This is a very unique, clever, and funny story satirizing what could happen if you don’t eat your green beans.  Martha hates beans and even though her mother serves them for dinner every Tuesday night, she won’t eat them.  Until one day….a wild bunch of mean green beans ride into town and cause problems…especially for those who have said “eat your green beans.”  While Martha is sitting at the table staring at her plate she hears a ruckus and finds that her parents have been bean-napped by the mean gang.  At first she is delighted because now she’s her own boss.  But she’s also lonely and misses her parents.  She follows their trail and finds her parents tied up with bean vines.  She demands that they free her parents but the bean gang just laughs at her, ’cause really, what could she do?  She threatens to eat them but again they laugh because they know she won’t eat green beans.  But Martha pinches her nose and starts to munch away and soon her parents are freed.  Martha becomes a hero and her mother doesn’t serve green beans again.  The illustrations are a hoot and the mustaches, boots and hats really give the beans some character.  Makes a great read aloud and should be a purchase for elementary libraries.

Jose and his family have moved from Puerto Rico to the U.S. (it sounds a lot like New York City).  It’s right before Christmas and it just isn’t the same as it was back home.  Now they live in a too tiny of an apartment with grouchy neighbors in a neighborhood teeming with immigrants.  Jose’s father must go to the pizza place in order to use their oven to cook a roast.  After it is done, the mouth-watering aroma attracts all those grouchy neighbors’ attention as they carry it back home.  They all tell Jose’s father that they are alone for Christmas and they get invited to share with Jose’s family.  Everyone brings something.  Because they aren’t alone for the holidays, spirits rise, and everyone has a good time–a miracle!  The illustrations are bright and vivid and full of the energy found in NYC.

Mission Titanic, Book One, is the first installment of the fourth series within 39 Clues.  You will have had to read the others before this one will make any sense.  The original 39 Clues was quite imaginative in which a prominent citizen of a leading family (leading in financials, political, scientific, athletic, you name it) dies and in her will she issues a challenge.  Each beneficiary, and there are many, may choose between one million dollars cash or a clue which may lead to her entire fortune.  After 11 books, all written by different authors, each book has various family members scouring the world to find clues to the fortune.  I only read book one and thought it was great.  However, Mission Titanic introduces a new family character who has rounded up others to overthrow the new family leaders.  He has given them a clue to prevent an impending disaster.  If they can’t, they lose everything.  First of all, this book goes back to all the younger generation members of the Cahill family and revisits their part of the plot and how they will unite together to solve this mystery.  It pretty much jumps all over the place and doesn’t give the reader a sense of plot or strong characters.  You’ll need to read the other books in the previous three series before this one, and I think it would have been better just left alone.

In the RIVER DARKNESS, by German writer Marlene Röder, is a young adult drama that does not live up to the intrigue that gripes the reader in the opening paragraphs. The cover and the opening chapter lead the reader to expect that the book will be a mystery or thriller. But the reader is let down by the predictable plot and so-so ending. It almost seems as if In the River of Darkness was written to lead into future sequels. This quick read (222 pages, easy to read) can be read in just a couple of hours.

The plot centers around three teens: a new girl to town, Mia, and two brothers, Alexander and Jay, who live next door. The story is told from these three teens’ points of view. There is a bit of romance, a bit of mystery, but overall, there is no thrill in this story.

Teenage girls are sure to fall for Burn Girl and her ambivalent attempts to pursue the search for self, bought to light by Mandy Mikulencak’s persuasive writing style and her ability to build tension right up to the very end.

After her mother’s mysterious death, Arlie’s struggle to find her place in the “normal” world turns out to be a true emotional roller coaster ride. Stuck between abandonment issues and confusing emotions around family, friendship, and love, Arlie’s irrational behavior reflects her traumatic upbringing perfectly. Durango, Colorado is where her mother last took her when she ran away with her hiding from her mean step father. The mysteries around her mother’s death – whether she OD’d or got killed never was resolved but the process of finding truth took it all from Arlie.

The book expresses well that both emotional scarring as well as physical handicaps alike can have deep impact on our development. The author described the tender roots of emotional healing and that it is possible to transform one’s life.

Using various characters offering friendship and help providing a safe space for trust and growth keep the book interesting and alive. A truly heart warming teenage drama with lots of extra twists and turns.

