Stylish and colorful this readable introduction to writing ones own graphic novel will be a hit with the comic book crowd.  Written for ages 10-12, it could certainly engage and prove very useful to the junior high or high school student.  Student writers will receive oodles of excellent advice on various topics, such as, setting the scene, characters and character building, building suspense, etc.  Of particular interest to me was the How to Use this Book intro which visually depicts in a linear fashion the writing process.  This book also includes a glossary, a “Further Information” section which includes websites and graphic novel titles and an index.

In this science project book, the author offers older students 16 plans…”to construct and explore working models that generate renewable energy.”  The directions are easy to follow; black-and-white simple photos help to visually depict the steps.  Safety is one-page addressed.  (Note:  Quite a few of these projects involve cutting, soldering, sawing, etc.  The young scientists must pay heed to the author’s Safety First section.  I wish the author had stated the need for adult help or adult supervision depending upon the age and ability of the young scientist.)  Each project includes a Materials and Tools list (websites are given on where to find specialized items) and  More to Think About questions.  Although the presentation of the book is not handsome, it is straightforward.  The topic is definitely current and relevant for today’s students.

This book does an excellent job in illustrating the interdependence of all creatures.  If we were to extinguish even one species, others would fail and the quality of the environment would drop.  The illustrations and simple explanations are easy to follow and understand.  This book would make an excellent resource in teaching habitats.

Attractive in design, this boldly colorful book will attract motorsport fans young and old!  The writing is clear and informative.  The book is logically organized with a wealth of information; chapters include a short historical perspective, “Motorsport Classes,” “Techniques and Technology,” “Tracks and Races,” “The Business of Racing,” “Racing Legends,” and “Teams and Machines.”  This engaging book will appeal to the casual reader as well as to the student who is gathering research information.  The color photos are definitely awesome eye grabbers.  The reference section includes U. S. Facts and Figures, a glossary, a resources section, and an index.

Author Catherine Reef offers the reader a well-rounded realistic portrait of the incredible life of Ernest Hemingway.  The text is concisely written and logically organized.  This biography is a great choice for students needing information on this fascinating writer AND it is a great choice for pleasure readers as well.  The black-and-white photos complement the text nicely.  The book includes a “Selected Biography,” a list of “The Major Works of Ernest Hemingway,” and an index.

Young children, especially boys, are fascinating by the large, heavy equipment used in road construction and building.  This book is especially appealing because of the bright, vivid colors and the photography used.  Each page just seems to pop out at you and demand your attention.  This book will be very popular!!

This is a book for those in need of answers to life’s big problems, like “where should I to go to high school”, or  maybe problems like  “how to get my own dog”.  With the help of  a cartooned illustration on each page to lighten the sometimes cumbersome text, Watanabe shows how to break down those seemingly impossible goals into bite sized chunks.  At first we learn about the many attitudes that keep us from our goals, like Sofie Sigh and Chris Critic.  Then the book offers many ways to organize and evaluate, like logic trees, rubrics, charts, and hypothesizing.   This book is not for the browser and may not be as “easy” as the title suggests, but it is a great tool for those with the determination to read through it.

This book is a fascinating play on words that the author dubs “the reverso”.  12 Folk tales inspire the poetry on each illustrated page but if you look further the real magic happens.  Each poem and illustration are split in two, both showing an opposite viewpoint of the same tale, but the poem itself is the same wording, only in reverse with a few punctuation changes. This book is perfect for browsers, as a companion to fairy/folktale studies or poetry units.

This book is a sure fire winner for students and adults alike.  This  well researched title is fully illustrated with engaging and detailed photographs and an engaging text that is packed with scientific information, brought to you in an easy to understand layout.  It chronicles the emergence of the Colony Collapse disorder discovered in 2006 and the importance of bees in our world. Inside you will meet the team of experts and be privy to their research as they try to discover the causes and solutions needed to save our agriculture and protect the hard working bee. Includes references and index

Because our sixth graders learn about Ancient China in their Social Studies book, I thought this book would help link Ancient China to the present.  Based on the title, I was expecting the book to enlighten the reader to the many inventions and practices we still use today.  While this is true, the laundry list of inventions that are named on page 4 pretty much cover this.  The rest of the book repeats these inventions (kites, dominoes, umbrellas, the martial arts, ice cream, matches, gunpowder, and fireworks), with just a few more additions (wheelbarrows, block printing, paper, and planting crops in rows).  Nicely done is a “Then” and “Now” comparison at the bottom of each page, linking the past to the present, but overall, their isn’t enough research provided.  Perhaps this book is simply too meant for a younger audience, leading to my disappointment as a middle school librarian.  It’s use in the middle school would be to offer it to ELL or Special Ed students as a general overview, or to be read aloud at the beginning of the Ancient China unit as an introduction to life in Ancient China.

