Twins Sydney and Simon are hoping to enter their window-box flowers in the neighborhood flower show.  A heat wave creates all sorts of problems – the window swells shut, they can’t water the flowers, and the flowers are wilting.  Using STEAM thinking (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math), the twins learn how to successfully solve their problems.  They hypothesize, seek advise from others, observe, make predictions and connections, and test.  Many scientific facts and procedures are explained and creatively illustrated as these two purple mice use each category of STEAM.  A glossary of many terms in included.  This is a great resource to explain STEAM and describe the process of the scientific method.

A young boy is unhappy as his family packs up to move.  The rainy weather matches his mood – it’s all bad, “bad truck, bad guy, bad wave, bad bye”.  As they travel the long distance to their new home, the bad weather disappears and new sights, new experiences, and new towns appear.  Good things begin again.  Jonathan Bean’s ink and Prismacolor tone illustrations beautifully and simply match the emotions with the move.  The rhyming text is large and spare, yet a complete story is told.  Anyone who has moved may identify with this family.

If kids ruled the world, life would be much different!  Each page addresses a separate rule for kids of all ages.  No bedtimes, travel can include pirate ships or rockets, school can be chosen by interest, (circus school, fairy school, inventing school, recess school…), and no one would forget how to play.  Illustrations are bright, amusing, and colorful.  All rules involve physical activity – not a hand-held in sight.  Great for story time, as a writing prompt, or just fun reading.

Readers are introduced to the five basic biomes: tundra, grassland, forest, desert, and water.  A mammal example for each biome is mentioned along with the characteristics needed to survive.  Included is a separate question to encourage inquiry-style thinking about biomes and the animals to have a home there.  Text is in large font.  Illustrations are simple, yet provide adequate information.  A short matching quiz is found in the back along with a small glossary.  Good introduction to biomes for young readers.

The saber-toothed cat is one ancient animal that lived at the same time as early humans.  Fossilized bone tells us how the cats may have looked, how and what they hunted, and how they may have become extinct.  As large, strong animals, they may have preferred hiding and waiting for prey to walk by instead of chasing it.  They may have lived in groups (prides) who cared for injured cats, as fossils have revealed healed bones.  With no more than four sentences per double-page spread, the text is simple and clear.  Acrylic paintings provide colorful, detailed illustrations to support the information about this prehistoric, formidable predator.

Large, simple sentences give very basic information about baby horses.  Full page color photos are clear and support the text.  Young readers will learn fundamental facts about foals.  Additional facts are provided on a “Did You Know?” page.  A short true/false quiz is included in the back with a glossary of the bolded text.  This is a good introduction to baby horses with just enough facts to pique the curiosity of young people.

This book demonstrates how to draw nine different animals. Each animal has a four step guide to completion. Each animal has a cute, cartoon appearance.

This version of the story of the Trojan War, Hades, Ruler of the Underworld, tells his version of how Helen was kidnapped which lead to the war. Hades reports that Cupid shoots an arrow at Helen to make her fall in love with Paris and go to Troy with him, leaving her husband Menelaus. The story continues with Menelaus and his army sailing to Troy with mass loss of life, including Achilles and Hector. The concept of the Greeks hiding in the Trojan horse to pass through the gates of Troy to conquer the Trojans resulting in Helen returning to Greece with Menelaus. Modern day items are found in this version, such as TV and a bus. A table of contents, guide to the myths, glossary, discussion questions, writing prompts, and websites pages are included.

Jared lives next to Woodland Cemetery. Jared has nightmares of being dragged by grave robbing ghosts, and then one night the ghosts drag him for real! The grave robbers believe that Jared should be buried in the cemetery, and plan to do just that, until Jared formulates a plan to get rid of those ghosts forever.

While their mother is out of town, Jessie and Evan Treski plan to put on a magic show. When their babysitter is injured, who is available to stay with the two of them… their long lost father. Evan is skeptical, but Jessie is quite excited to have their father back. Evan’s intuition turns out to be dead on when their father leaves early, abandoning the kids with a hurricane approaching. Jessie and Evan work together as a team throughout the course of the hurricane to protect themselves and their home. This fifth book in the Lemonade War Series if full of suspense, courage and family love.

The saga of the fight for domination continues both on land and on the oceans.  Drew Ferran, werewolf, continues to be the strong and wise leader as the war grows and more enemies and allies present themselves.   The action, and there’s plenty of it, is ferocious and it becomes difficult to tell friend from enemy.  The setting switches from land to sea constantly; the story is well linked to past books.  The characters are believable, with Count Vega as the Sharklord and Casper, Vega’s son, from the last book playing a major role.  The war is still going strong and those who crave action and adventure will love this series.

Capture the Flag is a suspenseful thriller set in an airport.  It appears that this is the first book of a series in which three middle-school age kids meet for the first time and, together, solve the mystery of the U.S. flag stolen from the Smithsonian Museum.  All three happened to be at the Smithsonian at a ceremony to rededicate the flag after being removed and repaired for the last six months.  The next morning, all three are at the airport when all flights are cancelled due to a snowstorm.  They recognize one another when they all hear that the flag they had just seen the previous evening had been stolen.  One boy, Jose, was particularly upset as his mother had done the restoration of the flag and was now taken into custody as a suspect.  As no one was going anywhere, they all had plenty of time to talk and figure out that whomever had taken the flag was probably stuck in the snowstorm, just like them.  With some great deductive reasoning, the kids all work together to figure out who was at the museum last night and who would have opportunity and motive to do such a thing.  The three become friends and along the way discover that they have much more in common than first thought–each has a parent or close relative who is a member of the Silver Jaguar Society–a group of people who are all related to past artists and who have all taken an oath to protect art at all costs.  Those in the Society all wear some type of Silver Jaguar which identifies them to fellow Society members.  Lots of twists and turns and an enjoyable read.

