Ella is an angel at the Guardian Angel Academy, with big dreams to be a guardian angel someday. Although Ella is an angel, she seems to get herself into all kinds of trouble. Ella has made some true angel friends in Poppy, Tilly and Jess, and she has met a grumpy angel, Primrose!
In order to cheer Tilly up from her homesickness, Ella goes on an adventure to Rainbows End, a forbidden area where the remembering flowers grow. When Ella finds a flower to take to her friend, she loses her map to find her way back home. Good thing she has true friends to come to her rescue! This story is adorable in the cutest way with all of the many special ideas written within! Readers will fall in love with the angels and their adventures!

“This is the Baby, wrinkled and gray.  This is the Baby born today.” All the world embraces a baby elephant on the day she is born.  The earth supports, sisters cuddle, the herd trumpets, the lagoon baths, and the peacocks dance for the baby.  The rich language, repetitive phrasing, and sweet illustrations make this a lovely read.  Use as a mentor text for young writers to draw out descriptive language in their personal narratives.

Two children and their dog enter a cave lit only by their flashlight.  They climb and crawl as they face cold, bats, crawling things, shining eyes, and giant paws.  Finally, a light appears and the reader is hopeful that the frightened huddling characters have found a way out.  But it is only their dad telling them to find a quiet game because the baby is sleeping.  After some thought, the cave becomes a barn for the kids to ride their horses as they create a new, but not any quieter adventure.  A good choice to inspire imagination and creative play.

Created by the pair that gave us Some Bugs, Some Pets combines rhyming verse with mixed media illustrations to create a fun engaging read.  The repetitive “some pets” is followed by descriptive verbs and surrounded by colorful supporting illustrations.  This book makes a great read aloud and is sure to insight a lively conversation about both pets and word choice.

With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, titles featuring age appropriate engineering concepts are needed in our school libraries.  Making Machines with Pulleys is solid example, including informational text interspersed with images and diagrams.  The three projects provide hands on opportunities that directly support the pulley concept discussed on the previous pages.  Each of the projects has a difficulty level, introduction, materials, clear step by step directions, and a “What did you find out?” concluding section.

Includes Table of Contents, Fun Facts, Glossary, Find Out More, and Index.

Large font and colorful photos on opposing landscape pages is characteristic for Abdo Kids titles. These features make it a good choice for young non-fiction readers.  Table of Contents, More Facts, Glossary, and Index are standard features.  The inclusion of both academic and content vocabulary in the glossary add to this title’s positive points.

A good choice for young shark fans.

This informational text with large font and full page photographs on opposing pages has the basic features expected in a primary grade non-fiction text which would make this an acceptable choice to include in a collection.  Unfortunately, in a time when the national perception of police is racially charged, this book does not include images representing an adequate spectrum of our nation’s racial make-up.  Not recommended.

In this sci-fi second volume in the Undertow Trilogy, Lyric, a teenage girl, must find and rescue all the people the government stole from her city of Coney Island. She must also face difficulties among her circle of so-called friends. Lyric, with her special power of controlling water, must learn who to trust and who not to trust for the better of the world.

The first volume, Undertow, was action-packed with a great main character. Unfortunately, this book was dull through the majority of the book and the main character was very stereo-typed as a ditzy teenage girl. Lyric was written as very power-hungry person, but was willing to change herself for a boy. The story was not predictable, but the element of surprise was not exciting. The last 100 pages were a good read — more action and more character connection. However, in the last chapter, the genre changed from sci-fi to complete fantasy, which some may view as positive, but, some readers may find it to be too disconnected from the book. Hopefully, the third book in the series will portray the main character with a different outlook and be filled with non-stop action.

— Natalie S.

In this contemporary novel, Lily, a junior in high school, begins to leave notes under her desk in chemistry class and someone responds to her notes…which eventually blossoms into romance.

This book is super cliche; typical mean girl with the guy she can’t get. The main character changes herself so much throughout the book that she is not the person you first meet. Although this is a predictable story, it did have worthy aspects in its plot: 1. Good family values, 2. Moral strength in the main character; and, 3. True to high school life. This book is written for those readers who enjoy a light romance book.

— Natalie S.

Bridget Heos’s enthusiastic, creative voice in It’s Getting Hot in Here: The Past, Present and Future of Climate Change is inspiring.  This is not your typical piece of non-fiction for student research.  Heo’s passion for the who, what, when, how and why is evident throughout.  Students will walk away knowing the science in how climate changes have happened historically, not just warming but the times of cooling and freezing as well and how the two have interplayed.  They will be taught how nature is constantly changing its climate and that we are actually just making it happen exponentially faster.  Of course, she gives the standard ways to help stop climate change and the most recent research behind this, but students will learn how the little things we do without thinking also add to the big picture, such as how tilling the soil to plant a new crop is releasing naturally produced underground methane gasses or how our expectation of readily available food sources has a direct impact on climate in terms of mass breeding of animals and the amount of waste they produce, let alone all of the steps to get that animal fed and on our table for dinner.   Every chapter ends with a “Be the Change” segment with real life ideas that we can do to help slow down global warming.  Additionally, this is a gorgeously printed book.  While closer to the size of hardback novels, it is the vivid pictures are used as examples and  every 15 pages or so as wallpaper, making the book visually stimulating.  But the best part of this addition to all of the literature out there on climate change is Heos’s voice.  She is enthusiastic and clever in every aspect of her writing.  In talking about the Big Bang and how the Earth began evolving, she explains how bacteria in the ocean first started photosynthesizing light and releasing oxygen about 2.4 billion years ago.  But oxygen was poisonous to bacteria not in the ocean.  Heos writes a little typed note stating:

Dear Oxygen,

Thanks for destroying the world.  We’re going to go live in a hole now.

Love, Bacteria.

That flash of wit shows up many, many other times and keeps the tone educationally fun.  For all of these reasons, I would highly recommend this book.

This biography of Hillary Clinton, part of A Real-Life series of biographies, is better suited for school age audiences than the other Clinton biographies I have in my library collection. Living History or Hard Choices, for instance, are both considerably longer and have a higher reading level, making them less accessible to students who want a quick biographical overview.  Hillary Clinton: American Woman of the World features photos, including recent ones from the 2016 campaign, a Time Line, Further Reading and Viewing, Sources and Source Notes, and an Index.

This 2016 biography is a good addition to school libraries. Other biographies in the A Real-Life series include Sally Ride, Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.