Adventures of Jo Schmo: Wyatt Burp Rides Again #2

Fourth grade crime fighter,  Jo Schmo, is ready to fight more crime after defeating Dr. Dastardly in Book #1, but “the bad guys must be taking a break…It happens.”  So Jo invents a time machine to travel back to the California Gold Rush of 1849, where outlaw Wyatt Burp is causing havoc with his Hole in the Head Gang. (They wanted to be the Hole in the Wall Gang, but that name was already taken.)  Jo and her sidekick dog- Raymond track Wyatt Burp down as he and his gang head out of town on a stolen sailing ship. Whenever Jo gets too close Wyatt burps them out of the way. Finally, Jo outsmarts Wyatt by replacing his sarsaparilla, which is Wyatt’s key he his gigantic powerful burps, with Raymond’s dog drool. That done, Jo flies Wyatt off to jail. Not wanting to stay in 1849, she and Raymond travel back to the present.

All I Need

True love that is life changing.  True love that is breath taking.  True love that is heart aching.  This is the love that Skye has hoped would magically show up during the summers of her teen years.  With school beginning in just days, it looked like this summer would be hopeless as well, until she made eye contact with Seth.  Seth is a year older and leaving for college soon.  One amazing evening alters their worlds.  When the plan to meet again the next morning is disrupted by Seth’s mother’s early arrival in town, the two are left without any good byes.  But they just can’t get each other out of their own minds.  With no contact information, their chance meeting again at the end of next summer was expected.  Luckily there are other parts to this novel that help it stand on it’s own, such as the alternating chapters in Skye and Seth’s voice, the side drama of Skye’s girlfriends’, and Seth’s art.  A teenage romance novel with honest voices amidst in an idealistic, narrow life, Skye and Seth will question if each other is really all they need.  If you’re a Colasanti fan, you’ll know the answer and still love reading the book to watch it unfold.   Recommended for high school audiences.

Adventures of Jo Schmo: Dinos are Forever #1

The reader is introduced to ordinary fourth grader, Jo Schmo, when suddenly Jo receives a red cape in the mail from Uncle George, who is retiring from being a superhero. “Use it well,” writes Uncle George. Grandpa Joe, who lives in the shack behind Jo’s house, helps trim the cape down to Jo’s ankles. The extra fabric lands on Jo’s dog, Raymond – Jo’s new sidekick! The cape’s instruction manual says “to fly” think lofty thoughts. After crashing several times, Jo gives up on flying for the time being. Jo is able to stop trains – “it’s all in the wrist” – permanently.

Enter Dr. Dastardly, who wants to bring dinosaurs back to life with his Re-animator Laminator, so he can take over San Francisco and then the world. Before meeting up with Dr. Dastardly, Grandpa Joe texts Jo (who is in school at the time) about a bank robbery happening at that very minute. Jo and Raymond leave school ( on a bathroom break) to try to stop it. The robbers get away. Jo catches the two bank robbers in ” ‘the longest bathroom break in U.S. history,’ said Mrs. Freep. ‘What did you do, fall in?’  ” (p. 54) After stopping several more crimes, Jo and Raymond meet up with Dr. Dastardly at the museum of natural history. They are able to stop the dinosaurs( Dr. Dastardly has brought to life) and Dr. Dastardly. As chapter 21 comes to a close, Jo has finally unraveled her ‘lofty’ thoughts and is able to fly. “Tomorrow there would be more problems to face in the city, more villains to catch, more crimes to stop, and Jo Schmo would be ready to face them. But for now, there was only one thing on her mind.           Sponge cake. (p. 105)      [It is lofty.]

Stay tuned for book #2 of The Adventures of Jo Schmo.