Kids, boys especially, love these superhero graphic novels.  In this, the adventure begins shows a typical day for Superman and his alias, Clark Kent.  The day also includes Lois Lane, newspaper journalist, Jimmy Olsen, newspaper photographer and gopher, and enemy Lux Luthor.  The colors are bright and vivid, the action interesting.  The only question I have is why is the Chief on Jimmy Olsen’s case about bringing him coffee?  I remember this also as a kid and watching the television version of Superman.  Is it still going on?  If so, too bad, this dates the story.

Most young children have watched Scooby-Doo on television so he is a familiar character.  So having books based on the same character and teaching math concepts is a great idea–they are learning without even knowing it.  Oddzilla is a monster created by a man who programs it to steal one object in a pair.  He then advertises that if you are missing one of something, he’ll have one to sell you to make a pair.  This book is short and sweet, great sewn binding, and teaches all in one.

Lester and Munsinger are a winning duo.  Subtitled Feeling Good About Yourself, Hurty Feelings is about a hippo who took everything anyone said to her the wrong way and hurt her feelings, causing her to weep and sob, earning her name Fragility.  Finally when confronted by an elephant, everything he says about her is true for him, too, and he breaks down crying.    They finally stop and become friends and she learns not to take things said so personally.  A very cute story appropriate for dealing with kindergartners and first graders fragile feelings and getting them to understand everything said isn’t to be taken literally.  My only complaint is that the binding appears weak.

Hide and Seek is a sequel to Messner’s Capture the Flag, but it is not necessary to have read the first book to understand this one; that’s a first for me.  Hide and Seek reunites four middle-school age kids whose parents are members of the Silver Jaguar Society, members whose ancestors are related to artists and have sworn to uphold and protect art.   The story takes place in Costa Rica where the parents have gone in order to locate and retrieve a missing golden jaguar cup worth a small fortune.  While the parents are pretty much out on a wild goose chase, an earthquake separates them from their kids for a few days.  Left at a nature reserve with friends, the four kids find the missing cup and the thief who stole it.  The suspense comes in the kids not knowing who to trust.  The setting description is very well done and there are photos at the end of the book depicting the locations and animals from the story.  This book is a mixture of adventure, mystery, and suspense.

This book goes into quite a bit of detail which includes the story of  jade throughout history, the mineral analysis of the gemstone, coloration, and much more.  I would say that this book is for the serious rockhound.  The photos are well done and clear, and the pages have a bottom border which livens it up.  Well written and with lots of good information, this book is not a first purchase for the average library.

The photos of bakery items in this book look delicious!  Includes easy step-by-step directions.  Although targeted for kids 4th grade and up, I believe it would need to be someone with some baking experience to be able to pull these off.

A  first-grade teacher recently asked me for some books on shapes, and other than the ancient book by Tana Hoban, I couldn’t find any.  This book fills our need perfectly as it shows 2D and 3D shapes in food.  The author did a great job in choosing foods that kids actually eat and like, and she does a great job in explaining the difference between 2D and 3D.  I am planning on getting the other books in this series.

People are becoming more and more conscious of the environment, kids included, and this book has great ideas on what to do with all those plastic gallon containers.  Ventura gives lots of ideas (kind of like Pinterest for kids) for games and actual useful items like bird feeders, bird houses, piggy banks, and so on.  The supplies necessary for each activity are mostly found around the house.  For kids who are crafty, this book is a winner.

In this retelling of the classic tale Chicken Little, Byrd does an excellent job in illustrating the various animals who believe the sky is falling.  His attention to the minutest detail is very pleasing to the eye.  This is the typical story with a slightly different ending.  Here, Foxy Loxy manages to get the group to his house and locks them up waiting to be cooked in a stew.  Chicken Little escapes and makes Foxy Loxy believe the sky really is falling by throwing apples on his head.  Foxy Loxy and his family run to tell the king thereby allowing the others to escape, who then run home.  This version does seem more believable than that of Steven Kellogg which was published in 1985.  This version makes a great replacement.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I am not a Captain Underpants fan, and this book reminds me why.  Basically, I have three main gripes: first, the comics portions of the book have such bad word choice, grammar and spelling.  Is this really what we want our impressionable kids to read?  Second, I find the illustrations of the teachers in their underwear or not and pulling down someone else’s pants pretty crude.  Really?  Do we want kids to laugh at teachers?  And, third, the telling of the story is all over the place.  Kids reading this aren’t tracking a story line–it’s just snippets of a story here and there, changing as fast as possible.  This series is extremely popular, mainly for boys in grades two and three, and those who are not so mature.  I am sure that this book will be too.

This fun, flip-book story is told from two perspectives.  Lucy, the cat, cannot wait for Luke to leave for school so she can begin her day’s adventures.  She chases squirrels, visits the supermarket for a snack, and stops by the pet store to play with toys.  As she plays in the sock display at the clothing store, she hears her boy.  She rushes home and is happily settled when Boy returns.  On the flip side Luke, the boy, leaves for school with a list of errands to do for his mom after school.  As he learns about lions, he thinks about his sleeping cat.  He stops by the supermarket, the pet store, and the clothing store just after his cat has caused a disturbance.  When he returns home, he curls up on the couch with his lazy cat.  Looking closely at the features in the colorful illustrations, one can find small details indicating the presence of both Luke and Lucy throughout the book.  Conversations and thoughts are written in a different font than the narration.  Fun to read with multiple classroom uses!