This book is an elementary look at the life of a penguin.  There are funny words that young children would enjoy having written in a story book style from the perspective of a baby penguin.

The authors note at the end of the book covers more of the interesting details about the penguin.

It was an ok book.

This is a cute valentine joke book.  Along with the cute jokes are little tidbits and information about Valentin’s day.  Fun to read the jokes, riddles, and limericks.  Fun to find out more about Valentine’s Day.

A quick mini-bio of the Hulk appears on the back cover for those who are not familiar with the Hulk.

 Bold purple text begin each new twist in the story line.

As usual, Bruce Banner wants to be left alone.

As usual, General Ross wants to capture the Hulk – AKA-  Bruce Banner.

As usual, S.H.I.E.L.D. wants the Hulk.

As usual, Bruce Banner is struck, then transforms into The Hulk, and the battle is on.

Now the predicable scenario is over, the real story begins with Hulk being captured . There is a double agent at S.H.I.E.L.D. working for the evil HYDRA. The S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is outwitted by the double agent ”  ‘but as far as S.H.I.E.L.D.  is concerned, I just took down a traitorous double agent.’ Then she held up the vial of Hulk’s DNA. ‘Hail HYDRA…’ “

A cheery bright orange cover with a happy hatching chick greets the young reader of this seasonal book.

The story begins with Spring arriving outside, at home, and at school, “but who exactly is the Easter Bunny?” Then, we see the Easter Bunny collect eggs, paint the eggs, and hide the eggs for the children to find. Finally, we see him “hop back to his little house in the woods and into his snug, cozy bed for a long, long sleep.”

Chubby smiling children and  Easter Bunny are illustrated in large  visible child-like strokes of colorful tempera paint.

Noah Webster is best known for writing the first American dictionary but is also very active in helping to unify the country.  After the Revolutionary War was over, he thought having consistent spelling and understanding of words was one way to strengthen America.  While teaching, he began writing the “blue-backed speller” for his students and the country.  He continued to write more books for school children and a DIC-TION-AR-Y [noun: a book listing words in ABC order, telling what they mean and how to spell them] of “American” words.  The watercolor and ink illustrations are humorous and portray Webster as an ambitious man who loved words and his country.  This fun and informative book would make a great addition to school and classroom libraries.

Choosing the best small animal as a pet for your family is an important decision.  This book introduces seven small mammals, how to feed and care for them, individual traits, and if they can be trained.  Each animal has a page or two describing the cage, food, and supplies to keep your animal happy and healthy.  Enough information is given about each animal for one to decide if a particular pet would be a good fit with one’s family.  There are large, colorful photographs of each animal.  Text is easy to read, each photo has a cation, and there are many Fast Facts sprinkled among the pages.  Glossary, index, internet sites, and other books to read are included.  Great resource!

Beginning with the Paleozoic Era, 542 million years ago, one can trace the history of prehistoric life on our planet up to recent discoveries.  Many facts include information about where fossils were found, diet, and size of animals living on the planet long before humans.  Scientists are able to determine many features, however sometimes a best guess is presented and is indicated with a question mark.  Recorded dinosaur discoveries in the United States and around the world began in the 1800s and continue up to the present day.  The layout is easy to read and the illustrations are created digitally.  Two of the three facthound internet sites were active at the time of this report.  Glossary, index, and books to read are included at the back.  This is a great resource to help put years when particular dinosaurs lived in perspective.

Flyaway grabbed me from the start and I didn’t stop until the final decision was made.  Stevie is a junior in high school with too much on her figurative plat and very little on her real plate.  Her mother’s “profession” gets her harrassed at school and her mother’s personal choices keep Stevie’s mind racing as to her mother’s safety.  With issues no high school student should have to deal with, but probably too many of our actually do, Flyaway is a fierce account of one girl’s mental fight to do what is right just for her.  Helen Landalf does not shy away from any of the issues she brings up.  Drugs and alcohol abuse keep this title for the older young adult audience, but I particularly like the brutal honesty that comes from all of Landalf’s characters.  Stevie is not an angel herself, but she will make the right choices to lift herself to better places in the end.  This is highly recommended for high school libraries.