The Adventures of a South Pole Pig: A Novel of Snow and Courage

Flora, the farm pig, reminds me of another farm pig, Charlotte, in Charlotte’s Web.  Flora, however, is much more curious and adventurous.  She wants to see who and what’s out there in the big world.  She listens to what the cat and horse say, and practices techniques they use.  Through a series of mishaps, she ends up on board a ship bound for Antartica–she thinks she’s going to be trained as a sleddog, but the ship’s cook has other ideas.  She finds and aids friends, survives a crash and ends up in Antarctica, just what she wanted.  Through times that show her strength of character, her kindness and thoughtfulness, and sheer heroics, she becomes a sledpig and actually saves the expedition.  This is a beautiful story of someone seeking and making their own adventures while being a hero and a friend.  I would expect this book to become a classic.

Supergirl: My Own Best Frenemy #2

This is book two of four graphic novels in the Supergirl series- comic adventures in the eighth grade.

Superman’s cousin- Linda Lee is an eighth grader at Stanhope Boarding School. Linda is trying to figure out how she fits into the scheme of things when in her school’s science geology lab Kyptonite is exposed and filtered through the light of an overhead projector.”ZZRREOOOAAAZZZ!” a dark haired duplicate of the blond (Linda) Supergirl pops into existence. The same, but opposite. Super villain. Version B or Belinda Zee proceeds to hang up campaign posters of Linda Lee for Class President “for an election that doesn’t exit!” Later, when Linda confides in Belinda in an attempt to become friends, Belinda secretly tape records the conversation, only to play the tape over the school’s P.A. system – embarrassing Linda. As Book #2 ends, Linda has made a friend with another new student – Lena Thorul. Unknown to Lena, her new friend Linda is cousin to Superman, who put her big brother in prison.

Includes five discussion questions in the section- Visual Questions and Prompts.

Tombstone Twins: Soul Mates

This graphic novel is set beneath the graveyard at Underworld Elementary School in Forever Fifth Grade, where everyone is dead.

Word play and bad jokes abound as Dedbert and Skully find their world falling in on them , as the graveyard above them is being bulldozed by order of the upper world’s city mayor.

“over my dead body…graveyard — it’s usually dead quiet… you don’t dig graveyards?… cross my heart and hope to live… grave situation… feel it in my bones… can’t just roll over and play dead.” are but a few of the phrases that will haunt/greet  the reader.

Includes – 5 ‘visual questions’.

Author Denise Downer “has written shows on today’s top networks, including Fox, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network.” And illustrator Otis Frampton “has illustrated many of today’s top properties, including Star Wars, The Avengers, Lord of the Rings, and more.”

CowboyUp!: Ride the Navajo Rodeo

When I think of sports- football, basketball, or baseball come to mind. BUT this book is set in Navajo Country where rodeo just may beat out all other sports.

Enthusiasm  for rodeo exudes from the pages of this book as each rodeo event is presented with a free-verse poem, a rodeo MC as he introduces each event, and a description of the event.  Includes: Grand entry, wooly rider, bronc riders, calf roper, barrel racer, steer wrestler, team roper, and bareback bull rider.

The photography which fills each page and the expressions on the participants faces captures their souls for that moment in time.

Glamsters

Sometimes trying to doll yourself up, or change into something you aren’t, backfires. Glamsters is the story of two sister hamsters who are awaiting adoption in a pet store.  One is worried she’ll never get a home and so she makes herself into a ‘glamster’ or glamorous hamster.  When her sister awakens and sees her, she freaks out.  Realizing that trying to make yourself into something different won’t work, it’s not natural.  So one sister cleans the other one up and the act of taking care of one another is what attracts a young girl looking for a pet.

Colors for Zena

Zena wakes up to a gray, colorless room and embarks on a journey outside to find the colors.  Each page she comes to is one color whereby kids can name all the things that color.  The book introduces the primary colors first and then the secondary colors.  Each time a new color is introduced, Zena’s hat turns that color, and a polka dot on both her and her dog become that color.  At the end all colors join to become a rainbow.  There is a color wheel activity at the end, which is written for people with absolutely no experience doing art with little kids.  Preschoolers totally enjoyed this book.

Maya Was Grumpy

Sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and that’s what we call grumpy.  Maya, a little girl, didn’t know why she was grumpy, she just was.  Everything she did was done grumpily.  But grandma had the fix and slowly, slowly, a little bit at a time, grandma got her to smile and be happy, all by going to the park to play on Maya’s favorite toys.

