It’s got large, full-color photos for visual appeal, and it’s purposely written simply for early readers, but when each two-page spread is dedicated to a different food group, and only has 2-3 sentences to say about it, the information provided is so skimpy it hardly seems to justify the price.

A sweet book for dog-lovers, it tells the story of Duffy’s day, from his own perspective, hitting such highlights as his before breakfast nap, his after breakfast nap, his late morning nap, etc.  Not surprisingly, when the day ends snuggled up for a bedtime story, Duffy doesn’t find himself to be the least bit sleepy. The fun illustrations are full of personality, and bound to make dog lovers go, ahhh… Clocks scattered throughout the book tracking the time of day could be used for math practice for kids learning to tell time.

Kids will be drawn to the cartoon illustrations full of characters which they already know from other Bailey books.  Obviously the book is not going for believability — Bailey is a dog who walks upright and attends school like just another student in the class.  At the museum his canine instincts raise their head when he climbs on the dinosaur bones and has to be told they’re not a snack.  It’s cute I guess, but I can’t claim to be a huge fan.

I like the concept behind the series, and it’s got a reasonable amount of information contained in the text, but I was disappointed by the visuals in the book: besides using an over-all drab color scheme, it missed many opportunities to offer pictorial support for the text (e.g. right next to the paragraph that says she was born “near the Salmon River in Idaho” is a map that labels neither the Salmon River nor Idaho; when telling the story of load their buffalo-hide tepee onto a travois to go to the hunting grounds where she was kidnapped while picking berries with her mother, the photo on the page is of berries — a concept most students will be well-familiar with, instead of a travois). It’s adequate, but I think there’s better available.

This beautiful, vibrant book is the last we’ll have from this talented author-illustrator who passed away last year.  Monkey wants to cross the river to reach a tree of ripe mangoes, and Crocodile wants to eat Monkey’s heart.  No matter how Crocodile tries to trick Monkey, Monkey always outsmarts him, coming to the conclusion in the end that though Crocodile’s teeth may be sharp, his mind is dull.  A worthy addition to a library’s folktale section, to place along side McDermott’s other work.

This is a 25th anniversary re-illustrated update of Tedd Arnold’s first picture book by the same title, telling the tale of young Walter, who lives in a tall apartment building and learns the hard way that perhaps he should have listened to his father when he was told, “No jumping on the bed.”  Instead, Walter jumps so vigorously that he proceeds to crash through the floor of his bedroom, into the apartment below, continuing to fall clear through to the basement, collecting startled neighbors to fall with him through each floor along the way.  If you don’t already have this classic, it’s fun, and a worthy selection for the library, but to be quite frank I preferred the original illustrations, so if you’ve already got the older one, you don’t need this one, too.

Gruntly is a hog in every meaning of the word.  His friends are sick of his greedy grabs for everything around, but he learns his lesson at the town treasure hunt — Gruntly is so greedily determined to get to all the treasure first and keep it all for himself that he never stays long enough to hear or read the end of the clues, but jumps to conclusions and heads off at full speed in the wrong direction.  When he does finally catch up to his friends, he is moved by the recognition they all left his portion for him, that he ended up sharing in the end.  Is it believable that one would change their ways so easily? No.  But it’s not aiming for believability, but for making a point, which it does admirably.  Students will be drawn to the familiar illustrations from other books by this pair, and they will delight in using the rhyming clues to make predictions about what mistakes Gruntly makes.  A worthy choice.

What a beautiful book!  The illustrations strike one first, rich in color and evocative of the time and place and mood of the story.  The story is equally beautiful – that of a boy ostracized since birth, as the illegitimate child of a mixed-race, mixed-class relationship.  Though left without a standing in the society in which he lives, Martin continuously responds in kindness and compassion to all those around him, including those who ostracized him, becoming known as a great healer sought by all.

Given how popular fairies always are, as well as ABC books, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done before.  It had a good variety of words for the alphabet, selecting from a wide range of fairy lore, each accompanied by a rhyming quartet, just enough to give a touch of explanation, and perhaps encourage enthusiasts to seek further information. The illustrations are charmingly drawn, including a human boy and girl and three fairies that continue throughout the book, along with page-specific illustrations that are supportive of the text.  My one criticism of the book, keeping it from earning an R* rating, is that there’s something jarring about the color-scheme used in the illustrations – too many clashing colors are visually off-putting.

