The illustrations seem a little quirky, and personifying the instruments didn’t seem necessary, but the information seemed clear and pertinent.  I don’t know much about musical instruments, but I learned some basics from this book. It seems like an adequate book.

I liked this one.  Usually I don’t have much use for these early-reader non-fiction books, because they generally lack any real substance to the information they provide.  This one just had a sentence or two per page, but it managed to clearly convey all the necessary components to understanding the water cycle.  The text was understandable for young readers, but it still included the appropriate vocabulary — it didn’t talk down to kids.

It’s badly written — highly repetitive and redundant.  It saved the interesting stuff for the last page instead of including it throughout.

It certainly lived up to the title of the series.  There wasn’t a whole lot connecting the different facts included other than that they are all things that make people itch.  The photos and illustrations, combined with the information to give me the heebie-jeebies.  Yuck. A little more substance/organization might have brought it up to a Recommended.

I get the feeling this book isn’t really meant for the audience it’s claiming to be for — I don’t think it’s so much a kids’ book as it is a book for parents who want to raise eco-friendly kids.  Kids who are interested in gardening in the city are going to be more interested in how-tos.  This is more like an anthropological work on the good that gardens can bring to urban environments.  It’s a nicely constructed book, but not likely to have much appeal beyond a niche audience.

This one is just basically a waste of paper.  It doesn’t seem to have anything consistent about it.  I can’t tell what it’s purpose is.  It seems to be a book about finding shapes around us in our daily lives, but most of the text is random information about things that happen to be triangles, even though the information is irrelevant to the fact that they are triangles.  I guess it could be helpful to someone trying to learn English or Spanish, but there are better bilingual books for that.

I almost gave this one a “Recommended.”  It’s got more information that a lot of the non-fiction for early readers.  It does have some interesting facts about some interesting birds.  The piece it doesn’t have that I really wish it did is information about where these different birds can be found, whether in the text or in the form of a map.

It’s yet another early reader text with simple sentences accompanying color photos, and including all the typical non-fiction text features.  It’s shiny, and it’s got a sturdy binding, and it’s just fine for what it is, but I don’t usually invest a lot of my library dollars in this type of thing — long on literacy instructional uses, short on recreational reading interest or information.

Intended for emergent readers, one to two sentences per page accompany color photos, listing different adaptations that forest animals use to either help them hide or help them access food. It’s small in size for the small hands of the intended audience.  The binding is shiny and strong. It’s good for what it is, though not likely to be popular for recreational reading.

Eh. It’s fine I guess.  Nothing really to get excited about, but nothing really to complain about — except maybe that it over generalizes, saying “In fall, plants are ready to be picked.”  I don’t claim to be a farming expert, but I believe there are some crops that are picked at different times of year, and I know there are many farms in parts of the world where they don’t even have our traditional seasons.  But it’s got a good sturdy binding and nice paper.

It almost earned an “additional purchase,” but it poked one of my review buttons: even when writing for young children, I think it’s important not to talk down to them.  On p. 12 it states, “Your blood moves around your body in tubes.”  If they’d only added, “called veins and arteries,” I’d be happy.  Instead, they used “tubes” as the vocabulary used in the diagram, index, and glossary.  I think they’re underestimating young readers unnecessarily.

I thought about giving this book an “additional purchase” rating — it’s got an adequate, if not substantial, amount of information; it’s clearly organized, and written in text that is comprehensible to it’s young audience, without being overwhelming (not too much per page), etc.  But there’s one sentence in it that I’m struggling with the authenticity of, and I figure inaccuracy in a non-fiction book should make it “Not recommended.”  On page 23 it states, “Currents are made by wind, too.”  While wind is one factor among several that influence currents, it’s a gross over-simplification to say they “make” them, even for young readers — if you don’t want to go into too much detail, I don’t mind a little ambiguity, but…

Minimal information, but sturdy binding, colorful photos, all the necessary text features for teaching non-fiction literacy skills.  More useful for the classroom than for the library.

A lot of significant vocabulary and complex science presented in clear text and supportive illustrations to make it comprehensible to young students.  I like this book because it targets young readers without losing substance.

The information is limited, but the detail in the clear, up-close photographs is fabulous.  Intended more as a literacy tool for emergent readers, the information is weak, but definitely about a topic of interest to many students.  It includes photographs and statements about many different kinds of critters, likely to spur curiosity rather than satisfy it.

Bright, bold illustrations and simple text introduce young readers to the graphic novel format while also explaining the role of Veterinarians in our community, outlining the different reasons people may take their pets to see a vet, and what is likely to happen when they visit.

This is not a book of information, so much as a literacy development tool for very emergent readers.  There is only one sentence per page, and it is pretty much the same sentence on every page, with just the verb changing: “A baby _____ at the zoo.”  Even the verbs repeat sometimes, so that multiple pages say the same sentences.  Each is accompanied with a full-page color photo of baby zoo animals supporting the text.  Good binding.

It’s got a good, sturdy binding, large color photos to support the text, lots of text features for teaching about non-fiction, large font, and simple text (using lots of repeating vocabulary) to present the basic scientific information about the sense of touch.  It’s light on information, useful more as a literacy tool than as an information source, so it would perhaps be more suited to the classroom than to the library.

A fun collection of poems all created around a theme of school, with such such topics as yucky cafeteria food, writing sentences as punishment, substitutes, etc.  Kids will enjoy and relate and laugh.

This is a fun book, full of cheerful illustrations describing this author’s imaginings of what the world of fairies is like:  it declares that fairies were created from the love of girls and butterflies, and goes on to describe them in different types of settings, with different kinds of wings, and different purposes.  The illustrations have lots of pink and lots of flowers, and I know a lot of girls at my school who will eat it up.  My one gripe with the book is that when it lists different celebrations fairies have, it lists the longest night of the year celebrated on December 7th instead of December 21st.  Oh well.

In true Scaredy Squirrel fashion, Scaredy Squirrel is petrified of having a party for his birthday, for a whole host of reasons which he carefully outlines.  He then sets forth elaborate plans to have a safe party, protected from all his possible fears.  Of course his plans go awry, but it turns out okay after all.

A really fun story about the disaster that strikes when young Harvey dismisses his mother’s instructions about how important it is that no one draws on Doodle Day.  When mom goes off to the market Harvey decides to go ahead and draw anyway, only to find that everything he draws comes to life in giant size and is out of control.  He keeps trying to solve the problem by drawing something new to catch the last thing he drew, but they’re all out of control and wreaking havoc until mom comes home and draws a mom to order all the doodles back into the book.  It’s fun!

When no one is coming in the pet store, the pets decide to put on a circus, complete with costumes they’ve made themselves, and then all sorts of people come in the store.  There are just a few words per page.  The pictures are fun and cute, but there’s not a whole lot to the story, which limits the target audience to very young students.

Ugh.  This is the third one of these I’ve gotten myself stuck with, and I haven’t liked any of them.  They have a noble purpose, to create stories that teach valued characteristics, but this needs to be done in such a way that does not talk down to students.  There are much better stories that can serve this purpose without being so painfully pedantic and overly-simplified.

It presents itself as non-fiction, but it makes some assumptions in its description of what life would be like as a movie star, glamorizing a career children already have glamorized visions of.  I can’t find a purpose to this book.