Bright graphics and color photos illustrate this really rather comprehensive look at assorted tools used in fighting crime.  It’s up-to-date at this time with a lot of modern technology, giving a brief explanation as to how each device operates.  It raises questions as to the privacy issues some worry about, and the limitations of some technologies.  It includes a timeline in the back that looks at the history of crime-fighting (dating back to the first known police force in ancient Egypt).  I think it will be of high interest to kids who watch crime dramas on TV and are curious about how all these gadgets work, though it may go more toward sparking curiosity that fully satisfying it.  My one caution is that it is likely to be an out-dated book rather quickly, as technology changes so rapidly.

Granted, I’m not a huge fan of graphic novels to begin with, but I’ve read some I liked.  Not this one.  The artwork is visually appealing and all, but the story is lame and incomplete.  It takes seven pages to tell us the main character isn’t a morning person and is bored with small-town life, and then when she finally gets to school, she over-hears part of a conversation between some classmates that set’s her imagination going.  Suspecting there’s something strange going on, she spends the day following them, and along the way there are these strange little alien guys who seem to be following her, too, but the reader never actually gets to find out what’s really going on, because it just ends abruptly with, “after all this story is far from over.”  As far as I can tell, the only reason this book exists is to try to get someone to buy the next book.  It won’t be me.

Based on the characters from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, this story takes place at some indeterminate time in the midst of Belle’s stay at the castle, after she’s stopped being fearful, but before she’s fallen in love with the beast. Reading a book before bed one evening, Belle discovers the last chapter of the book is missing.  She spends the rest of the story deciphering clues that lead to other clues until she finds the book (with the help of the Beast). It’s a beginning level chapter book that will appeal to some students simply because it’s Belle, but it’s really rather a trite little story.

The sequel to Our Only May Amelia, this tells of the continuing adventures of a young girl growing up in Southwest Washington around the beginning of the 20th century.  Her family is a poor farming family, amid a community of poor farming/logging families.  Most of the folks in the community are immigrants from Finland, and like our immigrant communities today, they depend on the children to help translate, as much of the older generation speaks limited English.  When a slick city guy comes to offer a deal that’s too good to be true, Amelia is the one who speaks for her father, getting him to sign papers that they think will bring them all riches, but instead robs them of all their savings.  What really makes these books such a treat are the relationships between Amelia and her brothers and the network of connections in this close-knit community.  The only thing I wasn’t crazy about is the new cover — since the story is set before the days of color photography, the glossy cover seems a little disconnected.

This is the second book in this series I’ve read (though it’s actually the third book in a trilogy — I never read the one in the middle), and I’ve really enjoyed both.  Set during the Revolutionary War, it tells the adventures of a girl dressed and living as a boy aboard a privateering ship.  In the first book she was disguised to everyone; somewhere in book two, she must have revealed herself to the couple trusted friends who know her secret in this one.  The book does a good job of describing what life aboard ship would have been like in those days, outlining the differences and relationships between the navy ships, privateers, and pirates, and it’s got good plot and character development to draw the reader into Hannah’s adventures.  The only real problem is that the title gives away the ending, as it is not until the very end of the book that Hannah is made Captain of the ship.

A small spiral bound book with alternating pages of heavy board and transparency film, it provides basic information for young readers about different types of homes, from prehistoric caves to modern city sky-scrapers.  Each two-page spread (with one tranparency in the middle) is dedicated to a different type of home from a different part of the world, with 4-6 sentences describing its unique features and why they are helpful to the people who live there.  While I know students will be intrigued by the transparent pages, and the information is sound, if scant, I worry about how this type of binding will hold up under library use.  I don’t expect it to last long.

The illustrations are fabulous: they’re charming and sweet and inviting.  But then you start reading.  There are actually several short stories, but they’re all rather dull and stilted in the telling: this said Maudie, that said Bear.  Maybe they’re meant to appeal to the very young pre-school child, but I think they need to hear more fluent examples of language.  But the pictures really are delightful.