This 2011 publication  is sure to please young Seattle Seahawks fans.  Brimming with colorful photos, football statistics, and the history of the franchise, readers will learn how difficult the early years are for a new team.  Play-off picks (good and bad), the changeover in coaches and players, and missed opportunities tell the story from 1972 when the construction of the Kingdome began, to 1974 when Pete Rozelle awarded the franchise, to 2006 when the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl, through the 2010 season.  The reader learns that when the team played their first season in 1976, names were put on their helmets to help the players learn each other’s names.  Sidebars with interesting anecdotes, a timeline of important events, Quick Stas, and Quotes all help round-out the quality of the book.

In order to teach young children about how the Pilgrims first lived when coming to this country, this book might be adequate.  However, if you take away the title page, table of contents, map, glossary, and so on, there are 12 pages of colonial homes facts and info and eight pages on Native American homes, the first of which is a tipi, used by western coastal Indians, not the eastern tribes as first seen by the colonists.  Yes, it is difficult to understand how people who were so incapable of taking care of themselves came here in the first place.  However, I would have enjoyed seeing some of the actual houses and communities built by the early pilgrims that are still standing today.  Pretty remarkable endeavor for not knowing what they were doing.  Book does not contain much useful information.

If used to teach about the Pilgrims and Native Americans and introduce the concept of ‘Thanksgiving’, this book will explain it all.  Very elementary and basic, this book covers the time when the Native Americans helped the European settlers learn to fend for themselves.  It’s hard to believe that people would actually come over to a new land and not know how to fish or hunt. I appreciate the fact that no comment was given about the relationship between the colonists and the Native Americans.

This book will work for showing primary age students what pilgrims wore when they first came to the New World.  But in later grades (still in elementary school), students study the American Revolution, and the language and illustrations are too young for such a study.  The limited vocabulary is somewhat redundant because it explains the meaning of the word just after using it in such a way that it is clear what it means.  I think kids will be bored.  Did colonists have clothes that were pink, red, green and blue?  When did the king allow them to make their own cloth?  This book will work for the young and the curious, but not for students who are actually studying that time period.

Can you imagine being the adopted only child of two orphans?  Isabelle Beans knows it’s very hard not to know who she is and who she came from, but it explains a lot.  Like why she doesn’t have any friends, why she seems to get into trouble, why she’s lonely, why she has trouble fitting in.  After being sent yet again to the principal’s office, she falls into a closet and travels down through a tunnel.  Here is where the story seems a bit like Alice in Wonderland and Hansel and Gretel.  Isabelle comes to another world where she encounters children running away from home, afraid that the witch will come and eat them. They live in a camp, much like Never Never Land.  Instead of running away from the witch’s direction, Isabelle runs towards the witch’s house.  Instead of encountering a typical witch, she finds an older woman who gathers herbs,  medicinal plants and roots for the villagers’ ailments.  This couldn’t be the wicked witch could it?  Is Isabelle a witch, too, because she understands this woman and her herbs?  This is a place where she finally feels at home.   A confrontation between the runaway children and the woman answers some questions, but asks many more which Isabelle needs answered.  An interesting adventure sure to keep the reader wondering.  Those who love fairy tales will enjoy this book.

Example, after example, after example of an interjection (“Oh, no!”, “uh-oh!”, “The jerk”) accompanied by rough whimsical color sketches.

Delightful! It will definitely grab the readers attention!

I first read Encyclopedia Brown in the 1970s, so I was interested in how they stood the test of time.

The opening of the book still explains why Encyclopedia Brown is called that and how his father is the chief of police  of Idaville. The 10 cases Encyclopedia Brown solves are copy written 2010 and so are new. I was able to solve a few of the cases myself: having to do with military time, dates- B.C., and the differences between the  seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Both, he and I did this through the powers of observation alone. No computers or cell phones required (or even mentioned). And he still only charges a quarter!  The solutions to the cases are in the back of the book.

The illustrations have been modernized several times over the years, much as Betty Crocker’s image has been over the years.

STILL TOTALLY ENJOYABLE!

In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: Movie Prequel: Defiance Volume 2 the Autobots and the Decepticons are philosophically divided over whether they should continue their passive ways or aggressively attack those who attacked them.

This is issue number 2 of four. There is a very short summary of the previous episode on the title page before the graphic novel begins. I almost missed it. True graphic novel readers, might not have this same problem. True fans would probably not have any trouble telling the Decepticons from the Autobots, either.

The Demon Queen: This book was just plain weird. A boy who comes from nowhere, who has no parents and no homeland just happens to be fostered in the town where a mother and her daughter Honor relocate after a terrible tragedy in Indonesia that claims the life of  Honor’s father. And Honor just happens to be the gateway for the mother of all evil goddesses to enter the world and take over.  And the only one who can stop her is Jesse, the boy with the mysterious past.  I kept thinking that the plot sounded familiar, like some cheesy movie I had seen on the SciFi channel. I picked it up because I was interested in having a story based on a mythology other than Greco-Roman, but this is so out there that it will be a hard sell to my high school students. Some middle school boys who are into weird monsters and fighting might go for it.