Three Cheers for Trees! A Book about Our Carbon Footprint

Three Cheers for Trees explains to young children through the use of text and clear photographs how important trees are to earth and to us, by providing clean air.  Although the message is a good one, I believe that the definition and examples of fossil fuels were weak.  There could have been better explanation as to how people or machines use these fuels before explaining how to decrease our carbon footprint.  A valuable, but weak message.

Football ABC

Clear, colorful photographs on each page distinctly show what each letter of the alphabet stands for, and there doesn’t have to be any imagination to figure it out.  Football covers it all.  Either kids know everything about football or they seem to know nothing.  This book does a good job of explaining some basics.  Considering I read this book just before the Super Bowl and the Seahawks were on their way, all kids were eager to learn more.  It makes a good addition to our school’s library.

Nothing But Blue

Blue’s world has exploded — literally.  She is on the run but she’s not sure what from.  Slivers of flashbacks haunt Blue but she just can’t put together the whole picture.  Lisa Jahn-Clough unfolds the mysterious back story of Blue’s before life in alternating chapters with her present tense scared, homeless self in her novel Nothing But Blue.  Now on the road east, Blue learns to eat out of garbage cans and avoid staying in one place for long.  But people recognize her.  They say her face has been on the television.  But why?  “All dead. No one survived. All dead.”  This is the chant that keeps Blue in the shadows.  In the shadows is where she befriends one magical dog that guides her through challenges again and again. Aptly named Shadow, the team continues east in search of a to a time where she was comfortable, even if a little insecure.  Jahn-Clough weaves familiar teen issues of self-image, sex, independence, and parental angst in a story about a girl that needs to learn to trust herself and to move on despite the horror she witnessed.  Recommended for grade 9 and up.

This is how I find her

With her first novel, This is How I Find Her, Sara Polsky develops a rare theme for young readers exploring the territory of a mentally ill parent, a child left to cope alone with that parent from too young an age and without explanation, attempted suicide, teen guilt and things left unsaid as the relationship of mother, daughter, and the family unfolds.

Sophie Canon has been mother figure to her bi-polar mother for 5 years, until the day she finds her mom near death from an overdose of pills. During the subsequent hospitalization and slow recovery of her painter mother, Amy, who feels her medication interferes with her inspiration, Sophie stays with the family that seemingly deserted her years before, whom she now feels she hardly knows. Frozen in silences, both Sophie, her cousin Leila, and her Aunt Cynthia finally learn to speak their uncertainties, to open the curtain of misunderstandings and fear that has hung too long between them. Sophie, too, realizes she cannot live for her mother anymore at the expense of her own life.

As she makes her way through her own pain and silence, she finds there are people around her who care, who want to know her thoughts, and who have reasons of their own for the distances that have kept Sophie and Amy so alone over the years. The plot is well crafted, the characters identifiable and well drawn, and each grows into better understanding of themselves, each other, and their needs by the happy conclusion of this book.

Highly Recommended

Miss Moore Thought Otherwise

Charming story set in New York city during the early 21st century when libraries were not allowing children inside.  This story tells the life of Annie Moore, who was trained to be a librarian, and helped to revolutionize library access to children in New York city, setting an example for other cities and countries to follow.  Heartwarming story with bright and cheerful acrylic paints. Recommended.

The Tooth Mouse

French words are deftly intertwined within this story of a French mouse living near a beautiful cathedral who is hopeful to become the next tooth mouse, which is a “tooth fairy”.  Since she is so young and small, she is told that she doesn’t have much of a chance.  She enters the contest and the rules are stated: you must prove yourself brave honest and wise.  The wall of names of children about to lose a tooth was daunting and her greatest challenge was what to do with all of the teeth!  But, alas, this little mouse comes up with the wisest of ideas.

Maggie’s Chopsticks

The illustrations beautifully assist in the story telling of the young Chinese American girl who is learning to use her chopsticks as adeptly as her older family members.  Her perseverance pays off as she succeeds by the end of the story with the encouragement and support of her family.

