Told in simple kid language for young children, and illustrated with cheerful images, this book provides a good basic overview of health and well-ness basics.  There’s a page for diet, one for exercise, one for safety, brushing teeth, keeping clean, sleep, etc.  Not in-depth enough to be considered comprehensive, but broad enough to be a beginning place for young children.

It’s hard to know who the target audience of this book really is: it tries to be a children’s picture book, but the text is far too long and rambling to really capture or hold the interest of most children; I think the audience who will really appreciate are the loved ones of special needs children who are looking for comfort.  It’s easy to see what it’s trying to do: to teach readers to see beyond their eyes when considering the lives of children with limitations.  It’s a worthy purpose, and it’s a valiant effort — I just wish they’d had better editors to help it achieve better success.

The illustrations are a stunning example of aboriginal artwork from Australia.  The simple, single lines of text at the bottom of the pages list different elements of the Australian landscape.  Though not detailed enough to really serve as an informative text, it would serve well as an introduction to a unit on Australia, or as a tool for children to compare Australia to their own homes.

Carly and Sara meet up at camp and become fast friends.  When Carly laughs upon learning Carly’s last name, Carly’s feelings are hurt and she dashes off, avoiding Sara and refusing to listen when Sara tries to make amends.  Their budding friendship seems doomed until Sara finds an opportunity share her own last name, so that Carly understands this is another bond they share — she never meant to laugh at Carly, but with her. A good book for starting discussions about teasing and misunderstandings.

A rather sweet story of kissing tag, with lots of repetitive text as a lamb and mouse chase a pig around a garden while the pig shouts, “No more kisses!” After much chasing around the pig turns on the other two and attacks them with kisses until they are giggling for him to stop.

When Baby Hippo can’t sleep he wanders through his African neighborhood, listening to all the other baby animals being put to sleep.  Simple, repetitive text is good for emergent readers, and the bright illustrations will introduce them to a variety of animals.

The topic is one that will be popular, the color photos will appeal, and it’s got a sturdy binding.  It’s even got a lot of good information, including the history of Cheerleading camps, messages about teamwork and spirit, and what kinds of things typically happen at Cheer camps.  I have one big complaint about it, though, that keeps me from actually recommending it: it speaks to the reader under the presumption that said reader actually belongs to a squad and will actually be attending one of these camps.  There are an awful lot of girls who are interested in cheerleading, but will never have the opportunity to attend a camp or be part of a squad.  I wish it hadn’t been written in such a way to exclude them.

Another first-day-of-kindergarten story, but it’s a cute one.  At first everything seems to be going wrong for Polka-dot, as she keeps accidentally breaking Kindergarten rules, and she manages to get off on the wrong foot with one of her new classmates, who looks like she’s shaping up to be a first-class meanie.  By the end of the day Polka-dot seems ready to declare Kindergarten a complete disaster, until Liz (aforesaid meanie) faces a crisis and Polka-dot is able to come to her rescue.  Before long the two are fast friends and Polka-dot is feeling like she can tackle school after all.

This book is really cool.  I would give it an R* if it didn’t have such a limited audience for the text.  The illustrations include a single black line that traces through the entire book, connecting words and pictures in one long continuous thread.  The rest of the artwork that surrounds this single black line is very bold and graphic, and invites the reader to study the pictures.  The text walks the readers through different parts of a school, developing school-readiness skills by asking them to count and look for clues and identify animals and colors, etc.  Many folks will be intrigued by the illustrations, but children over a certain age will find the text babyish.

A great book for helping children develop an understanding of the fine line sometimes necessary to balance honesty and tact.  When Kim has a lesson on honesty at school, she declares a policy of always being honest, but she takes it too far, thinking it’s no longer okay to pretend to be a princess, but that it is okay to say everything she thinks, even when it’s hurtful to others.  Of course this causes problems with friends.  In the end, she discovers the trick of finding something to say that is both truthful and kind.

Good rhythm & rhyme. Cute pictures depicting the secret life of toys playing on their own while their boy is away (sounds like Toy Story — already been done, with more style). A few brief words on each page tell a simple story of stuffed dogs as traffic cops. It’s fine. Some kids will like it, but there’s nothing about it to really make you go oooh. Strictly for the younger set.

Fourteen common and exotic birds are captured in this volume, each with it’s own two-page spread including a vibrant, close-up, full-page photo, a paragraph of factual background information, and a poem to capture its personality.  Obviously put together by folks who love the birds involved, this book is sure to capture the appreciation of folks who didn’t know they cared. It’s lovely.

The illustrations are bright and colorful and fun, but the story doesn’t quite live up to them: it’s basically one long request of a young boy asking his local librarian if he can bring a woolly mammoth to the library.  He anticipates potential problems and offers solutions, and then eventually decides Woolly would be homesick, so instead he wonders if a Saber-toothed tiger could visit instead.  It sort of seems to lack a climax or point.