Given that it’s meant to be about humor, it’s rather dry in the telling.  It’s got some good information.  I learned some stuff.  It’s got some jokes and comics sprinkled throughout, but there’s no color to make it visually appealing.  Somehow it seems that it ought to be funnier (or at least more interesting) in the telling.

A picture book for kids to share with their grandmas, the illustrations are cheerful and fun, and depict a whole variety of grandmas.  The rhyming text celebrates the variety of grandmas found in our world:  different ways they look, different things they like to do, different names they’re called by.  It reminds kids that if they haven’t got a grandma of their own nearby,  it’s possible to adopt one.  It reminds us all to cherish our grandmas.  It’s a delight.

It’s got a beautiful cover, and the author has received all sorts of awards for other books, but I had a hard time really getting into this one, or imagining who would.  It’s a work of historical fiction set in 1912 in the Cuban countryside, told in free-verse poetry.  The main character is a girl who has been diagnosed with what they refer to at that time as “word blindness,” what we would call dyslexia, and these are supposedly her collection of poems she’s written in a blank book her mother gave her.  Besides dealing with her learning disability in a time when society was less accepting of such, she’s also dealing with the turmoil of living in a time of political unrest, and there are vague allusions to a creepy guy who works for her parents who may be trying to get too friendly with the daughters of the house.  The problem with the poetic form to tell the story is that it leaves a lot unsaid, and the reader is left piecing things together.  And to be honest, the girl comes across rather whiney.  I so much wanted to like it more than I did.  I think there is a gap in children’s literature for both hispanic kids and kids with learning disabilities finding themselves represented.  But I don’t think there’s enough here for any of my students to really connect with.

This is a very readable book tackling some seriously complex science in an approach that is rather conversational.  Just when one explanation brings up some question the reader wonders about, that’s the next thing they explain.  And yet it doesn’t give the mistaken impression that scientists have all the answers, either; it acknowledges the way our scientific understanding continues to grow and evolve.

It’s a very sentimental, idealistic version of history, focusing on the family relationships between the famous Kennedy brothers.  Still, who says there’s anything wrong with sentiment and idealism?  The soft water-color illustrations are stunning and really draw the reader in to the story.

Really flashy graphics and color photos are visually appealing, but REALLY low on substance: it’s got a couple of sentences in large font on each two-page spread — mostly pictures. Great binding, though!  Still, not worth the cost of the binding.

As a personal souvenir of her trip, maybe to share with family & friends, this is a beautiful book, but as a published work for the general public, I don’t think it’s got enough focus (or is it an issue of enough breadth?) to appeal to random readers.  This author has written other books that got lots of impressive awards, but I just thought this rambled.

Okay, so maybe I’m not a fair judge, as I haven’t read the first four books in the series, and maybe I would like it better if I had, but the reality of series is that students don’t always come to them in order, and each volume really needs to be able to stand alone in my opinion.  This one didn’t.  There’s no explanation of characters or plot — it just picks up in the middle of some adventure with some kid trying to rescue his friends, but there’s no character development to get me to care.  Maybe if all of that had been addressed in the earlier volumes I would already care, but I didn’t.  Most definitely not recommended unless you get the whole set, and I still don’t know that I’d recommend it.

There are better versions out there.  This is a simple volume of 13 traditional nursery rhymes, one rhyme on each two page spread, accompanies by full-page painted illustrations.  The illustrations were a bit bland and washed out.  But it’s got a really sturdy binding!

This is a beautiful, informative, and valuable book.  Our world is so often torn apart when we look at the things that divide us.  This is a text on comparative religions that uses the approach of looking at similarities.  It starts with a brief description of what faith is, and what the five most common world religions are.  It then looks at various elements that are common to many or all of these, such as sacred texts, symbols, prayers, etc.  It is illustrated with photographs (often of children), and next to each photograph is a simple caption stating which religion it is depicting.  I think every school library needs to have this book.

