The Grumpasaurus is a small, fearsome creature. You should observe the Grumpasaurus from afar. Edward Hemingway’s book is written as a field guide and features diagrams and colorful illustrations. The book starts out with the Grumpasaurs finding his teddy bear with his arm falling off. It sets him off in a grumpy mood. Eventually his teddy bear is repaired and we soon learn that the Grumpasaurus is a young child in a bad mood. This is definitely for younger audiences. It could be a fun way to talk about bad moods and strong emotions.

John Wallace’s illustrations make a perfect match for Marion Dane Bauer’s simple information on snow for young readers. Clouds in winter are made of ice crystals. The ice and dust in the clouds grow “so heavy that they drop from the cloud.” (13) The colder the air, the smaller the snow flakes and vice versa. “Each snowflake has six sides.” (20)

Page 31 contains six “Facts about snow” which are more complex than the previous information. This includes, ” People used to think it was impossible to find two alike, but a researcher named Nancy Knight once did find two snowflakes exactly alike.” (31)

John Wallace’s illustrations make a perfect match for Marion Dane Bauer’s simple information about wind for young readers. The earth spins, so air moves creating wind. Heated air rises, colder air falls trading places. “We call this movement ‘wind’.” (11) Birds, seeds, kites, sailboats, and windmills all use wind. Very quickly moving air can cause storms.  We can’t see wind, only its effects.

Page 32 contains four “Facts about wind” which are more complex than the previous information.

John Wallace’s illustrations make a perfect match for Marion Dane Bauer’s extremely simple information on clouds. One of the three types of clouds most youngsters will relate to are fog and their chilly breath on a cold morning. There are cirrus clouds, “That means ‘curl’.” (10)” Stratus. That means ‘layered’ or ‘spread out’. “(12-13) “Cumulus. That means ‘heap’ or ‘pile’. (18)
Clouds consist of liquid or frozen water. Clouds cool the earth during the day and keep the warmth in the atmosphere at night (like a blanket). The water in clouds is the same water as back in dinosaur days.

Page 32 contains 5 “Facts about clouds” which are more complex than the previous 30 pages.

John Wallace’s illustrations make a perfect match for Marion Dane Bauer’s extremely simple telling of the water cycle for very young readers. Sentence length ranges from three to eight words. There is usually one sentence, in a large font, to a page. The plot: it is hot, plants wilt, a cloud , water droplets unite, droplets get heavy, and fall to earth. Repeat.

Page 32 contains six “Facts about rain” which are more complex than the previous 30 pages.

Have you ever wondered who invented the cookie? This book discusses the history of the cookie. It starts with how the cookie was started, then how they came to America, and then how the cookie became popular. It gives a lot of interesting tidbits about how cookies became a part of celebrations and the most popular cookie. It ends with a bit of baking science, a recipe and a short quiz.

This book is a part of the History of Fun Stuff series. It is billed as a Level 3 Ready-to Read book, but the text is long and lacks text features. Several of the famous people or companies may not be recognizable to a younger audience. Students who are interested in the history of sweets will enjoy the fun facts and history of the cookie.

Bertie looks and acts like all of the other giraffes. They do the same thing everyday. One day Bertie oversleeps and realizes that he was all alone. As Bertie wanders around lost and unsure what to do, he sees Blue, a creature just like him, only blue. Blue says that he can lead Bertie back home. As Blue and Bertie walk to his home, Blue shows Bertie things he had never noticed before like birds and rare flowers and helps Bertie see things in a different way. When Bertie joins his heard, Blue sadly turns to leave because he does not belong. Bertie tells Blue that he does belong and Blue helps the heard see things a little bit differently.

A sweet story about acceptance, being a good friend and looking at things differently.

