This is a wonderfully inspiring picture-book biography about following one’s dreams.  Born in the midst of the great depression in the to a family of southern farm workers, Benny dreamed of moving out into the wider world, but in the meantime he used his art to capture the daily world around him.  Knowing finishing high school would be an important part of escaping his current circumstances, Benny he remained dedicated to his education.  Military service after high school first gave him an opportunity to travel, and then allowed him to continue his college education, and throughout he continued to use his art to capture daily life, and given the times in which he lived, it became a force in the civil rights movement.

As early-reader non-fiction goes, this one does a pretty decent job of providing a reasonable amount of information while keeping the readability easy.  Like other Pebble Plus non-fiction, this one offers 3-4 sentences per page, opposite full-page color illustrations.  This one accurately recognizes pirate treasure as stolen goods, not romanticizing the pirates, but acknowledging the lure it has held for many over the years.  The illustrations are partially historical artwork of the time, and partly color photos of historical recreations.

It’s a sweet story, in a somewhat vintage sort of way.  It tells the story of the family of an impoverished artist.  Having fallen out with his wealthy uncle who wanted him to go into business, the young artist and his family struggle to get by, his small children helping out the local book shop owner in exchange for being allowed to sit and read his inventory.  Just when their father is about to finish his masterpiece, and has a buyer all lined up for it if he can finish by the next day, he runs out of red paint, and the local art dealer won’t extend him any more credit.  Wanting to help, but coming up short, the children sit in the book shop bemoaning their family’s troubles, little knowing they are being overheard by another gentleman in the shop, who just happens to be the long-estranged wealthy uncle, who has had a change of heart, so the needed red paint shows up as the gift of an anonymous benefactor just in time.  The problem is that this is a reprint of a book originally published before color illustrations were common, and I doubt many children today will appreciate the sketchy brown-tone illustrations.

It’s cute.  It’s a series of poems centered around the theme of student down-time, hobbies, homework, and friendships — all topics students will relate to.  The illustrations are cute and cartoonish and inviting.  It offers a fun, non-threatening way to share poetry with children.

Not one of my favorites.  The pictures are bright and cheerful, and kids who are familiar with other Hot Rod Hamster books may enjoy it, but it’s one of those books that seems to sacrifice story for the sake of keeping the vocabulary and format in the target range for early readers: the result is that the story is a bit flat.  It tells of a day at a water park for Hot Rod Hamster and his friends, getting ice pops, choosing floaties, racing on the water slides. There just doesn’t seem to be any climax or purpose.

A really fabulous book that offers a sampling of the wide variety of backgrounds and circumstances lived by those in the United States who call themselves Latino or Latina. Each of the dozen chapters begins with a first-person (fictional) vignette, written in a free-verse form, sharing one individual’s story, followed by several pages of non-fiction information about one branch of the Latino community, which sets that vignette in context.  Through this book, the reader gains insights into the similarities and differences of the experiences of families whose roots are Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Sephardic, Zapotec, Peruvian, and mixed; who are documented and undocumented; who are first-generation immigrants or who have been here for many generations; pursuing many different careers and dreams and facing different challenges. The pairing of the fictional vignettes with the non-fiction passages allows each to enrich the other, and the voice throughout is one of respect and authenticity.

A beautifully told picture-book biography about a little known bit of sports history.  Even though an all-woman’s baseball league may not have come to be until WWII, when all the men were overseas, but all-women professional teams go back at least until the 1920s.  This book tells the story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Edith Houghton who joined the Philadelphia Bobbies (an all-female team, so named because all the players bobbed their hair), as starting short-stop at the age of 10.  In 1925, at the age of 13, when most people she knew had never been outside of Philadelphia, Edith traveled with the Bobbies to Japan and spent two months traveling from town to town playing against men’s teams.  The text is rich in details that really tell the tale, and the water-color illustrations do a fabulous job of setting the scene and capturing the mood of the era. It is a wonderfully inspiring bit of history.

Densely packed with a lot of really complex ideas, yet written in a manner that makes that information accessible and non-threatening.  The illustrations a cartoonish, in the style common to the rest of this series, and they offer support for the text, which is itself very readable and clear.  It is guilty of one of my major pet peeves — a “timeline” on the initial end pages that fails to represent the passage of time properly, spacing all the dates equally, regardless of the amount of time between them — but given the quality of the rest of the book, I’m willing to forgive this fault.

A fabulous read!  This collective biography introduces readers to twenty famous scientists who shaped the history of human understanding.  The collection does a good job of drawing from a variety of cultures and scientific disciplines, going as far back as China in the early years of the Common Era.  It includes the famous names students are likely to have heard of (but may or may not know much about), such as Galileo and Newton and Einstein, as well as many that were new to me (e.g. Zhang Heng, Ibn Sina, William and Caroline Herschel).  For each scientist, the book provides the basics of the significance of their discoveries, but the main focus of the book is adding personality to the names, to get the sense of what kind of person each was, giving context to their lives and their work.  It’s very readable and interesting.  Elementary librarians should be aware that some parents may complain as their are a few references to some of these great names having extra-marital affairs, but such references are brief.

