Beginning with several pages addressing general concepts (reminding readers to be creative and be willing to make mistakes and try again), it goes on to describe a bit about the history of collage as an art form, define tools, elements of composition, and techniques, using both pictures and words.  After this general introduction, it provides step-by-step directions for six specific projects with lots of photo support for the directions.  It also provides tips for preserving finished projects.

Just a few rhyming words on each page, with bright illustrations capture a small child’s experience of the pageantry and excitement of watching a parade.  It’s a fine little book for very small children, but nothing exceptional.

Told from the perspective of the older brother of a boy with autism, this story does a good job of describing some of the experiences, frustrations, and successes that autism brings to a family.  I think it would be a useful tool to include in any library collection, to help others understand and cope with their own experiences of special needs children.

A book intended for very young children, it’s designed to introduce the days of the week and the idea of journaling.  Each 2-page spread holds 1 sentence telling what that day is for, accompanied by mixed-media illustrations.  A page in the back offers parents/teachers conversation-starting questions for pre-schoolers.  It’s a fine book for what it does, but there are others that do the same, and it has very limited audience appeal.

It’s a rhyming tale describing how the Belly Button Fairy bestows 1 belly button on every newborn baby.  It has words to a song in the back to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”  There will be some readers who will always be drawn to anything with “Fairy” in the title, but it doesn’t really have much else to recommend it.

I didn’t like it.  It seems rather lame and disjointed:  a group of forest friends build a dinosaur to save their patch of woods from a plastic trees factory, but instead save the woods because it turns out the friends are all extinct or endangered.  It’s got cut-paper illustrations.

Adapted from a folk song that dates from the 1500s, this picture book tells the story of a farmer who brags about his work being so much harder than his wife’s, until she swaps places with him and forces him to recognize how much more difficult her work is.  Though the illustrations depict the couple in modern dress, it still holds a certain timelessness.

Ben’s favorite stuffed giraffe disappears one day, but sends a series of postcards telling about his travels, before returning just in time for Ben’s birthday.  I wish it mentioned specific places Raf traveled to, so as to provide readers with geographical context.  The only real humor comes when Ben is described as having to sleep all alone, without Raf, while the illustration shows a whole pile of other stuffed animals.  It’s fine, I suppose, but there’s not really much to make it wonderful.

The page layouts are clean and crisp, with one project per 2-page spread.  Projects use simple materials easily available.  The instructions are written in text suitable for children to be able to follow them independently, well-supported with step-by-step photos.  Vocabulary blurbs are added within the context of the project that illustrate them.  The final project combines techniques introduced in all the others.  My one criticism of the book (common among many craft books) is that the projects in the illustrations look like they were completed by grown-ups pretending to be kids — I worry that children will be disappointed if their own efforts do not produce such perfect results.

A basic weather book explaining thunderstorms, this book will be useful to teachers, but does not offer much to bring it to the attention or interest of recreational readers.  It is adequate if you are in need of some materials to support your science curriculum, but I’m not sure you couldn’t find better.

Eh.  It’s got a strong binding and all the necessary non-fiction features to serve as teaching tool, but it is boring and preachy, and is not likely to have much of an audience for general recreational reading. There are other tools that teach non-fiction reading and friendship better.

This wordless book tells of a girl getting on on a subway train with her parents.  While all the other adults are occupied (reading, sleeping, etc.) the girl watches out the window, noticing when they come out of  a tunnel into a sunlit hillside with lots of little people flagging down the train.  She follows, serving to rescue one of the little people and his plane which had been caught in a tree.  They follow her home and offer in thanks a small plant which grows into a large tree in her urban neighborhood.  The book’s bright, graphic illustrations invite the reader into studying the plot they portray.  It can be a useful tool for oral language development with young readers and a writing prompt for older students.

Fabulous full-page color photos support a couple of simple sentences of text (in both English & Spanish) on the opposite page.  This is a popular topic that holds automatic appeal for young readers, and the information included is both interesting and accessible to beginning readers and language learners.  As with all the books in this series, it’s got a strong and shiny binding that adds to its appeal.

In rhyming text a whole assortment of baby animals ask their mamas whether they’ll still love them and do all the same things when new babies come, and each mama replies, “of course,” calming fears and giving assurances.  It definitely has a very specific target audience and purpose (kids with pregnant moms who need reassuring), and it does a sweet job of fulfilling that purpose if you don’t already have something to fill that niche, but it doesn’t have wide reading appeal.

A sentimental, sweet, and touching story told from the perspective of a small teddy bear who shows patience and perseverance through much rough play in order to win a place in the heart of his young boy.  He wins the boy’s heart and stays with him until the boy is grown, at which point the once-boy shares his beloved bear with another child in his role on a rescue squad.

Cute water-color illustrations help tell this rhyming story of a four-year-old who becomes friends with all the animals in the zoo.  Disturbed by their confinement behind bars, she decides to set them all free one night and invite them to live at her house.  Of course this arrangement creates problems too, but her bold initiative spurs the zookeeper into upgrading their home.  One problem for American readers:  because it was originally published in Great Britain, the rhyme is thrown off a bit for our pronunciation at times (door-saw?).

