If you need something in your non-fiction section to support dental health curriculum for young students, this would fit the bill well.  The binding is sturdy.  The text is simple and straight forward, presented in both English and Spanish — just a couple sentences per two-page spread, opposite large color photographs supporting the text.  It’s unlikely to be chosen by students for recreational reading, but could be useful as a teaching tool. One gripe: they could have left “tooth” out of the glossary, and included “enamel” instead, given that it’s more likely to be an unfamiliar vocabulary word for students.

Another wordless picture book about the cute little puppy Jack, this story tells what happens when Jack is put out for the night.  A small UFO lands on the roof of his dog house and a gaggle of miniature robot aliens join Jack for play time.  They release Jack from his leash.  After cavorting in the sandbox and pond, the robots try to attach Jack’s leash to their flying saucer to take him with them, but his collar slips off his head, leaving him behind as they fly off.  When his little boy comes out to check on Jack, he is none the wiser as to what’s gone on while he was inside.  Wordless books are always great for helping younger students develop observational and story-telling skills, and also serve as writing prompts for older students.  This particular story is also a great prompt for triggering children’s imaginings as to what their pets get up to behind their backs. How cute Jack is is just an extra draw.

Frank Asch’s distinctive artistic style is clean and simple and child-like.  This tale is likewise simple and sweet .  When the big bad wolf comes knocking, Momma and Poppa pig do their best to hide, but Little Pig repeatedly misunderstands the situation, thinking it’s a surprise party for the wolf and they’re playing hide-and-seek.  He repeatedly reaches out in kindness to the wolf, and gradually wears away the big and the bad. Okay, I admit that there would be some who would say it’s too sweet, but kids could use more simple sweetness.  The characters are familiar to kids and the message is one they can never hear too much.

Mary Constance is looking forward to the local dog parade, but she is faced with a dog who doesn’t like to go for walks.  She tries luring him around with assorted treats, but nothing works for long.  In the end her pooch leads the parade in her baby brother’s stroller and gets voted the neighborhood’s most pampered pup.  It’s cute.

This really cute story is told from the perspective of a young boy who really wants a brother.  When mom and dad present him with a baby sister, he assumes it is a mistake, and sets out to rectify the problem by finding someone willing to trade, but every time he finds a prospective trade, there’s some flaw that makes him realize his sister’s not so bad.  At one point he misunderstands the purpose of a baby-changing station, much to his disappointment.  While searching for over a year to try to find a suitable candidate, he learns to appreciate his baby sister’s finer points, and finally gives up the search, only to be told a new baby is on the way.  The illustrations are charming.  The topic is one many kids can relate to. Recommended.

Set in a pet-store run by a clueless owner who absurdly mis-labels all the animals, this graphic novel for younger audiences tells the story of the local guinea pig who’s earned herself a reputation as a sleuth.  When the pet-store owner and the local hamster both get spooked by mysterious cold spots, and shadows on the wall, disappearing mice,  it seems the pet store must be haunted.  It falls to our reluctant P.I. to solve the mystery.  The characters and plot aren’t exactly strong, and it certainly helps if readers have already read the first book in the series, to help make sense of the second.  The first was well-liked enough by students to request more, but I’m pretty luke-warm to them myself — nothing bad to say about them, really, but nothing great, either.

Seemingly intended to be a book about handling bullying and controlling one’s inner monster, the book just doesn’t do a very good job of hitting it’s mark.  The story is kind of weak, about a sort of ordinary-looking boy who is actually the son of monsters, being scolded by his parents for not being vicious enough in scaring the bully at school.  Dad’s excited to take Monster Boy off to Scary Scouts camp, where they plan to scare away the ordinary kids at the Super Scouts camp so they can have the lake all to themselves.  Little Marty Monster Boy is not excited about the camp, but when he sneaks off to warn the Super Scouts, he overhears them picking on him, flies into a rage, scares them away, and then denies it when is dad is proud of him for his fierceness.  I don’t get it.  But the illustrations are cute and the binding is sturdy.