This book is one that just makes you go, “ahhh…”  For every kid who has relatives who live far away, this touching book about a grandmother missing her grandson will touch home.  The text is downright poetical. The illustrations are beautiful.  After comparing all the ways life is different where she lives from where he lives, it ends with the acknowledgment that they share the same moon.

Over all, I am generally a fan of Scholastic’s True Book series, but this one didn’t seem to do as good a job as the others of really getting concrete and clear in its explanations of complex scientific concepts.  Perhaps it was a function of how much material they were trying to cover within the same number of pages, but the information seemed to skim a bit more across the surface level.  It’s not bad, but I think it would have been stronger if it had gone more in depth, maybe having a different volume for each type of simple machine.

Like other books in this series, this one takes some pretty abstract scientific concepts (such as the difference between different types of energy), and explains them in simple terms, using concrete examples that are familiar to students.  It’s a useful and worthwhile tool to support the science curriculum, though it’s unlikely to be chosen for recreational reading.

This book does a good job (as I have found to generally be the case with this series) of taking some pretty complex scientific concepts, such as friction, inertia, and centrifical force, and explain them in clear and understandable language.  It sets up several experiments to illustrate its points that students could fairly easily replicate on their own.  In addition to the experiments for students, it also includes information about famous scientists and the early discoveries regarding motion.  I do however have one and a half gripes: gripe number one is that when it is describing the effects of centrifugal force, it never actually names it as such, missing a perfect opportunity to build scientific vocabulary; my half gripe is that it sets up experiments for students to conduct, and then proceeds to describe what the results would be, thereby taking away the need for students to actually try it themselves (but it’s only half a gripe, because I grudgingly acknowledge that this way students who wouldn’t bother to do the experiments may actually learn from them anyway).

This is actually a collection of four of Grimms’ tales: Tom Thumb, The Fisherman and His Wife, Hans in Luck, and The Seven Swabians.  I would have liked it better if Eric Carle had dedicated an individual book to each of the first three (the last one was a little odd — could’ve just not bothered).  His distinctive and fabulous artwork is what makes Eric Carle’s work so amazing, but this volume had too high a ratio of white space and words to somewhat limited artwork.

I loved this book.  I put off reading it for a long time because I thought it was going to be a chore, but it was actually a lot of fun, and I learned a lot, too.  A collective biography of U.S. presidents from George Washington to Barak Obama, this book focuses more on who the presidents were as people, rather than focusing on policies and politics.  With some of the less interesting presidents earning only 1/3 of a page, and others granted four whole pages, each biography includes a caricature, birth and death dates and locations (where applicable), and an interesting look at who that president was, including bits about their marriages and family lives, and what kinds of foods they liked to eat, as well as some pertinent historical stuff.  I gotta tell you — over the years we’ve had some pretty useless presidents.  I just wish they included at the beginning of each (or else a timeline somewhere) the dates for which each was president.

Other than as a souvenir from one’s visit to the Lincoln Memorial, I’m not really sure what the purpose or target audience of this book is. It’s got a lovely, sturdy binding, and it’s even got good solid information presented in simple-enough language for young readers.  I just don’t think it has enough information to warrant the cost of a book all of it’s own.  The same information could be offered within a book more broadly about Lincoln, or about Washington D.C.  I can’t recommend spending this much money for a book with such a narrow niche.

I wish the author’s note in the back of this book had been printed in the front instead.  Unless students are already fairly familiar with the artist’s work, they won’t know until the end (if they bother to read it) that the illustrations in the story are based on the surreal paintings of Rene Magritte.  Though the artwork is certainly intriguing on its own, and the occasional clear pages which alter the pages behind them with just a turn of the page will delight readers, the story of this artistic dog who purchases a mysterious hat that goes off on adventures of its own is certainly more grounded when read with some context.  Those readers who don’t bother reading the author’s note may be left puzzling over the book (which I guess is what happens when one views surreal art, too).  This is one of those picture books which could be useful in high schools as well, as part of the art curriculum.