BALL

This is a cute book that has only one word “BALL.”   The illustrations are what make this book so fun and entertaining.  Most everyone can relate to a dog or cat that has a toy that they obsess over. This is a very fun book.

Next Stop — Zanzibar Road!

The drawings are cute, but the colors are a bit drab.  The story is similarly drab: it tells of a Mama elephant (whose child is a chicken), who puts on a silly hat, goes to the market, buys some stuff, fixes a flat tire on the way home, and enjoys her purchases.  There’s not much in the way of character development or anything to make the reader care about the plot.  I’m not sure what the point of the story is.

Forest Has a Song

A beautiful book of poems, all inspired by things one might see on a walk through some back-yard woods.  The poems illustrate a variety of poetic forms.  The illustrations are charming and set the poems off well.  A nice tool to inspire young poets to see what inspiration they may find in their own back yards.

Bog Frog Hop

The illustrations are bright and vibrant and beautiful.  The words are full of rhyme and rhythm and repetition.  It’s a counting book, counting both up and down as the polliwogs plopping in the soggy bog turn into grimpy-grumpy frogs siting on the mossy log.  It’s got a variety of adjectives.  All-around, it’s a fun book for very young readers, which somewhat reminds me of Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom, for its use of sounds and playing with words.

Ancient Egypt

It’s a very attractive book, with a shiny cover and a sturdy binding and lots of visuals.  I also like that vocabulary words are bolded and defined in the margins, right on the page where they are found.  Unfortunately, I found the text a bit surface-level, with a lot of generalities, and sometimes statements that even seemed contradictory: in the introduction it starts out by telling us how stable the Egyptian government was for 3000 years, and then in the first chapter it goes on to list a litany of wars and changes of dynasties, interspersed with periods of chaos and civil unrest; on page 68 it tells us, “Royalty, the wealthy, and children were the only people with leisure time,” but a few pages later it states that, “Board games were a popular way for both the poor and the wealthy to enjoy family time.”  More than once the book tells us that for a long time experts in Egyptology believed one thing, but that now they believe something else, but the reader is never told what the evidence was that altered long-held understandings. Also, the “timeline” in the back of the book simply lists a series of dates horizontally, evenly spaced, even though some of the time periods cover 2000 years, and others only 300 years — there’s nothing in the spacing to provide a visual representation of the time involved.

Ancient Incas

I found this series to be very attractive, beautifully designed, but somewhat weak on substance.  The binding is sturdy, the cover is shiny, the text is interspersed with attractive photos and illustrations, and vocabulary words are defined in the margins.  All of these are nice features.  But I thought the information was somewhat lacking in depth.  Right away in the first chapter it tells us that modern historians must rely on archaeology and the written accounts of Spanish invaders and native Incas who were educated by those invaders after the 1500s, because the Inca people left no written records. The author even uses the words “cloaked in mystery” to describe the early history, but then the text goes on to assert as fact many details from ancient times without ever backing up for the reader how we know what we think we know.  I would have liked to have seen more frequently phrases such as, “[such and such] evidence indicates…”  Also, the designers of the book are guilty of one of my current pet-pieves for non-fiction text features:  a “timeline” that is really just a sequence of events written horizontally, where dates are evenly spaced without regard to how much time separated them:  two inches in one place represents 500 years, and in another place along the same line, the same two inches represents only 25 years.  In elementary school, I was taught that the distance along a timeline was supposed to be a visual representation of actual time.

The United States Constitution: Its history, bill of rights, and amendments

This book was surprisingly readable.  I confess that I put off reading it for a long time, because I didn’t expect it to be interesting, but once I started it, I read it rather quickly. It basically tells the story of how the U.S. Constitution came to be written, including the problems with the Articles of Confederation, the people who gathered to improve upon it, and the many arguments and compromises that went into its creation.  Appendices in the back include the text of the Preamble and the Bill of Rights.  I was rather surprised that it did not include the text of the Constitution itself — that would have made it easier to reference when various articles were discussed.