What a fun book!  The text is the lyrics from the classic Halloween song by the same title.  The illustrations are fabulous — hitting just the right note between creepy and silly.  Songs are known to be great tools for emergent readers, with repetitive words and rhythm to help them predict, and this one is just so fun, I think it will be a holiday favorite even with older kids.  Highly recommended.

I debated about whether to give this book an “additional purchase,” or a “not recommended.”  Since I really wished I could recommend it, I decided “additional purchase” was the compromise rating.  Each two-page shares a twist on a classic poem (“based on the poem…by…), in which a mathematical puzzler (or two) has been tucked.  It’s clever and fun, and the answers are provided, along with one way to show the work.  My reason for not recommending may seem overly persnickety to some, but mathematics is discipline all about precision, and there are several spots in the book where it lacks precision, either in the answer or the way it states the question.  It states that 1/9=0.11111 instead of 0.111… or using the repeating mark over the 1.  In one poem it describes the size of a garden as “eight by two” without labeling the measurements (feet, meters, yards…?), and yet the answer to the perimeter and area are stated in feet/square feet.  One poem asks readers to figure the number of teeth a shark has — after telling us how many were in the first row, and that there are four additional rows of teeth, it asks, “if each of those had half as many. How many teeth would equal plenty?” (okay, I just noticed lack of precision in punctuation as well, as that should have been a comma instead of a period at the end of that dependent clause) — Is that each row having half as many as the first row or half as many as the preceding row?  Another states that someone is being eaten “by a hippo-po-tah-tum at 4 percent per bite.”  Figuring out how many bites it would take is straightforward enough if one assumes the size of the bites stays constant, based on the percentage of the original size of the person, but significantly more complicated (not to mention gruesomely, unendingly torturous for the poor victim) if each bite is 4% of what’s left after the last bite.  As I said, I recognize that my criticisms of the book are highly nitpicky, and if they don’t bother you, you might still want the book, but math really is a subject all about precision, and though clever and fun, precision is missing several times.

Stunning! Fabulous! Amazing!  The simple text is almost poetical as it describes a spiral as a snuggling shape, a growing shape, a strong shape, a clever shape, and the gorgeous illustrations on each page depict examples from nature where spirals are found in the context described in that bit of text.  Labels tucked cozily in among the illustrations offer scientific vocabulary for further investigations.  Informational blurbs in the back offer more detailed explanations of how/why spirals serve the entities described in the main body of the book.  Highly recommended.  Though a picture book intended for young audiences, I could see it finding purpose in high school geometry, art, or biology classes.

The unifying gimmick running through this book is photographs of silly faces made from healthy food.  This may be the first bilingual ABC book I’ve encountered.  With each page dedicated to a letter of the alphabet, the perimeter of each page lists (next to illustrative photographs) healthy foods that start with that letter of the alphabet in either English or Spanish (or both, in the case of banana).  In capital letters next to each photo is the word for that food in the language that starts with the applicable letter; underneath, in parentheses and italics, is the translation of the name of the food.  There seems to be a good mix of how many are labeled primarily in English, and how many primarily in Spanish.  It is left to the reader to determine which language is represented by the primary label, and which by the secondary label.  In the center of each page is a large photo of a silly face created by the foods around the edges.  The back of the book includes informational blurbs on each of the featured foods, project ideas, and instructions for creating one’s own silly face.  A fun and creative approach to introducing students to perhaps unfamiliar foods.

If your collection needs a book on bicycle safety, I suppose this will fit the bill.  The text, presented in both English and Spanish, is simple and straightforward, telling of a young boy who receives a bicycle for his birthday, and all the precautions he takes to learn to ride it safely.  The illustrations are bright and cheerful and support the text.  Scattered throughout the book are text boxes highlighting and explaining particular safety tips.  Not exactly stimulating reading, but it serves a purpose and does it well.

The illustrations a re bright and cheerful and inviting.  The book begins with note Tu B’Shevat as a Jewish holiday, describing some of the customs there of, and comparing it to Arbor Day.  The story tells of Joni and her friend, Nate trying to figure out what to do for Joni’s tree to celebrate its birthday.  In the end it comes down to making a promise to always be good to the trees of the world.  A good book for making an environmental care-taking point, but a bit pedantic as a story.

The illustrations are kind of fun, and there might be some teachers who’d like to use it at the beginning of the school year, but really the text is just one long rhyming list of things not to do.  And then at the end it finally says, do have fun.  Really its kinda tedious.

