|
David Catrow is a terrific illustrator. Not only do his illustrations depict the story, but from the vivid colors to the dogs’ expressions, his attention to detail makes each page a masterpiece. This book is about a dog show that have become so popular. Max is in the show, but seems to be a ‘hot’ dog, too. He has to be different in some way. Kids love dogs and they love Max! The Brave Puffer Fish is a level 3 reader, meaning that it has full paragraphs, higher word count, and a high-interest topic. This book really is perfect for beginning readers; easily readable, interesting, colorful illustrations, and interesting facts set in a Disney-like story. Kids will enjoy learning to read with this book. Very readable guidebook, with excellent sections on how to choose a college, how to find colleges that will be a great fit, how to evaluate colleges and how to find scholarships. It offers lots of practical tips on how to organize a college search with a “college score sheet” that can be copied and used when one visits colleges. Has chapter on suggestions for what to do over summer to be ready to apply to college. Nice sample resume. Excellent section on how to explain any weaknesses on a school transcript. In depth chapter on funding education and finding scholarships. Detailed list of colleges that are not in the usual college search books with section on “B Student Support and Success”, and “Support for Students with Learning Disabilities” along with the standard statistics from each school. Colleges are listed in alphabetical order. It would have been nice if they also had an appendix with the colleges listed by location and one by size. Highly recommended. Two young boys are left with their mysterious rich uncle after their parents die in a plane crash. The oldest brother, Leo, discovers on his 13th birthday a letter and old recordable disc from the 1950s. The letter , written by his father on Leo’s 1st birthday, gives Leo an amazing look into his past — . . . → Read More: Sound Bender Violet McKenna has never felt comfortable with herself until she arrives at Winterhaven, a private high school. Violet has visions of terrible events that happen in the future, including death. She even foresaw her own father’s death but in the past, when she tried to warn people, no one would listen. Feeling as though she was . . . → Read More: Haven The Inquisitor’s Apprentice is a combination of a historical novel meets fantasy. The story takes place in New York City during the era of Thomas Alva Edison, during the hustle and bustle of the tenement buildings and the mansions of the extremely wealthy. The police dept. has a chief ‘inquisitor’ whose job it is to stop . . . → Read More: The Inquisitor’s Apprentice I rated this book as additional purchase primarily because the text is a bit unclear in spots in elucidating the original text. Without having read Charlotte Bronte’s original book, I would have been a bit confused at times, particularly since the story is set in the past when customs and times were quite different. I think . . . → Read More: Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel I enjoyed this book! The story line is especially well-developed for a young juvenile novel, the sketch illustrations throughout are entertaining and expressive, and the characters are interesting and unique. I also appreciated the Chinese-American culture woven into the story line through the main character’s family. In this story, Ruby Lu’s family receives a shock when . . . → Read More: Ruby Lu Star of the Show Great fun story. This is a creative story of many well know nursery rhymns twisted together into a fun tale. it leads through so many situations. The comic book style, and colorful pictures give this book the old comic book flavor. I loved it. There are puns and funny situations with a twist into fairy tale land. . . . → Read More: Detective Blue This is a fun scary story for young children. It would be fun for a slumber party story to give everyone a scare, or around Halloween. The girl is a bit rebellious, and ends up being scared herself. The rhyme is great for young children, and the pictures . . . → Read More: Frangoline and the Midnight Dream This is an early reader horse story from the Breyer Stablemates series. Diamond is an older horse who is purchased by a stable for lessons. Ava is the only girl who realizes the value of Diamond’s experience, everyone else favoring youth. When Diamond and Ava win a competition, the crowd goes wild and the reader gets . . . → Read More: Diamond Girls who love horses will want to read this book. It’s all about women trick riders, rodeo riders, ranch hands, and movie stars, and their equine partners. Open the front cover and you’ll see four women trick riders, their arms extended like a gymnast who’s just