This is a young child’s board book with lift the flaps and pop-ups.  It has bright, colorful illustrations that are well-balanced and visually pleasing.  The characters are introduced the very first page, with Mr Croc and five of his friends.  On each succeeding page, Mr Croc is invited to come and play and each time he replies he is too busy looking for one of his friends.  The reader must then lift up a variety of flaps and find the friend.  This activity provides good memory skills for the reader as well as naming skills.  Sturdy board pages, but inappropriate for a school library as the flaps always tear.

This book is based on true events in the life of Mark Twain, better known as Samuel Clemens, the writer of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, when he lived in New York City.  In an apartment in NYC, Clemens’ wife had died, his older daughter in a home because of severe depression and grief, and his other daughter and housekeeper lived with him.  He was having great difficulty coping with the loss of  his wife and best friend.  His constant companion was Bambino, a black cat belonging to his institutionalized daughter.  Then one day, Bambino escaped from the house to chase a squirrel and was gone.  Desolate, his grief seemed to worsen.  His daughter put up flyers and newspaper advertisements looking for the cat and offering a generous reward.  People were so worried about Mr. Clemens that many of them brought their own cats for him to have while the search was on for Bambino.  It was this outpouring of love and affection for him which awakened his spirit.  He realized he was wasting his life and got on with it.  He dressed in his traditional white suit and went out into the public for speaking engagements and such.  Life became meaningful again.  A lovely book but I’m not sure who the audience is; children will appreciate his fondness for his cat, but will not recognize his name and fame.  Most adults are familiar with depression but do you write a book like this about it?  Although familiar with Clemens/Twain, I thought it simply to be  a book about a man who was grieving and lost his cat and people showed they cared about him.  Illustrations were okay, but nothing remarkable.

As explained in the introduction by the author, John Yeoman, these folktales are not the common folktales frequently told, but are the older, oral folktales once told somewhere around the world by a storyteller long ago.  The folktales mostly contain magic and it’s either the underdog or the innocent who are the victors.  As the stories are read, one can imagine an old storyteller telling the tale.  The tempo, the language, the outrageousness of the stories, give the illusion of a seasoned storyteller.  This would make an excellent addition to any library and also to any home with children or grandchildren.  Well done!

Every time I read an Amelia Rules! graphic novel, I start it and think it’s a hot mess and the story is all over the place, and this time is no different.  But as I get into the story, there is always some redeeming quality of Amelia that wins me over and I end up enjoying the story.  After messing around in the morning, Amelia is late for school and ends up working with a girl on her enemy list, one whom she absolutely can’t stand.  They have to work on a project about Nancy Reagan only Amelia doesn’t do her part and research who Nancy Reagan even is.  This causes a lot of bickering and name-calling.  They eventually get their project done but it’s terrible and they earn a grade of F-.  Their teacher is so upset with them that they each earn an hour of detention time.  But lo and behold, they actually use the detention time to figure out that they shouldn’t be mortal enemies and it was all a big misunderstanding.  They even go so far as to figure out that the people they hang out with contributed to the misunderstanding.  What they realize is that they actually have a lot in common and become friends.  I just love these Amelia Rules! books because the kids learn about life in such a natural way and I hope that readers of these books can use the advice.

This book gives a synopsis or brief biography of the important people on both sides of the American Revolution, along with an image of what the person looked like.  As a teacher of the American Revolution to fifth graders, I appreciate the format in which the people are laid out as either Patriot, British, or women.  Usually books have everyone lumped together and unless you’re familiar with the names, it’s hard to know which side they were on.  This book makes it very clear who the team players were.

Apples A to Z is an alphabet book demonstrating how each and every letter in the alphabet can relate to apples.  I particularly enjoy the G is for grafting, V is for varieties, and Y is for yield, one I don’t usually see but make sense.  (X and Z are pretty lame, but it always is hard to come up with something for those two letters.)  Also included at the back are ‘apple’ jokes, sayings, and interesting facts.  The illustrations revolve around woodland and farm animals and are enjoyable and pleasing, without being too busy, as seems to be the trend these days.  The book is familiar and calming, as well as giving good information.  This book will be a sure winner with primary grade teachers come every fall and the start of school.

