It’s a beautifully illustrated poem celebrating the seasons through color. Beginning with Spring, it proceeds through the seasons, focusing on a specific color attached to each season, partnered with the consistency of green throughout the year (yellow on green for spring, blue on green for summer, brown on green for autumn and white on green for winter). Between each season the text pauses for a two-page wordless spread with clues to what season comes next, offering readers an opportunity to make predictions. The illustrations are gorgeous!

I’m not saying it’s super strong on plot. It basically tells of a small group of kids who decide to fix up a derelict clock tower. But the language is fun, full of sound effects and rhyme and rhythm. And the illustrations are beautiful, showing the transformation through a lot of different perspectives. And I like that it instills in kids that notion of putting for the effort to fix problems in our community by pitching in with others. It kind of implies that three kids finished the whole job in one day by 5 o’clock quitting time, which could never really happen, but oh well. I liked it.

As beginning readers go, it’s got the repetition and rhyme that helps to make it predictable for young readers. It’s no so much a story as a list of different types of bug behavior. The cuteness of the illustrations add appeal as well as adding meaning to the limited text. For kids who get intrigued and want to know more about bug behaviors, there’s a list of facts in the back for stronger readers to read aloud with the emergent reader.

The only good things I have to say about this book are that it has a sturdy binding, and that kids like Spiderman. Other than that, I find nothing else to recommend it. I know they are making an effort to control the vocabulary as a beginning reader, and they do include repetition that might be helpful, but the language is much too stilted. We’ve learned over the years through the works of countless authors that it is possible to limit the vocabulary while still including a natural flow and rhythm to the language. We need not feed our young readers examples of poor writing.

It’s a little fish’s first day of school, and the simple text (limited to a sentence or two per page, in a large non-intimidating font) manages to capture the mix of excitement and anxiety that can hit a student on such a day. Though the text is simple, it manages to incorporate the rhythm and rhyme and repetition that are so helpful to emergent readers.

It’s got repetition and rhyme and rhythm, as good beginning readers should, along with a good story captured in the simple text. It tells of the anxieties and excitement that go along with a big competition, as well as offering a suggestion on dealing with those anxieties (close your eyes, deep breath, count to ten). And it reminds readers that coming in second is worthy of celebrating, too.

The real strength in this book lies in its beautiful full-color photos of children at school all around the world. The text is simple: one chief sentence on each two page spread, as well as captions under two or three photos, describing how that sentence applies in different parts of the world. The theme of the text is that of the commonalities of school experiences for children all around the world, while the photos highlight both similarities and differences. There is a world map in the back with all the countries mentioned in the book highlighted.

It’s the story of two paper mice who after being cut out are tucked into some books and put away, but after dark they come out for adventures. The book ends when they crawl back into their books just before daylight. It’s a cute enough book, but really just another incarnation of a story that has been told repeatedly before.

It’s the 25th Anniversary Edition of a book I’ve never heard of. The artwork is beautiful and intriguing and always a bit strange. Each illustration is accompanied by an incomplete caption (“If mice were hair…. If worms had wheels…. If leaves were fish…”). It’s a celebration of imagination, and could be used it a variety of ways including art prompts, writing prompts, conversation starters, etc.). Suitable for all ages.

There’s a lot of rhythm to the flow of the text, which makes sense when you get to the back and notice the words set to music. It tells the story of seed that is found on an outing and brought back to the big city and planted in a jar of earth. The bunny who found it cares for it and watches it until it’s too tall to for the jar it’s in, then he and his friends take it outside to plant it in the ground. The refrain that repeats throughout the book is that though it started small, one day it will stand at a hundred feet tall. The illustrations show another whole storyline and the passage of time, as we see the little bunny’s mom pregnant, and then bringing home a new baby bunny who eventually is taking its first steps.

Trike is reminiscing over all the fun he’s had with he’s had with Lulu, when the arrival of a shiny new bike shows up and makes him conscious of all his own scratches and patches. Bike is a bit of a show-off, who likes speed, and he challenges Trike to a race. Recognizing the advantage that he’d have because of his familiarity with the route, Trike agrees, on the stipulation that if he wins, Bike has to promise to let Lulu ride at her own pace. Mid-race, when Bike’s risky behavior gives Trike an opportunity to take the lead, Trike goes after Bike to keep him save, rather than take advantage of the opening. They end up friends, and though Lulu gets presented with the shiny new Bike at her birthday, her baby brother takes over Trike, so the two get to keep riding together.

The illustrations are bright and cheerful. The text is rhyming and rhythmic. The story tells of all the barnyard animals gathering together to wait out a storm. Despite all of them declaring they’re not afraid of thunder, they obviously find comfort in each other’s company. When the storm passes, Little Blue Truck gives everyone a bedtime ride back to their own niches.

It tells about a girl who’s expanding her extracurricular horizons. She loves ballet, but after her recital, when the ballet classes end, it’s time for her to try the baseball she signed up for. She misses the twirling and leaping of ballet, as well as her sparkly tutu, and she’s not exactly giving her team her best. Her coach tells her about famous athletes who use ballet to improve their performance in other sports, and he gives her some sparkly shoe laces, and she begins to put in a bit more effort. And then when the ball is headed her way she leaps and twirls and catches the ball that puts the other team out and wins the game.