The fourth book in this series of graphic novels for younger readers finds the inhabitants of Mr. Venezi’s pet store faced with the need to adjust to a new helper in the store.  When Mr. Venezi takes on a teenaged assistant, she starts organizing everyone out of their comfort zone.  As usual with this crew, misunderstanding abound until the animals save the day.  When I first read one of these books, I thought it was kinda cute, but wasn’t sure how kids would respond.  The first two books have had nothing but positive feedback from students — I’ve had both gifted and reluctant readers asking me for more.

Fifteen different types of homes from different parts of the world and different periods of history are each described on its own two-page spread, illustrated by rich, detailed collages.  For every home, the introductory paragraph begins with, “If you lived here…”  After sharing some anecdotes of what life would be like in that house, individual paragraphs are dedicated to sharing the facts about house type, materials, location, date, and one fascinating fact. A world map in the back of the book plots locations for all fifteen homes.

The illustrations are really kind of cool, which is what led me to pick the book up, but the story is really pretty lame — the main character is an obnoxious little snot who whines and complains and is basically rude in every way (with a parent who apparently lets her), until she falls asleep one day and dreams about a circus where each performer insists that she demonstrate some iota of politeness before she is allowed to participate; when she wakes up she’s a new child, all politeness. Ugh.

On the one hand, it’s got cute, colorful pictures, and sneaks math into the story, but really it’s a bit contrived and not as charming as I hoped for.  The new bunny in the balloon factory who’s charged with counting all the balloons isn’t observant enough to realize he’s popping them all as he goes?

The cute cartoonish illustrations on a clean white background are very eye-catching, and draw the reader in to examine the details.  Each two page spread contains 100 of something (mice, moles, elephants…), broken up into chunks of ten, to aid young counters, and each page suggests some other detail to search for and count. At the edge of each page there’s a hint connecting it with the page to come.  It’s charming!

Oooh! What a gem! This beautiful book illustrates a poem listing all the things a leaf can be.  The gorgeous illustrations draw the reader in and expand upon the text: when the text declares that a leaf can be a “soft cradle,” the illustrations depict cocoons nestled upon leaves; on the facing page we see a lamb slurping water that has been captured in the curves of a leaf as “water ladle.”  Just in case the reader didn’t get it from the illustrations, the back of the book contains the author’s explanations for each of the potential labels she attached to leaves.  A wonderful book on so many levels, it would be a great edition to a nature study unit.

A companion to The Quiet Book, this book begins with the premise that, “There are lots of louds,” and then it proceeds to list them, one illustrated on each page.  Examples include alarm clock loud, last slurp loud, and home run loud.  The illustrations are sweet, and serve to expand upon the simple text.  All students would find something in this book to relate to, and it could serve as a great discussion builder with young children, providing a launching pad for them to recall similar louds in their own experiences.  Aw heck, I was going to give it an R, but I think I’ll go ahead and bump it up to an R*.

Each page is dedicated to a different animal, with one of Jenkins’ cool collage illustrations and a few simply lines of text describing how that animal sleeps, on a clean white background that makes both art and info pop.  Sleeping is something we all do, and something we have in common with all living creatures, but how some of these animals sleep range from the mildly interesting to the fascinating.  More information about each animal is offered in the back of the book for readers who want to know more.

I love this book! Highly recommended for all ages! Organized around different chunks of time (one second, one minute, one hour, one day, one week, etc. etc.) Steve Jenkins presents a collection of not-quite-random facts about plants, animals, and humans, describing things that occur within that chunk of time.  For younger students, it gives some perspective to help understand our concepts of time; for older students and adults, it gives some perspective to help understand issues of population expansion and nature preservation.  It’s just fascinating all around, and of course, illustrated in Jenkins’ typically delightful style.

I do appreciate the works of Paul Galdone.  I think he does an excellent job of staying true to the folk tale genre in his retellings, using much of the repetition that was part of the oral tradition from which they sprang, and his illustrations give personality to the bears and to Goldilocks.  I’m just not sure Houghton Mifflin did them justice in this particular republication.  There’s a uniformity to the series that is sweet, and would make them look nice on a shelf all lined up together, but as individual books, the new format detracts from the originals.  And they don’t seem especially sturdy for library use. I’d really recommend searching out these stories, by this author, in other editions if you can find them.

This is essentially a republication of an oldy but a goody, with a slightly different format.  The re-telling of the classic folk tale is well-done, and the illustrations are inviting (okay, maybe that’s just because this is the version I fondly remember from my own childhood), so if you don’t already have the older one, this would be worth getting, but I can’t say the new format enhances the story at all.  In fact, I would probably say this smaller version cuts down the illustrations too much.  If you have or can find the older, larger edition, I’d stick with that.

There’s not enough meat here to really make it a recommend, but what’s here is worthwhile.  Each two page spread consists of one full-page color photo opposite a single random fact about the human body, with a few sentences in large font to explain it.  Some of the facts are more “weird” than others, but there’s enough to trigger a response from kids (maybe disgust, maybe fascination, maybe humor).  It’s really intended for early audiences — I might be stretching it to include grade three — older readers may be interested, but not satisfied, with what they learn.