What librarian is not going to recommend a book where the characters from books come to life through the power of imagination to rescue the little local book shop from destruction. Little Joey is on his rounds delivering newspapers around London when he learns of the book shop owner’s distress that there are plans in the works to knock down his shop to make way for a super store.  Little Joey immediately whispers into his news bag and Origami Girl bursts forth to help.  Needing help, she heads into the book shop, tapping assorted children’s favorites until an army of favorite book characters has burst forth, but when they find the leaders of Parliament snoozing, and the Mayor and the workers about ready to break ground, they know they’ll need even more reinforcements, so they head to the library.  When the Mayor shouts at his workers to destroy them because they’re only made of paper, they respond my shouting back that they are made of ideas and imagination, things that can never be destroyed, and since the workers’ children have followed the characters to the work site, they’re not about to battle the stuff of their dreams before their very eyes, so the Mayor knows he’s beat, and the book shop is saved.  The illustrations provide a great opportunity for young readers to see which favorite characters they recognize, and to start a discussion about their own favorites. It’s a winner.

It’s your basic bed-time stalling story:  when Mom calls Alfie to say it’s time for bed, he insists he must find Sharkie first.  The story consists of the dialogue back and forth between Alfie and Mom before she finally insists they’ll have to look for Sharkie tomorrow, but when Alfie finally gets to bed, he finds Sharkie has been there all along. The scenario will definitely be familiar to young children, but it doesn’t really offer much in the way of originality, and I confess, I find the illustrations a bit drab.  All in all, not bad, but not great.

I’m sorry.  My reason for not recommending this title may seem petty, but given how many different options one has for learning about different countries, I find myself lacking any patience for paying good money for a book with inaccurate/contradictory information, just because the publishers couldn’t be bothered to edit carefully.  On p. 28, the text offers a description of the Malaysian flag and the symbolism there of, including stating that the flag has 14 stripes and a 14-pointed star, representing the 14 states; yet every picture of the flag in this book, including on the cover and directly above the paragraph describing it, the flag is pictured with only 13 stripes.  I expect accuracy in my non-fiction.  Kids will count.

Lynch’s Vietnam War series concludes with the final narrative of four friends caught in the chaos of war. Casualties of War (Book Four) gives Beck his turn to tell his story. Morris, Ivan and Rudi have told their stories, but it is not necessary for the reader to know their stories in order to understand this 4^th book in the Vietnam Series.

Beck, now in the Air Force, was always the smart one, the one bound for college. Upon discovering Beck’s plan to enlist, his father had said, “The universe has better plans for you.” And in Vietnam, Beck does feel as if he has “just been handed the keys to the universe itself.” He is, literally, above it all, as he watches the war from on high in his C-123 aircraft, his goal somehow to not kill anyone as he defoliates forests with Agent Orange. He finds the countryside gorgeous and rues the “danger and destruction in all its variety and in every direction.” Beck’s hope is that when the friends get back together, no matter what else has happened, “the universe will tilt back where it belongs.” This volume lacks the sharp character development and pacing of its predecessors, as much of the narrative concerns all four players and how to contrive the requisite reunion. When it does occur, it brings disastrous results and an abrupt ending to the series.

An excellent war saga that will leave readers feeling they have been through something monumental.

A really fun extension of the famous nursery rhyme, I almost rated this as highly recommended, but for a few places where the rhythm of the rhyme is a bit tricky to maintain fluently.  The illustrations include all the famous nursery rhyme and folk tale characters joining in the fun of a ball put on by this merry old soul. Unfortunately the king is worn out by all the preparations and falls asleep at his own party.  All the guests make unsuccessful attempts to wake him in the manner most suited to their character (i.e. Boy Blue blows his horn, the Mother Hubbard’s dog barks, Bo Peep’s sheep baaa…), but the king sleeps through it all until his Queen of Hearts, who knows him best, arrives with some freshly baked tarts.  One sniff and the king awakes instantly, ready for a treat.

The illustrations are fun and eye-catching, and the story offers readers encouragement to make their own fun.  The story begins with a gathering of ravens sitting around complaining of their boredom, until a brightly-colored, high-spirited strange bird crashes into their midst.  When the newcomer questions the group as to why they aren’t happy, the ravens reply by asking why they should be happy, to which the bright new fellow replies that they don’t need a reason to be happy.  The paradise bird then proceeds to give them lessons in fun, helping them make up a silly song & dance that suits their croaky caws, getting them all laughing before encouraging them to share what they’ve learned because, “Happiness stays with you when you spread it to others.” As part of the merry making, the paradise bird had shared with the black ravens some of his own brightly colored feathers as inspiration, which he leaves with them as reminders when he flies off, his mission accomplished, a nod to Pfister’s most famous book, The Rainbow Fish.