Maggi and Milo return in another adventure. This time Maggi and Milo are having a staring contest when Maggi’s mom suggests going to the park. Maggi wonders why they should go and mom replies, “Because it’s Tuesday and the sun is shining and you might make a new friend.” Maggi doesn’t think she needs new friends because she has “Milo, the Mammal of All Mammals.” They go to the park to discover that dogs are not allowed. Maggi’s mom says she will stay with Milo while Maggi goes to play. Maggi introduces herself to a group of children and soon they are playing. Maggi decides that she wants to walk Milo because he looks bored. The other children want to walk him too. Maggi says that it is expensive and sends them to look for roly-polies, sticks, acorns, dandelions and three leaf clovers. She decides that they look like they are having fun collecting things for her, so she decides to join them. Maggi leaves the park having made new friends, but with her best friend of all, Milo. This is a fun story about making new friends.

The illustrations are colorful and engaging. The characters in the book reflect a multicultural group of friends.

Edith Houghton was said to have been born with a baseball in her hand. If she wasn’t playing baseball, she was watching baseball. In the 1920s at the age of 10, she tried out for the new all-female team, the Philadelphia Bobbies. Even though she was only 10, she made the team and even became the starting shortstop. At thirteen, she had the opportunity to travel to Japan with the Bobbies to play against men’s teams.

This wonderfully told story depicts a lesser known piece of baseball history. The illustrations compliment the text. The end of the story includes a note from the author with pictures of Edith Houghton and more information about women in baseball.

David Milgrim uses multiple combinations of 19 words, plus 4 sound effects over 30 pages of illustrations to tell an adventurous story of Otto, the robot, who wants to visit his robot family on another planet. Otto builds a rocket pack to fly home, but on his test flight something goes wrong. It flies right, left, up, and down before crashing. Otto’s monkey and elephant friends are happy to see Otto safely back with them. The end, for now.

Young emergent readers will feel a great sense of accomplishment being able to read an entire story/book by themselves.

Eloise once again gets her Nanny on board for her latest project. This time it is building a snowman in Central Park, even before Eloise eats breakfast.

Eloise makes a standard snowman: 3 snowballs, 2 eyes, 2 stick arms, and a twig mouth. “But something is missing.” Back to The Plaza to fetch a large carrot for a nose. But something is not right. Back to The Plaza to have the “best tailors” make “a hat, a coat, a scarf, and gloves.” After the snowman is dressed, it’s back to The Plaza. Now, Eloise commissions a wooden house for the ‘dashing’ snowman. Back to The Plaza, for breakfast.

Cute in a pretentious sort of way that only Eloise can pull off.

Tomie dePaola’s recognizable art style gives this telling of making a snowman, sledding, and making snow angels before going inside for hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire all the soft cozy comfortable delight of the winter’s first heavy snow fall in easy to read format, co-written with Jim Lewis.

The last house on Candy Cane Lane does not have a single decoration because this one house can not afford any. How the little girl who lives there wishes they could have decorations, too. Then one night, batten down the hatches, there is a December blizzard on its way. In the morning, the little girl rescues a damaged outdoor choir boy decoration from a dumper to use in her yard, only to have her father put it back in the trash. At the dump, the choir boy befriends a plastic reindeer with a broken antler and a plastic ghost. Off they go to find the little girl at the end of Candy Cane Lane. They pass super highways, woods, shopping malls, and factories without luck. Then they discover a factory that makes Christmas decorations for displays. The choir boy, reindeer, and ghost are invited inside by a sugarplum fairy who’s never been outside the factory. The sugarplum fairy shows them a Santa assembly line, where the Santas are all identical. Next, the sugarplum fairy leads them into a room of “rejects.” “There was a Santa with a green coat, a camel with three humps, wise men without gifts, and a snowman who looked melted.” The choir boy tells them about the little girl on Candy Cane Lane who will “love” them all. Off they go, even though they do not know the way. The giant from the factory helps out by throwing the choir boy riding the reindeer with the broken antler up into the sky where they catch an updraft. Soon they land on the little girl’s roof and “the giant helps deliver the rest of the ornaments safely…” The little girl thanks her father ” ‘ This is the most wonderful Christmas I could ever imagine!’…And all the ornaments agreed.”