completed a perfect vault, only these women athletes are standing atop . . . → Read More: The Cowgirl Way: Hats Off to America’s Women of the West Told in simple kid language for young children, and illustrated with cheerful images, this book provides a good basic overview of health and well-ness basics. There’s a page for diet, one for exercise, one for safety, brushing teeth, keeping clean, sleep, etc. Not in-depth enough to be considered comprehensive, but broad enough to be a beginning . . . → Read More: Growing Strong It’s hard to know who the target audience of this book really is: it tries to be a children’s picture book, but the text is far too long and rambling to really capture or hold the interest of most children; I think the audience who will really appreciate are the loved ones of special needs children . . . → Read More: Yago’s Heartbeat The illustrations are a stunning example of aboriginal artwork from Australia. The simple, single lines of text at the bottom of the pages list different elements of the Australian landscape. Though not detailed enough to really serve as an informative text, it would serve well as an introduction to a unit on Australia, or as a . . . → Read More: Why I Love Australia Carly and Sara meet up at camp and become fast friends. When Carly laughs upon learning Carly’s last name, Carly’s feelings are hurt and she dashes off, avoiding Sara and refusing to listen when Sara tries to make amends. Their budding friendship seems doomed until Sara finds an opportunity share her own last name, so that . . . → Read More: Picnic at Camp Shalom A rather sweet story of kissing tag, with lots of repetitive text as a lamb and mouse chase a pig around a garden while the pig shouts, “No more kisses!” After much chasing around the pig turns on the other two and attacks them with kisses until they are giggling for him . . . → Read More: No More Kisses When Baby Hippo can’t sleep he wanders through his African neighborhood, listening to all the other baby animals being put to sleep. Simple, repetitive text is good for emergent readers, and the bright illustrations will introduce them to a variety . . . → Read More: Hush, Hush! The topic is one that will be popular, the color photos will appeal, and it’s got a sturdy binding. It’s even got a lot of good information, including the history of Cheerleading camps, messages about teamwork and spirit, and what kinds of things typically happen at Cheer camps. I have one big complaint about it, though, . . . → Read More: Cheerleading Camp Another first-day-of-kindergarten story, but it’s a cute one. At first everything seems to be going wrong for Polka-dot, as she keeps accidentally breaking Kindergarten rules, and she manages to get off on the wrong foot with one of her new classmates, who looks like she’s shaping up to be a first-class meanie. By the end of . . . → Read More: Polka-dot Fixes Kindergarten This book is really cool. I would give it an R* if it didn’t have such a limited audience for the text. The illustrations include a single black line that traces through the entire book, connecting words and pictures in one long continuous thread. The rest of the artwork that surrounds this single black line is . . . → Read More: Follow the Line to School A great book for helping children develop an understanding of the fine line sometimes necessary to balance honesty and tact. When Kim has a lesson on honesty at school, she declares a policy of always being honest, but she takes it too far, thinking it’s no longer okay to pretend to be a princess, but that . . . → Read More: Princess Kim and too much truth Good rhythm & rhyme. Cute pictures depicting the secret life of toys playing on their own while their boy is away (sounds like Toy Story — already been done, with more style). A few brief words on each page tell a simple story of stuffed dogs as traffic cops. It’s fine. Some kids will like it, . . . → Read More: Traffic Pups Fourteen common and exotic birds are captured in this volume, each with it’s own two-page spread including a vibrant, close-up, full-page photo, a paragraph of factual background information, and a poem to capture its personality. Obviously put together by folks who love the birds involved, this book is sure to capture the appreciation of folks who . . . → Read More: Birds of a Feather The illustrations are bright and colorful and fun, but the story doesn’t quite live up to them: it’s basically one long request of a young boy asking his local librarian if he can bring a woolly mammoth to the library. He anticipates potential problems and offers solutions, and then eventually decides Woolly would be homesick, so . . . → Read More: Can I Bring Woolly to the Library, Ms. Reeder? |
|
Copyright © 2012 South Sound Book Review Council - All Rights Reserved - Log in |