The illustrations are bright and cheerful and will invite young readers in, especially those who will be drawn to these familiar characters from other picture books by the same author.  The story is simple, yet shares a positive message about persistence and looking for different ways to achieve one’s goals.  The story opens with Bear wishing he could fly so that he could swoop and glide and feel the wind in his fur.  Goose wishes he could help, but does not see how it would be possible, while Fox is full of ideas.  Finally Bear is able to achieve his goals of swooping a gliding by dancing instead, which Goose declares is “like flying, but with your feet on the ground. Mostly.”

If you have a significant Spanish speaking population, and/or a group of students trying to learn Spanish, this is a solid choice for an early reader book about cats.  The layout is clean.  The text is simple and straight-forward, well-supported by full-page color photos.  There is only one or two sentences of text per two-page spread, so the information is not in depth, but for vocabulary development, it does a good job of highlighting important words, and offering enough other context within the print and/or photos to allow a reader to deduce meaning.

The illustrations are colorful and fun.  The story allows the reader to read between the lines:  if one pays attention carefully to the reactions of the sideline characters, one realizes that the dragon being described by the main character falls more into the category of imaginary friend.  The story opens with a young boy helping his father build a crib, which happens to be decorated as a castle.  The opening line states, “If you help your dad build a castle, a dragon will move in.”  Throughout the book, a full understanding requires that the reader pay attention to both the pictures and the text to put all the pieces together.  The situation (new baby arriving) is one many young children will relate to, and while I’ve read many books that address the situation, not all of them offer something creative or fun to make them stand out.  This one does.

Although I admit this title is unlikely to draw a high level of interest among your average elementary population, and it’s not exactly a part of the usual core curriculum, so it may not find a huge audience, I still give it a recommendation.  It offers a clear and concise description of how banking and investments work to return interest on money saved, including explaining the differences between different types of savings accounts and different kinds of banking institutions. The examples it offers uses simple numbers, easy for children to understand.  I think it wise that every library collection should have something along this vein to encourage students to understand the value behind saving money.

As is often the case with books designed for early readers, the information in this book is so scant as to leave it lacking interest.  It claims to be designed for a fluent reader, but it still only has a 1-2 sentences per page, and other than the historical information about early cars, much of the other information provided would be things most kids would already know, such as that an automobile is a car, and that most cars run on gasoline, and are made in factories…

A fanciful series of poems all centered around the theme of a circus, from the viewpoint of the circus chef.  The illustrations are equally fanciful, well-matched in style to the text.  Though the poems may be a bit inconsistent, the delights outnumber the duds, and the individual poems are tied together at the end with the final two poems working to connect the others into a comprehensive story.

I confess that my review may perhaps be a bit biased, as I am not naturally inclined to approve of authors who take advantage of copyright holdings to use the characters and style of a deceased author to carry on adding to a series of books without the input of the original author.  This story is a rather pedantic story with an obvious mission: namely to encourage children to recognizing the abilities, rather than the disabilities of kids in wheelchairs.  It lacks the humor of the original stories, in which George’s curiosity lands him into some kind of disaster. There’s nothing bad about this story, but there’s nothing exceptional about it either.

In simple text, supported by color photos, this book does an adequate job of describing different kinds of currency, including cash, checks, and credit cards.  It points out the historical use of shells and stones and beads and beans to serve the same purpose. It explains that most countries have their own kinds of currency, and goes into details describing the different bills and coins of American currency.  It ends with a final “chapter” about using money wisely, discussing the differences between needs and wants, and encouraging the wisdom of avoiding debt.  It’s fine for what it is, but given that it’s intended for early readers, the simplicity of the text limits the depth of the information.

It’s got a sturdy binding, and it does a decent job of clearly and accurately defining a circle, providing lots of color photos of real-world examples, with the circles brightly highlighted.  The examples are ones small children will easily recognize:  wheels on a car, pizza, hula-hoops, etc. But really, how much is there to say about circles?  It seems a bit pricey to spend over $100 and invest the shelf space to buy 6 different books to describe 6 different shapes.  If you’ve got the room and the dough, this series at least doesn’t seem to erroneously include incorrect examples (including spheres with circles, for example).  What I would be particularly curious to know is whether the rectangle book includes squares, as it should, and whether the hexagon and triangle books are careful to include non-regular shapes.

Illustrated by somewhat cartoonish water colors, this picture book biography of our third president is suitable for all ages.  Returning often to Jefferson’s love of farming and making things grow, this book draws many parallels between this passion of his and how it influenced his many roles in government.  From planting the first seeds of independence as author of the Declaration of Independence, to growing America’s economy and sharing it’s natural riches with the world, while seeking new varieties abroad, as minister to France; from his experiments and inventions in support of agriculture, to doubling the size of the young nation with the Louisiana Purchase and the exploration, everything is presented as different manifestations of the same theme of nurturing and seeking growth, sprinkled with quotes of his own writing throughout the illustrations.  An end-note does share the controversial contradiction of his role as slave-owner who declared, “all men are created equal,” without trying to justify or explain it away — simply recognizing it as another facet of this complex man, leaving the judgments to the reader.