Author and illustrator, Scott Santoro has worked on such movies as The Lion King, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Gnomeo and Juliet.

In Book #3 of Eddie Red Undercover, Edmund is back working for the New York City Police Department after a bomb was delivered to a police station with the note “1-Eddie will know what this means” attached. (1) “Last spring I worked for the NYPD because of my photographic memory and ability to draw almost perfect character sketches.” (2)  The police tell Edmund as little as possible in an attempt to protect him, but Edmund and his friend Jonah realize this case is  dangerous because they have assigned a body guard for Edmund. The police have also put Detective Bovano undercover as a teacher in Edmund’s expansive private middle school- Senate. Det. Bovano is in every class with Edmund using the name Mr. Frank, but this is OK with them because Mr. Frank is a better chemistry teacher than their regular chemistry teacher.  Jonah and Edmund keep working the clues, but which items are clues and which are not? Are some items just coincidence? Are they working one case or two?         As the plot unravels, it is revealed the villain actually had five bombs planted throughout the city. While Jonah and Edmund are using the computers at the public library, Edmund receives a text from an unknown someone saying, ” You’re looking in the wrong place… The answer is on the map. Gold. Stolen treasure. ”  Jonah and Edmund try to decode the clues and solve the case without Bovano because once they tell Bovano, Edmund will be off the case.   In the meantime, Senate Middle School is having a school carnival which the boys are working. While there, Edmund finally gets some alone time with a particular girl as they go into the “Maze”. The villain kidnaps Edmund from inside the “Maze” wanting his memory and art ability to sketch the basement of the art museum to be used in a future museum robbery. Jonah uses a clue from Edmund to locate his whereabouts and has the Senate Middle School marching band parade down the street outside the hotel where Edmund is being held as a diversion. Then, Edmund uses the birthday gift Jonah gave him , a mace pen, to get away from his kidnapper. Bovano arrests the villain Lars at the airport at the same time the unknown texter sends Edmund the text, ” ‘ You ruined everything.’ ”  (184) “THE END”

Eddie has included three pages of  “HOW TO BE A CRYPTOGRAPHER”. This gives the reader tips on how to break codes.

Based on a true story, The Only Road tells of a 12 year old boy’s escape from Guatemala to the United States to join his older brother.  Fleeing the drug lords who have killed so many in his community, including his cousin, Jaime fears that he will be next, and that he has no choice but to flee his country and try to make it to his brother in New Mexico.

Jaime faces many challenges: hoping trains and hoping he doesn’t fall under the wheels, surviving crossing the desert, watching for and fearing that he’ll be captured by the Border Patrol.

This is a gripping story that tells of a boy’s bravery as he seeks a better life in the US.

Set in the rural, off the grid community of Rowan’s Glen in the Ozark Mountains, this mystery is the story of a romance, suspense, and horror. Twenty years earlier a teenage girl had been murdered after being crowed the May Queen at the annual Glen’s May Day celebration. Now, all these years later, animals are being found brutally murdered.

Who is killing the animals? The same person who killed  the May Queen? What is causing the dark omens that seem to settling all around the Glen? Is this year’s May Queen in danger?

The plot is intriguing, as is the setting. But not all plot pieces fit together. And the ending is complicated and somewhat convoluted.

WAX is a eerie, creepy story of the Grosholtz Candle Factory in Paraffin, Vermont. A seventeen-year-old girl, Poppy Palladino, makes a disturbing discovery in the back room:  dozens life size, realistic wax sculptures, crafted by a very peculiar old lady.

Frightened by this discovery, she rushes away in her car, only to have a wax figured teenage boy jump naked from her trunk! She tries to return him to the factory, but it is destroyed in a mysterious fire.

As she and the wax boy, Dud, try to solve the mystery of the fire, she begins to notice that citizens of the town of Paraffin are looking more and more waxy. Why is behind this? What evil is lurking?

