With text all in Spanish, this information-rich book was a bit beyond my Spanish skills to adequately review it, so I handed it to one of my native-spanish-speaking second-grade teachers, who teaches a unit on rocks, and asked her to tell me what she thought.  She says she would recommend it.  Features she approved up were that it is well-organized, has an attractive layout and color photographs, uses high-academic vocabulary and appropriate grammar, highlights important vocabulary, and incorporates additional and relevant elements related to the topic.  As a librarian, I approve of the sturdy binding, and the complete range of non-fiction text features, including headings, index, glossary, charts, etc.

Cotton-candy sweet, it’s probably best suited to a public library that serves the pre-school crowd.  It tells the story of a young polar bear, used to spending all his time with Mom, who is trying to make a new friend.  Things don’t work out with the seagull, the seal, the penguins, or the walrus, but when he takes a break from his search, another young polar bear comes along, and the two have fun together.  The pink and white cover, with the i in the title dotted with a heart, and the fuzzy bears will appeal to young girls.

Every children’s library needs something along these lines to offer as reassurance to kids who are going to have to visit the hospital, and this one is cute.  Kids who already enjoy the other Little Princess stories will especially appreciate it.  When the Princess is informed she’s going to need to visit the hospital, she insists she doesn’t want to go, despite all the positives those around her offer in reassurance.  When she is finally hogtied and dragged in, they treat her like a princess, so she wants to go back.

So this is not a folk song with which I am familiar, but it’s fun to read.  It’s filled with non-sense words, telling a rather non-sensical tale about a mouse who lives with a tailor who bakes the mouse into a pie because he thought it would die because it had a chill.  The bright, cheerful illustrations expand on the words, giving the characters personality and helping to make sense of the non-sense, and the rhythm and rhyme just make it fun.  The complete text of the song is set to music in the back, and the last page offers what is known about the origins of the song.

Your basic pet story with cat and dog learning to get along:  Toby makes it very clear that he doesn’t like cats, but the neighbor’s cat comes to stay anyway.  Nobody ever notices all the trouble the cat causes, or the things Toby wants them to notice about him, but they always seem to notice when he’s getting into trouble.  In the end, they make friends after Toby gets the family’s attention when Pandora (the cat) is stuck in a tree. Kinda cute, but the illustrations are a bit drab.  Not a stand out.

Each page, or two-page spread contains a short, 3- to 4-panel cartoon, mostly wordless, ending in some sort of humorous twist in the last panel.  Useful for observation skills and as a tool for developing oral or written language skills by having students describe what is happening.  But there are better wordless stories that serve similar purposes.

The simple, straightforward text is presented in both English and Spanish.  It gives some basic information about money (how much cents makes a dollar, the names of the coins, etc.) and considers different ways coins can be sorted.  My problem with the book is that the only two ways to sort coins that actually serve a real-world purpose are to sort by type of coin and by value, which is really the same thing, but this book dedicates two separate pages to these ways, and also sorts by size, color, and whether or not there are ridges on the edges.  I guess this is fine as a study of sorting, but serves little purpose to understanding money, other than guiding introductory observations.

Adequate information, but nothing to make it special, and the illustrations are a little odd.  There are so many books on Martin Luther King Jr. that are so much better, I can’t imagine spending money on something that’s just adequate.

A solid choice to support earth science curriculum.  The text is clear and straightforward, easily accessible, with an attractive layout, and color photos and diagrams to suppport the text. Organized into chapters that address what soil is, how it forms, layers of soil, what it looks like, and how to take care of it, it taught me a few things. I did wish that in the chapter about how to take care of soil there had been some mention of how composting can help return nutrients into the earth. The binding is shiny and sturdy-looking, too.

The story opens as young Hope is presented with the gift a a conch shell from her father as he says goodbye before running away to fight for the North to help bring an end to slavery during the American Civil War.  It goes on to tell how this shell becomes a symbol of hope for her as she misses her father and worries about him for over two years as they wait to gain their freedom. I had a hard time deciding how to rate this one: it’s a nice little story with nice illustrations, but I still don’t think I can really go so far as to recommend it, as it seems a rather sanitized story to tell about such an ugly, brutal time in American history.