Illustrated in a simple, sweet style that will attract many young children, this book seems to specifically target an audience of Christian chil”  dren already familiar with the Easter story:  while the text of the story focuses on the interactions of a dove and an angel who are observing spring in the hatching of eggs and blooming of poppies and birth of butterflies, the illustrations show it to be set during the time of the original Easter story — the people in the illustrations are dressed in biblical fashions; at one point when the text describes the sun going behind a cloud, the illustrations show three crosses on a hillside in the distance; after waiting with a crying woman in front of a tomb, the rock is rolled away and they are joined in the garden by a bearded man in a white robe, and the final line of the book states, ” For it was not just spring, but the very first Easter.” While it will likely be enjoyed by its target audience, readers who are not already familiar with the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus will find the book puzzling.

The rich and vibrant colors in the illustrations, along with the swirly track of the print will catch students eyes and invite them into the story, but the story is not as developed as I wish it were to give it a true “recommended” rating.  It tells of a girl who loves chewing bubble gum.  One day while out and about with her grandmother, who tells her stories of growing up in Mexico with a father who is a chiclero (harvester of chicle from the sapodilla tree), little Chavel finds a package of Magic Chicle in a local market.  When she chews it, she blows a giant bubble and the wind picks her up and carries her to the jungles of the Yucatan where she meets people still carrying on the old traditions.  She spends one day with them and then chews some more gum to return to her grandmother.  I wish there had been more to tell about her adventures on her journey — as it is, it seems a little anti-climactic.

A good book to support science units on life-cycles or habitats/conservation.  It’s officially classified as fiction, as the bulk of the book is a picture book telling the story of a boy and his family working together on a rainy night to watch for spotted salamanders crossing the road on their way to lay eggs in the pool where they were born.  They count the salamanders they spot, warn approaching vehicles to be careful, and help the salamanders across the road.  In the back there is a lot of non-fiction supportive information to explain the life cycle of the salamanders, and efforts being made in many communities to help protect them.  The glossary gives clear and simple definitions to important words that may be unfamiliar to readers.

A sweet, simple story, useful for addressing bullying problems.  Carly and Sandy are two sisters who enjoy playing together until a new neighbor moves into the neighborhood.  Lily Jean seems to enjoy being on a power trip, and only wants to play with Sandy.  She will only allow Carly to play if she takes on the demeaning roles Lily assigns.  Sandy sort of half-hearedly tries to stick up for Carly a few times, but gets over-ruled.  In the end, when Lily Jean tries to exclude Carly altogether and tells Sandy to come over to her house to play, Sandy finally says no, and insists she’s going to stay and play with Sandy.  Then Lily Jean wants to play badly enough she declares she’ll be anything they want, so Carly and Sandy demand she be nice, and she agrees.  Though perhaps unrealistically simplistic in finding resolution to a big problem that is usually not so easily solved, it is a good conversation starter, and illustrates well how easily bullying can get started.

This was not as painful to read as I expected it to be.  I picked it up because I knew I have students who are interested in the series, but I thought it would be a real chore for me to read.  Though I certainly wouldn’t call it great literature (a bit cheesy, two-dimensional characters, predictable plot), it was really a reasonable, nice little undemanding story for those who aren’t really strong readers. While it’s able to build off the popularity of the Disney movies on which it is based, I would certainly recommend having it in your collection for those fans.  However, though the binding on Spotlight’s edition is certainly nice and sturdy, I doubt the popularity of the series is likely to last as long as this binding, so I probably wouldn’t bother investing in the reinforced library bound unless you really expect a lot of hard wear and tear — probably the paperbacks would suffice long enough.

Beautiful illustrations of painted paper collage support this story as Lucky Mouse recounts for his friend Lucy all the ways his lucky feather has proven itself lucky since he found it.  Lucy is skeptical — to her, each incident sounds like coincidence or bad luck, etc.  But each time Lucky is able to correct her and explain just why it was really good luck.  In the end, when the lucky feather saves them both, Lucky presents it as a gift to Lucy.  A delightful tale about looking on the bright side.