For those who like mysteries and creepy stories, this is a good choice.

The Unexpected Everything is Morgan Matson’s fourth book (you may know her from Since You’ve Been Gone). A Junior Library Guild selection, The Unexpected Everything is the story of a prominent US Congressman’s daughter whose summer internship and future plans are tossed into the wind by a scandal that rocks his career and blazes across newspaper headlines and cable news airwaves.

Andie, aged 17, has lived, since her mother’s death from ovarian cancer, under the microscope of her father’s staffers, who have made sure that she’s never done anything to embarrass him in the eyes of the public. But now, a campaign finance scandal is embarrassing Andie, and results in the revoking of her spot in a prestigious Young Scholars Program summer internship at John Hopkins.

Driving to the home of the doctor who withdrew his letter of recommendation, in a failed effort to be reinstated in the program, Andie stumbles upon a run-away dog, catches his leash, and then comes face to face with his dreamy owner, Clark. Clark, not much older than Andie, is a nerdy, homeschooled writer, who published his first novel at age 14.

The storyline evolves into a funny and entertaining romance. Here is an excerpt of Clark’s attempt to ask Andie on a date:

“I was just . . . trying to get a sense of your schedule.” He blinked, like he’d just heard himself, and I could see the tops of his ears were starting to turn red. “Wow, that sounded creepy. I didn’t mean that in, like, a weird way. I think I’m making this worse. Oh god.” He took a breath, then swallowed hard. “I was wondering, you know, what you do. At night.” He stared at me in horror after he said it, like he couldn’t quite believe the words had come out of his mouth. “Oh, man,” he muttered, closing his eyes behind his glasses for a moment. “This isn’t going well.” I had to bite my lip to stop myself from smiling wide.”

Although this novel is 519 pages long, each one is a page turner. Even reluctant readers will enjoy this story of friendship, family, romance and, of course, dogs.

A double homicide upsets the quiet Swedish village of Blackwater. The residents are left dealing with finding the murderer while dealing with their own personal issues. The two main characters, Annie Raft and Johann Brandberg, face communes and cults while coping with their issues of isolation and fear which is the main theme of the novel.

In this adult book, while the writing is very pretty, the plot is very confusing; the point-of-view was messy. The novel is translated from Swedish. There was character development, but it was lost in the flip-flopping of the characters’ stories. The reader’s full attention is required and multiple readings might be necessary in order to fully understand the plot development.
Final verdict: It is an interesting book, but, will leave the reader more confused than satisfied.

— Faith E.

This dystopian novel takes place after the Seventeen Days of destruction. Eliza, the second princess of England, must find her captured brother and sister and stop the man who killed her mother. Eliza, pretending to be one of “the evil people” sees how they evil people fight and rule. Thus, educating her to become more passionate for the people and the crown.

If you are looking for a literary read, this is not the book. However, if you are looking for an engaging, fun, fast-paced read, this is your book. Teens will be able to relate to the characters especially Eliza, who depicts a strong heroine, and her younger brother, who is a symbol for freedom and growing up. There are some very fun plot twists. The romance between Eliza and Wesley seems a bit unnecessary. The end is very powerful, but some of the impact of the ending is lost when the reader realizes that there will be a second book. This book is smartly-written and readers will enjoy the wild ride.

— Faith E.

Suffer Love, Ashley Herring Blake’s debut novel, will appeal to readers who enjoyed John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars or Nicola Yoon’s Everything Everything. The main characters, Hadley and Samuel (Sam) have the same attraction-with-a-complication, although in this case the complication is not medical. Sam’s mother had an affair with Hadley’s father. Sam realizes who Ashley is long before Ashley makes the connection. Sam’s decision not to share that information provides much of the tension throughout the novel.

The novel is told from alternating points of view, which is occasionally disorienting. It’s helpful that each chapter is titled with the name of the character from whose point of view that chapter is told. There is a good deal of vulgar language. Sadly, though, the characters seem to use profanity as casually  and unconsciously as many high schoolers do today.