One of the Survivors: Joey is one of two students in his high school history class who escape and survive the fire that destroys his school.  The book starts with Joey waking up from a nightmare – seeing the school burning while he is trying to go inside and save his cat. And his mother.  And all the other students in his class. The rest of the book is about Joey dealing with his grief, trying to reconnect with Maureen, the other survivor, and the blame placed on him by most of the students and much of the community. People need someone to blame and they blame Joey and Maureen – after all, they were the only survivors from their class, they must have survived because they started the fire themselves and escaped. Without being weepy or preachy, Shaw deals with a difficult situation in a way that is plausible and understandable. The book is short, just under 200 pages, and alternates between narrative and a journal Joey is advised to start to help him through his grief. This might sell well to some of my reluctant readers.

After the death of her reporter father, Maggie Chen decides to follow in his footsteps and interns at a local Seattle newspaper. However, on her first story, she finds a connection to her father’s death that leads her to wonder if  there is more to his life than she has been led to believe.  Is everything she knows about her father a lie? What is the connection between her family and 1930s immigrant Fai-yi Li?  Maggie will find some of  her answers in Chinatown and learn about the Chinese Exclusion Act to find others. Part historical novel, part contemporary mystery.

Amy had a rough junior year. Trying to escape her abusive boyfriend a mother and stepfather who were probably glad to have some time alone, she moved from her Seattle neighborhood to a tiny town in the north Cascades with her aunt. Trying to start a new life in a small, rundown trailer in an unwelcoming rural town isn’t easy, until Amy meets Henry in the misty clearing behind her aunt’s trailer.  Henry is totally unlike her ex-boyfriend Quinn.  Henry is a gentleman.  Soon Amy finds out just how different – Henry and his family live in 1944.  But the fact that Amy is able to move through the mist threatens the existence of Henry and his family.

These two teens have a lot to learn from each other: Amy must learn to trust again, and Henry has to learn to face his fears or neither one of them will be able to move on with their lives. A sweet romance that is not too sweet, with a touch of the paranormal that will appeal to teens, this novel should appeal to girls in middle school and up.

A Long Walk to Water, by Linda Sue Park, is an interesting narrative read about two people from the Sudan, twenty years apart, whose experiences have a common thread, perseverance.  It’s the story of Nya in 2008, an 11 year old whose job is to get water for her family 8 hours a day, and Salva in 1985, who as an 11 year old boy was forced to run for his life from rebel soldiers, in the middle of the school day, with one thought, where is my family? Salva continues to walk to refugee camps in Ethopia and Kenya and as one of the Lost Boys, a new life is given to him in America. Nya will also get a chance at a new life, 20 years later, because of Salva’s perseverance.   Every reader can empathize with the separation anxiety Salva experienced of being displaced from your parents or family.  But they may see, for the first time, how something as simple as a water well could dramatically change a way of life.  Linda Sue Park creates characters with the ability to push ahead, one day at a time, regardless of their situation, showing the true determination of the human spirit.  A Long Walk To Water deserves its starred reviews and is recommended for grades 5 and up.

Once you get past and accept the fact that you are reading about werewolves in a humous manner, not in a gothic way, and get past the fart dialogue, 100% Wolf is actually a pretty engrossing story–funny, good character development, and nonstop action.  By the end of the story, you end up cheering for the underdog (no pun intended).  Because of the setting and ‘castle’ is mentioned, I am guessing the story takes place in Europe.  The Lupin family comes from a long and distinguished line of werewolves–the Fangen clan.  On each youngster’s 125th month birthday, on the monthly full moon, there is a wolfification–where the youngster makes his or her first change into a wolf and gets to lead the pack on the hunt.  Freddy lives with his uncle, who is the leader of the clan, and his two cousins who are absolute terrors with no boundaries.  When his big night arrives, instead of changing into a wolf he changes into a poodle.  You see, his mom was bit by a poodle while she was pregnant with him and although his father is a full-blooded werewolf, he still mutated.  His rotten cousins strap a moonstone around his neck making it impossible for him to change back into human form.  While a dog, he discovers a plot to kill off the Fangen clan, but he can’t warn anyone because of his dog form.  Very funny and engaging.

This is a new addition to the Writer’s toolbox series, this time we are learning how to write a simple play.  Like the others in this series, you will be entertained with a short play that can be red on it’s own with engaging artwork, or learn to write a play of your own using the Tool sidebars.  The Tools help break down the process of writing for the stage, covering areas like; Character development, scenes, stage direction, dialogue, emotions, plot, climax, and conclusion.  Good for browsing or classroom use.  Contains writing tips, exercises, glossary, and index.