Often I don’t like when books mix English and Spanish, but this book does so in a very deliberate way, which helps to teach a few Spanish words in a mostly English text.  Building off a repeating pattern, similar to “This Is the House that Jack Built,” each new phrase is first introduced in English, and then subsequently repeated with the nouns in Spanish.  Picture clues in the illustration support comprehension of the new vocabulary.  By the end of the story all the ingredients have been added to the pot to form rice pudding, which the farm maiden shares with all those who helped contribute.  At the back of the book is a recipe for rice pudding and a glossary of the Spanish vocabulary used in the story. It’s bright & cheerful & fun, and could be useful for language learners, both English and Spanish.

A few Spanish words are sprinkled throughout mostly English text as a young girl describes some of the things found in her barrio, or neighborhood, the last of which are paletas in every color of the sarape.  The bright, bold illustrations to support the text, so that readers unfamiliar with the Spanish words would be able to use picture clues and context to deduce their meaning (an just in case, there’s a glossary in the back).  The bulk of the book consists of the young girl listing all that one can do with a paleta (similar to a popsicle), including painting your tongue and cooling down and learning to make tough decisions.

Told from the perspective and in the voice of a preschooler who’s having a sleepover at Gramma’s house, it tells of her excitement and preparations and all the things they do together.  Because it’s being told in the preschooler’s voice, it’s full of baby-talk and it’s poorly punctuated, making it difficult to read aloud.  I wasn’t impressed.

The interplay between text and illustrations in this story is important, as it is a tale about imaginary play.  Basically, it is the story of two sisters having a campout in their back yard, but that’s just on the surface.  In the world of imagination, it is a princess setting off with her panther to cross deserts and drink from wide blue lakes and pitch their silk tent in the night to keep out the leaf-snakes and the owl-witch and the frog-monster.  Throughout all the adventures, the princess (i.e. big sister) is brave, and the panther (i.e. little sister) tries to be.  In the illustrations the reader gets to connect reality to imagination:  the wagon on one page becomes a camel on the next, the wading pool becomes the sea, the grand red silk tent becomes a blanket thrown over a rope, etc.  A good story for encouraging imaginary play and acknowledging that backyard sleepovers can be a bit scary if you let your imagination run loose.

A great book for teaching young children that monsters aren’t real, it tells of a young boy walking alone through a forest where people say there lives a terrible monster.  He acknowledges the existence of bears and wolves and snakes in the forest, but he’s not afraid of them because he knows they aren’t really interested in attacking him.  Much of the story consists of the boy’ dialogue with the monster who is following him, trying to convince him he should be scared, but the boy keeps walking calmly along, insisting he doesn’t believe in the monster.  Eventually, as the monster fails to convince the boy to believe in him, he grows smaller, until he starts to look like a kitten, as he begs the boy to believe in him just a little bit.  In the end the boy picks up the kitten, agrees that maybe he could believe in him just a little bit, and asks his mom if he can keep the kitten he found in the forest.  The writing in the story is good: it’s got good voice and fluency, and it does a great job using text features such as larger, bolder print to help it be read aloud with expression.  The trouble is with the illustrations, which I found rather off-putting.  I think if I were to use it with a group of students, I would choose not to show them the illustrations and ask them to use their own imagination to create mind pictures that go with the words — maybe even have them draw their own illustrations.

When sister and brother, Susi and Bobby, are outside playing one day, they discover a yellow butterfly that sings.  They are so amazed that they share their experience with their grandfather at dinner, who in turn shares a legend that says that yellow butterflies are magical and can grant wishes, if those wishes come from the heart.  Bobby and Susi immediately start plotting and planning what they’d like to wish for, and spend days trying to catch the butterfly.  When they finally catch it in their net, they start spouting their wishes, but get no response and notice that the butterfly is in distress.  Unable to convince her brother to set the butterfly free, Susi wishes the butterfly free, and so it happens.  In gratitude, the free butterfly decides to grant them both a wish, and the story ends there, asking the reader, “What would you wish for?”  It reads aloud well, and would make a great conversation starter, as so many kids love to ponder the ending question, and it has a good message to offer about unselfish actions getting rewarded in the end, but that message is a bit muddled in that Bobby gets granted a wish, too, even though he was the one arguing to keep the butterfly captive.