This book is told through the eyes of young Rosa who lives on the lower Baja Peninsula with her family. Rosa tells her followers about Mexico being in North America with beaches, deserts, rain forests, and mountain ranges. Rosa’a parents take tourists on whale watching tours. Rosa goes to school after a breakfast of fried eggs, beans, and sauce on a tortilla. In school “we are learning about archaeology (say: ark-ay-AHL-oh-jee), which is the study of ancient cultures. There are many places in Mexico where the remains of ancient cities still stand.” Her school is taught in Spanish in the morning and in English in the afternoon.  In history, they learn about the Olmec, Mayans, Aztecs, Europeans explorers and conquerors. People “fought many battles with Spain… won their freedom in 1812… became Mexico!”

Lunch is the big meal of the day. There are after school programs for children while their parents go back to work.

Rosa likes the November holiday the Day of the Dead.

Rosa’s family eat a light supper before she goes to bed.

The first page of this book is a glossary of eleven entries. The last page is “ALL ABOUT MEXICO” which includes: the official name of the country, population, capital, official language, total area, government, currency, fun facts, and flag.

This book does not have a table of contents or an index.

This is a super quick overview of China for young readers. I was pleasantly amazed at how much information there was packed into these brief 32 pages! In 32 pages the book breaks China up into four regions: North, West, South, and East.  The North has the Gobi Desert, the West has the Himalayan Mountains, the South has the rain forests, and the East has the majority of large cities, such as, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Xi’an, and Beijing.

The book is introduced by a young Chinese boy telling the reader about his home country of China. His name is Jin. He lives in Hangzhou with his mother – who works at a bank, his father- -who works for a power company, and his Aunt Jun- who has come to the city looking for work.  The reader follows Jin on a typical day, starting with a breakfast of noodles with eggs. Then, off to school. Jin learns about the 40,000 years of China’s history. It includes a brief line or two about the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming Dynasties, along with the Mongol’s invasion, and the 1912 rebellion against the emperor. “My favorite part of history is learning about all of China’s great inventions. The Chinese are credited with inventing paper, printing, silk, and fireworks.” After lunch, they study science about the dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert.   They, also, study English, computer, art, music, and gym on various days. After school, dad picks Jin up for a snack. Jin is excited about tomorrow’s Dragon Boat Festival. The book closes with Jin’s family eating dinner.

The first page of this book is a glossary of fourteen entries. The last page is “ALL ABOUT CHINA” which includes: the official name of the country, population, capital, official language, total area, government, currency, fun facts, and flag.

Does not contain an index and table of contents.

Jess is feeling very sad because it’s her birthday and she is missing her parents. She hasn’t even received her birthday present in the mail!
In order to cheer Jess up, Ella and her friends plan to make a magical glitter bomb as a birthday surprise. However, Ella does not stick to the recipe and adds extra of the special ingredient just to be sure it goes off, sending a glittery message into the air. Unfortunately, when Ella delivered the special surprise, it went off with such force, it broke a priceless statue at the academy! Ella is sure she will be expelled, until the guardian angels realize a bird has hidden the missing mail and Jess’ birthday present in the statue!! This story is filled with cute, adventurous characters that readers will fall in love with. This is the second book of the Angel Wings series.

Ella is an angel at the Guardian Angel Academy, with big dreams to be a guardian angel someday. Although Ella is an angel, she seems to get herself into all kinds of trouble. Ella has made some true angel friends in Poppy, Tilly and Jess, and she has met a grumpy angel, Primrose!
In order to cheer Tilly up from her homesickness, Ella goes on an adventure to Rainbows End, a forbidden area where the remembering flowers grow. When Ella finds a flower to take to her friend, she loses her map to find her way back home. Good thing she has true friends to come to her rescue! This story is adorable in the cutest way with all of the many special ideas written within! Readers will fall in love with the angels and their adventures!