This book is full of heart.  I don’t know much about the history of baseball (in fact, I had never heard of Honus Wagner, this turn-of-the-twentieth-century ball player who was one of the first players inducted into the Hall of Fame).  But now I’m a fan.  His story from poor, homely, son-of-immigrants coal miner to well-loved baseball star seems like the epitome of the American dream.  Illustrations capture the era and the mood of the story beautifully.

I love this book! I promptly bought it for my first-grade niece for Christmas and recommended it to several friends.  The illustrations are fun, and the rhyming, rhythmical text carries a great message:  it celebrates all the things a girl can do, even while delighting in wearing a sparkly crown, including getting dirty, playing sports, and using power tools.  It simply broadens the view of what it can mean to be a princess.

Designed for beginning readers and language learners, this bilingual books shares very basic information about ballet.  A few simple sentences on each page are accompanied by full-page color photos supporting the text with images of diverse dancers.  It includes all the appropriate non-fiction text features for teaching purposes, it is a high-interest topic attractive enough to appeal to recreational readers, and it has enough structure to make the information accessible to emergent readers and language learners.

This sweet story begins when Santa returns from making his annual deliveries with one little kitten left over.  Like a child asking his mom, Santa asks Mrs. Clause, “Can we keep him?”  Unfortunately Mrs. Clause is left to be the voice of reason, reminding Santa of his allergies.  When Santa goes to review his letters, the romping kitten discovers one last lost letter under the desk.  In a neat and tidy Christmas ending, the problem of finding the kitten a home and the problem of finding a last-minute gift for the child who sent the letter are mutually resolved to the delight of both kitten and child.  Admittedly schmaltzy, sappy, and sentimental, it might have only ranked as an additional purchase, except sap and schmaltz is just what the Christmas season calls for, and besides, the illustrations do such a wonderful job of capturing the expressions of the characters, that it gets the final nudge into “Recommended.”

Apparently this book is an adaptation of a musical stage production which in turn is an adaptation of the classic ballet.  The CD included begins by reading the book aloud, and also includes songs from the musical.  I don’t know that I’m much of a fan of the music (though maybe it would be better in context), but I quite enjoyed all aspects of the book: story, illustrations, and audio, too.  One probably has to be familiar with the original story to appreciate this modern twist with a male protagonist and a female nutcracker.  It opens when Fritz gets in trouble and has his Mouse Hunter video game taken away, and sentenced to stay at home being baby-sat by the neighbor, Mr. Drosselmeier, while the rest of his family go out to see the Nutcracker ballet.  After sneaking into the closet where his video game has been stashed, Fritz plays so much he finds himself taking on the Mouse King himself.  When the Nutcracker comes to his aid, together they pursue the Mouse King to Toy Town to keep him from ruining Christmas, and after many adventures mirroring those of the original ballet, Fritz finds himself waking from his dream at home, as everyone troops in for their Christmas festivities.

The only thing I like about this book is the reinforced library binding.  The craft projects seem a bit lame, their connections to the states a bit tenuous, and the information about the states a bit redundant and dull.  Sorry, but that’s kinda all I have to say.

Is it still called a graphic novel if it’s only as long as a picture book?  This mystery is set in Mr. Venezi’s pet shop, where all the cages are mislabeled, except that of the guinea pig.  When the crash of the door one evening knocks the G off the end of the guinea pig’s sign, the new hamster on the block mistakenly thinks he’s a P.I.  Sasspants is really only interested in returning peacefully to his cage full of books, but the young hamster won’t stop pestering him until he fulfills his duty as local P.I. and solves the mystery of who has been eating the pet store owner’s sandwich each day.  The pestering hamster becomes the begrudging P.I.’s sidekick as they interview witnesses, test hypothesis, and set a trap to catch the culprit.  It’s a cute introduction to both the graphic novel format and the mystery genre for young readers.  It’s got a good, sturdy binding, and it finishes off with a couple pages in the back to offer a brief,kid-friendly, non-fiction explanation about the animals featured in the story.  It’s the first in what I presume will be a series for the Pet Shop Private Eye.  For now I’m calling it an additional purchase, but I reserve the right to come back and edit my review (possibly bumping it up to recommended) after I see how it goes over with the kids.

Inspired by the work of M. C. Escher, this is a marvelous alignment of text and illustration that takes the reader into an off-kilter world, where the story reads through front to back, but isn’t completed until, upon reaching the end of the book, the readers turns the book upside-down and continues back to the front again, with the illustrations an equal combination of sense and non-sensical, regardless of whether you are looking at them right side up or upside down.  Thanks to a bit of syntactical engineering, each page can also be read circularly.  It’s a celebration of imagination.

This non-fiction text describes  a dozen very different school experiences from a dozen different countries scattered around the world.  It begins with a world map labeling the twelve countries to be described within.  Each two-page spread within the body of the book is dedicated to a different country: it includes some basic geographical information about the country, photos, and a description of the personal schooling experience of a specific child from that country.  Within the description, within the context of describing the school, a lot of additional information about the culture of that country is also included.  I really appreciate the variety of settings included: right after reading about a school under a tree in Kenya, with few books, where a school field trip was the first time students had ever been beyond their village, the reader turns the page to learn about an international in Malaysia with over 16,000 books in their library, where a school field trip took students to the Netherlands.  It’s a wonderful opportunity to use the common experience of school to link students to children all around the world.  I just wish they could have managed to include more photos to visually support the textual descriptions of things that will be so foreign to most young readers.