The cartoonish sketches and simple, yet direct story do a a good job of making a political statement about the silliness of war.  When this grumpy little king is pouting about not being big and powerful enough, his advisors suggest he start a war to gain fame and stature, so he readies his troops and sends them forth with the order to attack.  When his soldiers declare they are ready to follow their king into war, they look around and realize he’s not actually there, but back at the castle having tea. The soldiers from both sides collected their respective kings handed them weapons and stood them facing each other, but the two kings were too scared that they might get hurt, so everybody goes home and the war is over.  Wouldn’t it be nice if all wars were handled so directly?  I’m not actually sure what grade to recommend this for, as it might best suit as a discussion starter in a high-school world problems class.

I wish I could give this book a stronger recommendation.  The text is rather lyrical and poetical, speaking of dreams and hopes for peace, and the soft flowey illustrations suit the text.  If you wanted to support a unit of study on Afghanistan or interpreting creative writing, this could be a worthy choice.  I just wish it had some sort of forward to place it in context so that it would stand alone better with young readers.  Students will need to be given some background, in order to make meaning from this book.

Well, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call these mysteries.  They’re word problems. They’re good word problems (real-world situations, all the necessary information provided, but leave the solver to figure out what to do with the information, well explained), but still, they’re word problems.  Twelve story problems are put forth, each on it’s own page, and on the reverse of that page the answer is preceded by an explanation of one way to solve the problem.  It does what it’s trying to do well, so if you’re looking to fill a niche like this, I could recommend this title, but I don’t imagine it’s likely to have a lot of circulation, as it is unlikely students will self-select it, and most teachers already have an arsenal of materials they draw from.  Also, I do wish they would have made more of a point of stating that the solutions offered represent one way to think about the situation, rather than just presenting it as THE solution.

Well, I’m not overly fond of the illustrations — they’re a bit on the drab side, but the story is even more drab: neither believable nor interesting.  When the princess refuses to sleep (at all, ever) no one in the kingdom can sleep, so they bring in all sorts of folks who try all sorts of things, from singing to stories to counting sheep, and nothing works.  Then the prince rolls into town, shouts “Silence,” the princess falls asleep and the prince falls in love.  The end.

What a beautiful bedtime story!  The illustrations are charming and delightful.  The story is something every child can relate to: a little girl who doesn’t want to go to bed.  As her parents tuck her into bed, she asks if everything sleeps, and they discuss several different animals and the way they sleep.  She insists she’s still not sleepy, but as she emulates each of the animals they discussed, she gently drifts off.

It’s a simple, sweet, charmingly illustrated story about a Mama duck who went for a walk with her little ducklings one day, but the little ones fell through the gaps in a storm drain.  Luckily the problem is noticed by some friendly humans who work together to rescue the ducklings and send them on their way. I’ve got two gripes with the story that keep it from getting a higher rating: 1) it feels like it’s trying to be the next Make Way for Ducklings, but it falls a little short, and 2) the cover declare it to be a “true rescue story,” but though it may be based on a true story, as soon as the author starts interpreting Mama Duck’s quacking to represent human speech, it stops being able to claim the “true story” label.

What a fabulous, fun book, about punctuation and about being yourself.  This charming story, told in simple sentences, on pages that resemble that rail-road track paper on which kids are first taught to print, tells of young Exclamation Mark’s struggles to fit in with a bunch of periods.  He tries all sorts of things to try to be like the others, until he meets Question Mark:  when Question Mark arrives on the scene, he is of course full of nothing but questions; he asked so many questions that Exclamation Mark is driven to shout out for the questions to stop.  So surprised by his own shout, he starts to experiment and finds all sorts of ways he can contribute to the vibrancy of language.

Oh, I’m so sorry to have to give this book a negative rating.  Usually I am a fan of Gary Schmidt’s books, and I was really looking forward to reading this one, but I had to slug my way through it, and I don’t imagine many of my students would stick with it much beyond the first chapter.  I think maybe Sci-Fi/Fantasy is not Gary’s strong suit.  The story is told in alternating chapters, with part of the story told on another planet in turmoil, and part in contemporary New England, with a family in a bit of turmoil themselves.  With the Valorim facing their impending doom, in a last ditch to preserve all the good and beauty of their world, a locket is fashioned that contains all their arts, and launched out into the universe; when it lands in Tommy Pepper’s lunch box, it begins to exude its influence over him, so that he finds himself suddenly able to do all sorts of things he never could before. Tommy’s story is actually pretty good, but the ending isn’t really satisfactory enough to make it worth slugging through all the other chapters to get there: the chapters set in Weoruld Ethelim are so heavily riddled with invented vocabulary unique to this planet, without enough supporting English text to give them meaning through context, that the reader is left puzzled and these chapters become a chore to read as one must struggle to make meaning of them. There is a glossary in the back, but few students are going to willingly look up so many unfamiliar words, and besides, doing so interrupts the flow of the story (not that there’s much flow in these chapters).  The five-finger rule tells kids if they run into five words on the first page that give them trouble, that book might be too hard for them.  I ran into five such words in the first two sentences.