Spanish and English are mixed in the text, as the author tries to adapt the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas carol to count in spanish, naming gifts from her own Mexican-American traditions.  In the back of the book are notes from the author and illustrator describing how they crafted the book, along with a glossary describing the traditional gifts and translating the numbers.  Unfortunately, the song itself is hard to sing, as the rhythm is somewhat thrown off with the new word choices at times, and I fear that there may be some stereotyping or over-gereralization happening, as many Latin-American cultures vary in their traditions, and one Hispanic friend I consulted was unfamiliar with some of those listed here.  Also, I don’t like the way the two languages were jumbled together.  I will say that the illustrations are bold and colorful.

A sweet (though perhaps a bit cotton-candy-sweet), story of a boy’s little stuffed lamb who is curiously poking about Santa’s great big bag when Santa stops by on Christmas Eve, and accidently falls into the bag.  Throughout the rest of the evening, as Santa continues on his rounds, Lamb visits with the other toys in the bag, calming their fears and offering the wise council of an experienced toy.  At the end of the night, when Lamb is the only toy left in Santa’s bag, he fears Santa may give him away to another child and wonders how he will get home to his own boy, but of course Santa knows better, and Lamb finds himself safely returned home.  A good addition to Christmas collections.

In a family full of folks who are expert multi-taskers, always in a rush, Fiona is a slowpoke who likes to take her time.  One day when her dawdling has made her miss the bus one too many times, her mother insists she attend Speed School.  Then Fiona finds herself multi-tasking with the best of them, rushing through life with her head spinning so much one day it gets stuck.  When she can’t take it anymore she makes a deal with her parents that she will be on time if the rest of the family will attend Slow School, where she teaches them to slow down and taste their food and notice flowers.  It’s a simple easy-reader book with a nice message we can all relate to on one end of the story or the other.  I just wish the internal illustrations were in color.

This book is intended for very young, pre-school audiences.  It has only a few words per page, sometimes only a phrase, sometimes a couple sentences.  It tells of a three-year-old proclaiming all he can do now that he is three.  The problem is that many of the things he declares he can do would be things he could do before he was three (e.g. cuddle, wiggle, flop, giggle).  The colors in the illustrations are rather drab, and they don’t always clearly support the text:  it took the second reading of the book before I could even figure out the picture on the “now I can swing” page.

A delightful book that stays true to the characters and artwork of the original Peanuts comic strip while creating a bridge to tradition text for early readers.  It tells the story of Lucy’s frustration over her little brother Linus’s dependence on his trusty blanket.  Lucy tries calling in Grandma as backup; she tries taking it away; Linus tries asking Snoopy to hold it for him.  In the end, Linus decides that though he may have to give up his blanket someday, that day is not today.  The story is one that so many children can relate to, and in the end, they can be reassured that it is okay to have a comfort object.  This is an early reader that is also a good story. And the binding is nice and durable.

As his family gathers in preparation for his big sister’s wedding, Gaps, a Nguni calf, is presented with a pair of long trousers from his father.  The problem being that the new trousers are too long.  Gaps proceeds to go from relative to relative asking if there is someone who can shorten them for him, but everyone is too busy with other wedding preparations.  That evening everyone he asked suddenly remembers that the trousers need shortening, and each do so in turn, resulting in trousers that are much too short, but in the end that turns out to be a good thing because the day of the wedding is so hot that everyone else is uncomfortable in their wedding finery, but Gaps is “fresh as a daisy.”  The story is good, but at first I was puzzled as to the author’s decision to make the characters cattle, especially a specific type of cattle with a name that will be hard for young readers to pronounce, but then I discovered that the story was originally published in South Africa, where I presume children are familiar with this particular type of cattle.  I have to confess I was not overly impressed with the artwork.