As part of the series, Asian Animals,Tigers gives a brief synopsis of how the continent was formed, the many languages contained therein, countries, culture, and people.  There is a map of where the tigers actually live in Asia and how their habitat is shrinking due to change.  The author mentions that there used to be nine different types of tigers, but that only six remain.  I wish she would have listed and compared the nine types or at least the remaining six types, accompanied with a photo of each type.  Why mention it at all if you don’t plan on showing them more?  The photographs of tigers are beautiful and clear.  The rest of the information is pretty common.

The honest, evenly balanced research and writing of Denver Nicks in Private Bradley Manning, Wikileaks, and the Biggest Exposure of Official Secrets in American History is refreshing.  Nicks assessment of situations, inferences from thousands of both email transcripts and personal interviews, and wry writing style give a fair critique of both t Manning and the U.S. government’s responsibility for the leak to happen at all.  Woven throughout this battle, of course, is the entity of Wikileaks itself, with Julian Assange at the helm.  Readers will not only get a history lesson, but two biographies to boot.  Nicks braids the story of Bradley Manning, from his entry into the Armed Forces to his detention at Quantico and beyond, with that of Assange, a hacker turned self-righteous solicitor of information and money, though his rule over Wikileaks ironically turns out to be more autocratic than one would think Wikileaks would allow.  Much interesting information is given about the positive connotation of the hacker community in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.  Had Bradley Manning been born 20 years earlier and had found a safe haven with his sexuality, his intelligence would have gotten him much farther in the “Information should be free” world.  But Manning has manic periods brought on by so many reasons, all of which are fairly and tastefully explored by Nicks. And his choice to pursue a military career is the perfect storm.  This text holds a wealth of information and should be in all college and public libraries.

This is an amazing true story.  I enjoyed the beautiful pictures, and the way the story helps you feel the emotions of Emily.  what a beautiful,  comforting story.  It would be fun not only to read, but to have it read to you.

Simple informative read for young readers. I liked how it told about flying and planes as they are now, and then included some of the history of airplanes and flying.  There is a fun experiment to demonstrate a jets thrust at the end of the book, and a great glossary.

Beautiful rendition of The Owl and the Pussycat.  Lovely illustrations by Robert Ingpen, sketching and paint.  This would make a beautiful updated copy of an old classic tale.

Pinned presents a refreshing twist on the girl meets boy theme – overcoming disabilities.  Autumn is the only female on the wrestling team.  Autumn has no confidence in her academic ability and is working below grade level.  Autumn’s parents take her off of the wrestling team because her grades. She can pin an opponent in a wrestling match but she faces opposition from Adonis, the team’s manager and an honor student who is wheel chair bound, when she tries to pin him down for tutoring, friendship and romance.   In addition to this dynamic, Sharon Flake brings in other realities, such as the wealthy, well educated parents of a friend of Autumn’s expecting so much of their child that she cheats her way to good grades vs. Autumn’s parents who try to show her that her education can allow her to achieve more than the hard life they have been living.  Autumn is a strong female character trying to do the right thing throughout the story.  Flake’s award winning realistic narrative writing style thrusts this plot line even further.  Many students will enjoy Pinned.  It is highly recommended!

“The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a multirole fighter jet. It Is flown by the United States Air Force and Air National Guard.”(page 5) So begins this 32 page, 13 chapter book by John Hamilton. The photography will amaze the reader with every turn of the page. Photos taken of the F-16 flying in formation and solo, photos taken from inside the cockpit – both looking towards the pilot and giving the pilot’s view, and photos taken from below and from above the jet while in flight. The text speaks in generalities for the first few chapters and becomes more specific as it goes into its origins, pilots, cockpit, Fire-by-Wire, engine, and weapons.

Includes an eight term glossary with longer than usual definitions, and an index.

Boys will want to look through this book of action packed close-up photographs of military helicopters set in front of graphic navigation/ targeting  backgrounds. The three short chapters include: Apache Helicopters; Crew, Parts, and Weapons; and Apache Missions. Each page turn has from 3 – 5 sentences.  The jest being “Apaches are mainly used to destroy enemy vehicles. They also escort other aircraft and give air support to ground units.” (page 17)

Glossary, www.factsurfer.com, and index are included.