Lots of Bots, book 2 in the series Robots Rule!, reminds me of the Jetsons meet Dr. Evil from Austin Powers.  George Gearing, an 11-year-old boy, has an opportunity to be an apprentice at TinkerTech, a research and development technology company where his parents once worked.  George quickly finds out that all is not what it seems or should be at TinkerTech.  The evil Micron is on the verge of introducing a product which controls people and will allow him to take over the world.  It’s up to George to stop it.  As the title says, Lots of Bots, and this is true–there are robots that do everything.  Plus the names of the characters are a little contrived, for example, Dr. Droid, Mr. Volt, and Micron. All in all, it’s an interesting, fast-moving story and stands alone even though it is book 2.  Kids in grades 3-5 should enjoy the action and humor.

Both beautiful and informative, this non-fiction picture book describes physical traits and behaviors and challenges faced by all bears, and it also dedicates a two-page spread to each of the eight species of bears.  For each species it gives the scientific name, common names, size, as well as detailed descriptions of the habitat, features and behaviors specific to that species.  The beautiful illustrations support the text and draw the curious eye.  A world map in the back indicates where each species lives, and a habitat glossary uses illustrations as well as words to explain the terminology of land features.

Beautiful watercolor illustrations combine with informative text to tell the story of train travel across The United States.  Starting with the fluster of activity on the platforms of an eastern urban train station as a commuter train gets ready to pull out, the story describes the actions of conductors and passengers and the passing views until it reaches another station where we see a passenger train just pulling out to cross the country-side.  Again we get a full description of events and sounds and sights until it pulls into a midwestern city, where we meet a freight train.  And so it goes until the overnight train crosses the Rocky Mountains and encounters a high-speed train heading into a new urban station on the west coast.  Besides being informative about all different kinds of trains, it’s a lovely example of descriptive detail.  Like a virtual cross-country field trip.

A good story, with believable characters facing real-life situations that a lot of kids can relate to.  The story is told from the perspective of its 10-year-old main character, Piper Lee DeLuna.  Piper’s mom is getting ready to get married again, but Piper is not too happy about it, partly because she’s not especially fond of the girl about to become her stepsister, partly because she doesn’t want to give up the hope that her father might still be alive (his body was never recovered from a plane crash), and partly because she doesn’t want to share her mom.  Throughout the story, Piper makes  a lot of not-so-smart decisions that lead to near disasters, but because it’s told from her perspective the reader gets to see why they all seemed like reasonable ideas at the start, until they never turn out the way she’d hoped.

The writing is stilted. The story is boring. The pictures are fine, if a little bit drab in their color scheme.  It’s like a junior graphic novel, telling of two friends going trick-or-treating.  One is too scared at first, but her buddy assures her that her costume does not need to be a scary one; along the way their bike gets a flat tire at a haunted house, but a ghost helps them repair it, so they make it to their party.

It’s well-constructed, and well-formatted.  That is, it’s got a good sturdy binding and all the important non-fiction text features like index, glossary, map, labels… It’s got nearly-full-page color illustrations that support the text.  I just wish it was better written: one page tells us “some rivers flow down to the ocean,” while another says, “The water flows into the ocean,” which sounds both redundant and contradictory.  Don’t all rivers flow into the ocean (unless they’ve been run dry by over-use before they reach it)? One page tells us, “A river is like a waterslide.”  Without any elaboration/explanation.  Did we really need a whole page dedicated to telling us that, “Rivers are full of water.” ?

The simple text is well-supported by color photos of people from all around the world, showing lots of different types of clothing.  It tells about the different reasons people wear clothes, and describes different types of clothes, as well as telling that some people make their own clothes while others buy theirs.  A map in the back highlights where different photos were taken.  It includes a basic glossary (with photos) and index, and it’s got a really good binding.

It’s sweet.  It’s got those classic David McPhail illustrations.  It lists a whole lot of ways that brothers sometimes differ and sometimes disagree, but they find ways to resolve problems and accept each others differences, and some things they have in common, but no matter what they know they’ll always stick together.  Not so much a story as a sentimental treatise on what it means to be brothers.

It’s just kinda lame.  It rhymes.  It’s a list of farm animals who don’t like doing what the author says they should; they all like doing other stuff.  The only normal thing they’re all good at is sleeping.

The story is one with a good message about not giving up on one’s dreams, as well as one a lot of little girls can probably relate to.  There’s this little bunny who loves to twist and jump and whoosh around her bedroom and really wants to be a ballet dancer, but when she makes the effort to pursue lessons she meets repeated folks who insist there are no bunnies in the ballet.  With persistence she sticks with it, and with the help of one instructor who believes in her she makes it to the the dance of the sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker, and astounds them all.  Some of the illustrations are really fun and appealing, but they seem a bit inconsistent — some look sloppy and ill executed and off-putting.

