Just as the title explains, this is basically a travel journal featuring the highlights of various places across Australia, such as the Great Barrier Reef, the desert, the rainforest, and so on.  Random anecdotal phrases strewn across each page.  Difficult to grasp all concepts as I am unfamiliar with the Australian animals, but would be a good companion for someone who has been there or is writing a report about Australian.  The BEST parts were the extravagantly beautiful watercolor illustrations–the details and colors were absolutely brilliant.  Loved the art!

This is a fairly small book in size, the cover measuring 7.5 inches across and 8.5 top to bottom.  Photos take up less than half of each page, with the rest devoted to explanations of various landforms, parks, rivers and lakes, mountains, vocanoes, just to name a few.  The amount of variety is welcome as are the explanations, however, the jewel of the book are the dazzling photographs.  I wish that this book were much larger, with larger photos, to see all the detail each photo captures.  The clarity of the pictures is amazing, I just want a bigger impact.  (Photo credits are listed on last page.) This book is great for schools and science.

In this first graphics version of a non-fiction book, illustrations and diagrams effectively show the various types of volcanoes, the causes of eruption, the effects of an eruption, and safety tips in case of an eruption.  This is a great beginning earth science book.  It looks as though all titles in this series are about natural disasters.

Lou and her mom take their annual summer vacation to visit Memaw in the country.  Mom misses Richard and Lou misses Tristan, but both meet new guys.  Memaw invites an old classmate, Clem Fiffer, of mom’s to dinner in order to strike up a romance.  Clem, an obnoxious teenager is now an obnoxious, well-to-do doctor, and it doesn’t go so well.  Lou’s friend, Paul, is artistic and musical, as well as understanding.  Both are happy when summer is over and they can get back home.  This is an interesting style of story in which each set of pages is like a new chapter, but no transitions.  The story line is engaging and girls will enjoy the camaraderie Lou has with her mom.

This is a strange story with a surprise ending.  The girls are very different and not very tolerant of others who are different.

The pictures are lots of fun.  They were my favorite part of this strange little story.

This is a story of a girl, Precious Little, who lives at the circus and wants to fly.  Her friends Fat Chance, and Tough Luck encouraged her to try to fly.  They threw a rope across the lucky dip (I don’t know what the lucky dip is).  Precious Little stepped out onto the rope.  She fell into the lucky dip and came out flying.(I am not sure what happened at this point).  She flew around for a while, then she fell back to the earth and Fat Chance and Tough Luck caught her.  The End.  I was confused as to what this was about.

I loved the pictures.  They are wonderful to look at, with so much detail.  I like the way the words swirl around the pages.  The upside down page confused me for awhile.

This is a cute book about an owlet who is learning to fly.  He is scared of the dark and afraid that he might get lost,  but with the encouragement of his mother he takes off.  After a shaky start and a few scary encounters he has had a good flight and heads home.  He is happy to be home and needs a rest.

This is a fun story about a girl named Minty and how her summer changed many things in the life and her neighborhood.  Minty has trouble with her best friend trying out new friends and leaving Minty behind.  There is a secret tree in the neighborhood that notes are left with secrets.  Minty and her new friend Raymond try to match the secrets to the people in the neighborhood.  This makes for some detective work and sneaking around.  Just what every kid would love to do.

This story is fun and cute.  children would enjoy the experience of going through town as a bear.  They do theings many children would probable like to do.

There is a grammatical error on the second to last page “It’s so big and has a lots and lots of windows.” The “a” should not be there.

This would be a good book for beginning readers.  The vocabulary used is full of sight words for early readers.  The font is large and easy to read.

Dudley is a worm, an ugly worm, whom children tease and taunt.  Feeling like an outcast, Dudley meanders along in life, dreaming of a beautiful butterfly girl he saw.  Wanting to run away from home in shame, Dudley is convinced to stay, build himself a home, and wait.  He does, and he is transformed into a beautiful boy butterfly.  He and girl butterfly become friends and get married and live happily ever after.  Simple story.  There are a few more embellishments to the story to make it interesting than just what I’ve explained.  However, the story is sweet and is a perfect complement for a unit of the life cycle of insects.  The illustrations are amazing and are what make this book a treasure.  This story, though simple, is explained in words and concepts that kids understand.  Every school library should have a copy.