This is the second book in a companion series, which serves as a prequel to the Charlie Bone books, giving readers the back story on who the Red King was and where he came from.  The characters are likable, the plot is engaging, and the book manages to avoid one of my pet peeves with series books: in a brief prologue and snippets explained as they pop up in the story, the author manages to explain enough of what happened in the first book in the series so that this story manages to stand alone: readers (like myself) who pick up this book without having read the first book in the series will still be able to enjoy the story independently — though they may find themselves intrigued enough to want to seek out the other book, they won’t be lost reading this one.

The patriotic color scheme, the illustrations (some photos and some drawings), and the way the text is formatted with lots of headings and captions, all serve to make the book visually appealing and non-intimidating.  The tone of the text is chatty and conversational, which helps to draw the reader in.  And the content of the book, focused as it is on the children and families who’ve lived in the White House, builds a connection between young readers and history.  Rather than being organized chronologically, it is organized around themes such as what it’s like to always live in the spotlight, what the house itself was like, and what were some of the perks and problems that came along with living in the white house.  Appendices in the back put the presidents and first ladies into chronological order and tell snippets of what happened to White House Kids after they left the White House.  It’s informative, approachable, and interesting.

Originally published shortly after the end of WWII, this beautifully illustrated version of the Gettysburg Address uses artistic montages to draw out the wider themes of Lincoln’s speech.  The complete text of this short speech is in the front of the book, but the body of the book is dedicated to pulling apart the text phrase by phrase.  The illustrations are rich and vibrant and full of symbols drawn from all eras of history, inviting the reader to ponder why different images were paired with each line of text.  In the back of the book is a page-by-page explanation from the author sharing his thoughts/reasons for including specific images.  The Afterword provides the historic context of the original speech.  All together this book helps take one of those standard texts students are often asked to memorize and enrich it by placing it in the context in which it was originally offered, connecting it to wider issues of history, and providing illustrations to help with comprehension of big ideas.

Even for an early reader, this book is way too simplified and general.  It’s only got one sentence per page, and those sentences are so vague as to provide very little information, even bordering on misinformation by way of omission.  It answers the question, “What are fruits?” with the statement, “Fruits are parts of plants.”  Which parts? Not all parts of plants are fruits.  It tells us, “Many fruits are round.” Many are other shapes, too.  It tells us, “Fruits are full of nutrients.” So are all the other healthy foods that belong to the other food groups.  There are much better food group books available for the money.

I like the size and the sturdy binding and the color photos, and I like that most pages include 2-4 sentences rather than some early readers that only have 1-2 sentences per page, but I think it’s trying to be more than it can be.  Given the limitations of the early-reader format, it perhaps needed a smaller focus.  Each page is dedicated to safety tips for different places, but in just a few sentences, you are obviously limited to how much content you can include. For example, the “At Home” section only addresses poison safety; the “At School” page only considers slipping or getting lost on a field trip.  Obviously there are many, many ways children can be hurt both at home or at school, so a few sentences really don’t cover it.  I do like that it started with the idea safety starts with thinking before you act — that helps to cover what cannot be listed.

Recommended with reservations.  It fits a narrow curriculum niche, strictly for young readers for health lessons — not likely to be chosen as recreational reading.  But if you need something to fit this niche, it’s a good selection:  one to two sentence on each page are accompanied by full-page color illustrations; it explains what kinds of foods are part of the dairy group, what makes a serving size, how much is recommended each day, and offers meal/snack suggestions.  It’s got a sturdy binding and the full range of non-fiction text features.

I recommend this book with reservations.  It is strictly an early reader book, and it is not likely to be chosen for recreational reading, which means it serves a small niche in a school library collection.  I have a hard time recommending such books, due to the limited information one gets for one’s buck, but if you need something to fit this particular niche in your curriculum, this is a good choice.  It lists examples of foods included in the protein group, including portion sizes and daily recommendations. It describes some of the benefits offered by the protein group, and offers meal/snack suggestions.  One or two simple sentences on each page accompany full-page color photos.  The full gambit of non-fiction text features are included at a rudimentary level. And it’s got a good, sturdy binding