It’s got a lot of good information (including current events as recent as 2012), and some great color photos and maps.  I just wish it was a little better organized.  It goes from talking about modern Egypt, to its history, and the back to modern life, and then back to history again.  And given that a lot of terminology may be unfamiliar to young readers from other parts of the world,  it could’ve made better use of photos/illustrations to support the text.  For example, on the page talking about the plants and animals of the region, it includes a full-page color photo of a crocodile (a fairly common animal most kids could picture themselves), and includes nothing to illustrate the ibexes, papyruses or lotuses mentioned in the text. And of course the timeline is not really a timeline, but a flowchart of history.

On the one hand, it’s about a little-known (at least I had never heard of her before) woman in science, from an era when few women were encouraged to pursue such things.  Our kids need to know more about such folks.  I could wish it was better done, though.  It is illustrated with photos from the time (yay, primary sources), but they don’t necessarily do much to support the text.  Because it is written for small children, the text itself is a bit dry, though clear and understandable.  Pet peeve:  it tries to construct a timeline of her life as it goes, but it pays no attention to the spacing along the line as representative of time (there’s more space between the markers separated by one year than there is between those separated by 24 years).

Seriously?  Who is going to want to read this book? Every library has a better way to spend $18.  At least the last two pages of the text finally explain, “That’s how I do my homework.  How would you do it?” Because the beginning seems to imply a lot of assumptions about what homework entails.  And it’s rather stereotypical to picture an Asian child as the example demonstrating good study habits.  But the biggest problem is that it’s just plain boring and pedantic.

A good, solid, age-appropriate science text for early learners: it uses simple text, and uses color photos well to support that text.  It manages to make some big vocabulary clearly understandable (opaque, translucent, transparent).  It uses examples that will be readily familiar to small children to make its  points. And it’s got a good sturdy binding, too.

It’s got a good sturdy binding, but it’s pretty useless for teaching kids the vocabulary it’s trying to teach.  The only page that tells what words mean is the two-age dictionary spread in the back, which kids aren’t going to look at.  The main body of the book has some lovely color photos of smiling people, labeled with French family terminology, but there are not clues in either the text or the photos to indicate who these people are, other than age and gender. Parents, aunt, uncle, and stepparents are pretty indistinguishable, as are cousins, siblings, and friends.  Demi-soeur is listed in the dictionary as stepsister, but given what I know about complicated families and word origins, it makes me wonder whether the French use the same word for both stepsister and half-sister??

We have often heard that truth is stranger than fiction,  Lauren Tarshis- author, is putting that saying to the test in this book. Tarshis has written fictional accounts of famous events in her acclaimed I Survived series, but this one is all non fiction! The five disasters she’s chosen for this book  include: ‘The Children’s Blizzard- 1888’, ‘The Titanic Disaster- 1912’, ‘The Great Boston Molasses Flood-1919’, ‘The Japanese Tsunami- 2011’, and ‘The Henryville Tornado- 2012’.

After the retelling of each event, black and white photos of people involved in the event, photos of the aftermath of the event, and  photos of memorabilia from the time draw the reader ever closer into the story, especially since the last two stories occurred during the reader’s own lifetime. The final story- The Henryville Tornado was written upon invitation from students who lived through the ordeal.

Stone Arch Books is bringing back  YOU CHOOSE stories. Meaning, after the reader has read the opening fives pages of the story, the reader is given two or three choices to make at each plot turn, leading up to 12 different possible endings. The plot begins with the Mystery Incorporated gang going to visit their friend, David Bush, at his quaint picturesque Bushytail Farm for a weekend. When they arrive at the farm, it is run down and David is nowhere to be seen. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo decide to search for David at the nearby fair. Daphne and Velma decide to search for David in the farm house and Fred will search the barn.

The reader is given four possible ending for each of the three search parties as they are chased and scared by zombies, while  searching for David.

Sometimes the zombies are trying to scare the Mystery Incorporated gang away so their boss can use the farm land to build a factory. Sometimes the farm land is wanted to find oil or hidden treasure or valuable lost paintings. Whatever the reason, the would-be crooks are foiled by Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, or Daphne and Velma, or Fred.

The book includes ten full-color illustrations by Scott Neely “a professional illustrator…for many years…official Scooby-Doo…licensed properties” (p. 106) sprinkled throughout the book.

Kyla knew that running from the government would not be easy but she hopes that by returning to the place of her birth – and kidnapping – she might succeed in hiding and maybe even discover some secrets about her life.  This is the third and final book in the Slated Trilogy.