completely lame.  It doesn’t describe any of the adaptations these animals make that allow them to survive extreme cold.  It’s simply an illustrated list of animals who do live in cold climates.  But the format in which it is presented borders on false: each page simply states an animal that can survive at a given temperature and then asks the question whether any animal exists in colder climate (the first page starts with an Arctic bumblebee that survives 40 degrees — even us wimpy humans in our mild Pacific Northwest climate survive colder than that every winter).  As you turn the page, the pictured thermometer drops a few more degrees, and another animal is declared to survive even that temperature.  The polar bear is described as surviving -34 degrees — you’re telling me if the temperature drops to -35 degrees all the polar bears drop down dead?  Given that many of the animals listed live in the same geographical areas, I’m guessing they must survive together.  After the last animal listed (the Siberian husky at -75 degrees), the repeated question as to whether any animal can exist in a colder climate is answered with, “Perhaps. Who knows what could exist in colder climates?”  I’m thinking man’s study of the temperature ranges in different parts of our world, and the animals who live in those regions is pretty vast, do data probably does exist as to what is the coldest part of the planet and what kind of animals live there.  The whole thing is just bad science, badly written.  The illustrations are nice, but they’re not enough to rescue the poor text. Don’t buy it.