I like it! I like it!  The illustrations are bright and engaging and humorous.  The rhyming story tells of a young girl growing up in a family of pirates, yet longing for the life of a landlubber.  (I particularly like the side-step of stereotypes that makes her mom the Pirate Captain and her dad the cook.) Despite not quite fitting in on board, Victricia’s eccentricities manage to help save the ship from the clutches of a sea serpent, and she is rewarded by finally getting her wish of being put ashore, where she opens a bookstore (no pillaging or plundering books).  Her family and friends come by to visit, and become “the world’s first seafaring librarians.”

On the one hand, with recent interest being generated by Rick Riordan’s books, it’s nice to have a book in the genre of Egyptian mythology, but I really wish it was better.  The telling of the story seems a bit bland, and the quality of the illustrations is inconsistent — some are quite strong, and some are a bit flat in the characters’ expressions.

Ack! Translation creates enough problems when a story written in English is poorly translated into Spanish.  But this story is designed/intended to be a bilingual story.  If a writer has such a purpose from the start, it seems reasonable to expect her to write story that works in both languages.  This one does not.  It tells of the story of a creature with an exceptionally long tongue that won’t fit in his mouth, and the troubles this causes:  when he orders ham and cheese, the waiter brings him a hat a sheep.  That works in English (stick out your tongue and try saying the words, and it’s a reasonable mistake).  The Spanish words in the translated portion of the book sound nothing alike — this would in no way be a reasonable mistake.

I will say this for the book:  it uses lots of simple, repetitive language, which is good for emergent readers.  But the story opens by introducing the robot character, listing several special tools this robot has, and stating, “He uses the tools to help his best friend, Rico.”  The problem is that robot never uses a single one of those tools to help his friend.

I don’t like it. I found several places where it over-simplifies information, sometimes unnecessarily vague, and sometimes less than accurate.  When asking the question, “How long will one month take?” instead of saying about thirty days, it just says that a month is longer than a week but shorter than a year.  On the next page it states, “People around the world measure time the same way,” before going into describing seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.  But there are plenty of places in the world where people live in remote areas without access to detailed timekeepers, where time is still measured much more vaguely. On the next page it states that “Clocks measure seconds, minutes, and hours,” yet not all clocks measure seconds. On the next page it describes a calendar by stating that, “Each month gets a page.”  Yet lots of calendars show a year or a week on one page.  There are better time book available.  Choose something else.

It’s a good solid little book. It starts by defining climate and climate change, then goes on to describe several factors that influence climate change, both natural phenomena like the tilt of the planet and volcanoes, as well as human activities such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees.  It gives examples of some effects already being felt, and predicts what is likely to happen in the future.  It concludes by listing thinks individuals can do to help reduce human impact on climate change.  It’s got enough scary stuff for readers to take notice of the problem, yet it offers hope by suggesting things that can be done to help.  For those people out there who don’t believe climate change is due to human activity, this book acknowledges that it’s not all due to human activity.

This was not one of the better books in this series.  It was a bit bland, a bit repetitive about the chain of life, and not as well-organized as I could’ve hoped — it’s got a two page spread describing different kinds of crocodiles and what an impact they have on the chain of life, and then four pages later it tells us that crocodiles live in wetlands, which it already told us.  Still, it’s got some good information that could be useful for habitat reports.

It’s fine.  It describes Earth as the “Goldilocks” planet, since it’s just right for life.  It goes into detail listing what features are necessary for life, and why none of the other planets in our solar system are suitable, and it ends by considering the possibility that there could be other suitable planets in the universe, but they’re so far away that the likelihood of contact is slim.  It uses every type of non-fiction text feature it could think of: bold print, subtitles, sidebars, captions, definitions, diagrams, etc.  But it still just looks like a school book, unlikely to be chosen for recreational reading. An adequate selection if it fills a need, but nothing special about it to set it apart.

The best thing about this book is that it shares with students the way scientific knowledge unfolds: it begins by describing the discovery that many frogs were going extinct very suddenly from an unknown cause, then it proceeds to describe the unraveling of this puzzle.  It shares the scientists thought processes as they considered and ruled out assorted possible causes and why.  Even when they discover that the deaths are being caused by a particular fungus, this just led to further questions as to how the fungus spread and what could be done about it. It then goes on to describe the creation of a conservation center and the assorted problems that had to be overcome, as well as describing the possible avenues being considered to develop a long-term solution to the problem for the future.  The color photos are vibrant and the graphics are visually appealing without being busy or distracting.  A beautiful, worthwhile book, which could become out-dated rather soon.