My fresh green salads are never this much fun! There is something whimsical about freshly photographed vegetables printed with inked faces smiling at you. Juana Medina’s salad preparation consists of counting smiling vegetables on their way to the salad bowl:

“1  one Avocado Deer, 2  two Radish Mice, 3   three Pepper Monkeys” , 4  horse carrots, 5 turtle tomatoes, 6 alligator cucumbers, 7 radicchio lions , 8  flying bird walnuts, 9 romaine dogs, and 10 Clementine segment kittens.     Wait, don’t forget to make dressing for the faceless salad. Olive oil in a porcupine bowl, a birdy salt shaker, and 2 piggy lemons come to the rescue.

Otto, the robot and his mouse friend Pip come full circle in this pre-level one story about Pip wanting a balloon.When Otto shares his balloon with Pip, Pip floats away until  a sleeping Zee, the bee, flies into the balloon popping it. Otto comes to Pip’s rescue only to crash into a palm tree sending Otto and Pip down into a pond. There Pip points to the baby hippo’s balloon.

David Milgrim’s illustrations answer all of the questions the minimal vocabulary does not provide.

Years ago, the Warming came and it was destructive. Now, everyone in the meadow and city is assigned a job. The keepers enforce rules, the catchers track rule breakers, the computers are those who conduct all the mathematical computations. Jeremy Finn is a dreambender. He and the other dreambenders secretly analyze people’s dreams and adjust them to avoid danger and violence, fear and anger, music and art. It is those things that bring about emotions which are thought to bring about another Warming.

Callie Crawford lives in the city and works as a computer, but is dissatisfied with her work. One night, Jeremy encounters Callies’s dream of singing, and he finds it beautiful. Jeremy questions the rules of a dreambender, and he allows her singing dream to continue. Because of his choice, he is banned from his job as dreambender. He decides to escape the meadow and travel to the city to find Callie, telling her about the dreambenders which causes a domino effect of changes for those in the city and the meadow. Changes of hope.

Alice is a 12 year old girl who is quite troubled. Her parents send her away to boarding schools and summer camps each year to avoid her. She is physically awkward. She is excessively too tall, her body is overly stocky, and her hair is very thick, curly and unruly. Each boarding school she attends, she does not remain in, due to bullying. More than anything in the world, she wants to have a friend.

Millie is a Bigfoot, living in the Yare community deep in the woods. She is excessively small for her age, and therefore feels useless because she is weak and slow. She is very interested in the “No-Furs” (humans) that go to school on the other side of the lake, but it is forbidden to talk to one because they cannot be trusted.

Jeremy is a boy that is infatuated with the Bigfoot. He conducts searches of them on the internet. He completes a presentation about them every year in school. He wants to hunt them.

Alice is sent to another new boarding school where she is again bullied due to her diverse appearance. Escaping into the woods at night, she rescues Millie from drowning in the lake. A spark of a secret friendship begins. As the three characters’ lives collide, a crazy plot is formed to save Millie and her Yare community. The ending is a tease of the potential of a sequel.

This story has a great moral of accepting yourself and others, no matter the differences.

In this realistic fictional novel, JT, a teen who is not able to afford college, wants to get out of his dead-end town in Florida. His boyfriend Seth suggests driving to New York to participate in the Miss Drag Teen Pageant. The two guys and their friend Heather encounter various characters along the drive that help JT discover his drag persona and, in doing so, himself.

JT and Seth are very relatable characters in the book. Some of the drag queens portrayed in the novel are interesting people that one would like to meet in person. The writing flowed and the text was easy to read. This book will definitely hit the mark with LGBTQ readers and those who enjoy reading coming-of-age books. This a fun and poignant read.

— Faith E.

In this realistic fiction novel, teenager Rakmen’s little sister died. His anger led him to nearly flunk out of high school. His parents are on the verge of divorce. The only place Rakmen feels kind of feels supported is in a grief support group meeting. He meets one of his teachers and her daughter at one of the group sessions. This leads to Rakmen’s parents sending him on a trip to the Canadian wilderness with his teacher and her daughter. In these surroundings, he is able to canoe, camp and find himself.

The author’s writing is such that the reader is able to feel the emotions of the characters which made the novel exceptionally captivating. Although it is a sad book, the journey of Rakmen’s self-discovery made the book a very moving novel. I give this book a 3.5 – 4 (out of 5) boxes of Kleenex rating. For those who enjoy reading realistic touching fiction, this is a good one!

— Natalie S.

Cowpoke Clyde sees an ad for a bike and decides that he should order one. He doesn’t know how to ride a bike and his first time on it turns into an out of control adventure. When Clyde finally ends that ride, he walks away from his bike never wanting to ride it again. Clyde soon decides that cowboys cannot give up, so he gets back on his bike again.

The illustrations are colorful and the expressions on the characters add to the story. The text is written in rhyme and with a cowboy twang.