The illustrations are cute, and the story draws upon a character that will be familiar to many. But with only one sentence on most pages, the storyline and character development are both a bit limited. It basically tells about planning and preparing for a tea party, and then when Angelina drops the special tart she made for the guest of honor, she performs a dance for her instead. I guess it could be useful for recalling sequence, but otherwise it’s a bit blah.

It’s got the basic, very rudimentary information about why earthquakes happen presented in a simple, straight-forward manner. There are only one to two sentences per page, and illustrations to support the meaning of the text. It includes information about how different cultures of the past explained earthquakes before the science behind them was understood.

The story is lame. The writing is stilted. There’s repetition, but no rhythm or rhyme, as the description on the back claims. The questions in the back of the book are trying to turn reading into an assignment, but there’s not enough substance to the story to illicit any authentic questions. This is a tool designed to turn kids off reading.

The rhyming text tells of a cheerful chick who’s got a dream of starting up a barnyard cheer team. She’s made herself an outfit, practiced her moves, thought up her cheers, but when she ventures through the farm to enlist the other animals she is met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Everyone is busy with their own agendas, and they each send her on her way. What she doesn’t notice is the series of other chicks who are following her throughout the barnyard, watching her every move. Just when she’s about to give up altogether, they joined her, and by then the grown-up animals’ work was through, so they at least served as an audience as the chick cheer team performs.

Based on the family stories handed down by the author’s grandmother, it tells the story of a year in the life of a family during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When a single mother of 8 children gets evicted from their home, they move into a shack in the woods and make it into a home. Granted, it is a very romanticized view of some harsh realities, but one of the points that the author is making (according to the author’s note in the back of the book), was that though times were hard, the memories her relatives carried forth from these times were overwhelmingly good ones. The illustrations certainly contribute to the nostalgic feel of the book, softening the harsh realities.

The text is almost an essay about friendship, a series of truisms. It might seem preachy, except that the topic is one that everyone can relate to, and the things it has to say are things that so many children will have had experience with, so rather than coming off as preachy, it comes across as a recognition and validation of their own experiences, as well as a reminder about how things can turn around. The illustrations help set the tone, being very soft and comforting and sweet.

The tone of the writing is that of a dime-store detective novel, and the cartoonish illustrations present the information in the form of rap sheets, but within this silly format is a lot of substantial information about animals with which many readers may be unfamiliar. The common theme running through to connect the animals that are included is that each exhibits some sort of behavior that could be considered anti-social: the Anglerfish is wanted for illegal fishing, the Common Cuckoo for bad parenting, the llama for assault, etc.

This is a lovely book, useful for discussing adjectives and opposites and changing perspectives. The text is a series of simple declarative sentences describing a young girl’s experiences of the ocean within a single day. The illustrations add to the meaning of the text by showing how she can say back to back that the ocean is both shallow and deep (the part that rushes up on the sand v. the part she jumps into off the end of a pier), and likewise with a whole series of other opposites. One of the things I think adds a special touch to this book is that the illustrations show the main character with hand crutches: there’s no reference to why she needs them, but the readers get to see a girl with some sort of physical impairment going about her life enjoying all the beach experiences without letting her crutches get in the way.

A great book for sharing nursery rhymes with young students, this book can be a fun way to review that which is familiar to some, while introducing famous nursery rhymes to those who don’t yet know them. As the characters are out on a walk, different things they saw throughout their trip remind them of nursery rhymes, which they share. The telling of the story includes lots of its own rhyming and repetition between the nursery rhymes, so there are many opportunities for making the sharing of this book an interactive group experience.

I like this book. It’s a science lesson disguised as a picture book. It’s written in a friendly, conversational tone, and begins by telling the reader how to find a worm in their yard, and the little cartoon-side-kick worm suggests some other things they’ll need, too (all easily accessible household items). It goes on to essentially offer a series of instructions for an observation lesson on the structures and behaviors of a typical worm. It doesn’t feel like the instructions for a science lesson, though, because it feels like the reader is just joining the kids in the illustration on an interactive adventure.

Some students may be put off by Ed Young’s somewhat dark mixed-media illustrations, but the really do a good job of evoking the mood of the story. This retelling of a Chinese folktale describes the efforts of the wind and rain and sun to win a bit as to who can force young shepherd girl (I like that the shepherd is a girl) to lose her cap. After the wind sends gales to try to blow it off, and the rain likewise storms at her through the night, it is the rising of the warm sun that shines upon her and warms her enough that she removes it herself when she begins to sweat.

It’s fun. We usually use the term “cat ladies” to describe women who have a lot of cats. But in this case the cat who’s telling the story uses the term to refer to the four women who take care of her. Princess is quite content with her comfortable world filled with the devoted attentions of the four cat ladies, until an interloper arrives. When a stray (grandchild?) shows up on the scene, the ladies’ attentions are diverted, and Princess begins feeling neglected. When she sets out on her own, she gets herself into a bit of a pickle, and it’s the stray who comes to the rescue. Princess decides she might be trainable after all.