Bernie Bridges attends Rotten House Boarding School, and he is definitely rotten. However, Bernie has decided to change his ways to impress April May June, the coolest, hottest girl in school that gave Bernie one week to be a better student than Sherman Oaks, a spoiled rich kid. Well, Bernie runs into trouble with Headmaster Upchuck, Jennifer Ecch, the girl who wants to take Bernie to the dance, and Mrs. Heine, a teacher. Unfortunately, Bernie’s’ efforts are in vain. Crazy, rotten things happen in this book! The illustrations are descriptive and show unique expression. Great for reluctant readers.

The problem with trying to write a book about the unexplained is that when you’re writing about something about not much is known, you don’t have much to say.  So what’s the point?

This book packs in a lot of information, and does so in a well-organized manner.  The font and the layout and the plenitude of color photos keep the information from becoming overwhelming for young scholars.  The words from the glossary are highlighted in bold, and “words to know” sections along the way provide the definitions without requiring students to turn to the back of the book.

A topic of high-interest to many, this book draws on a wide variety of sports to complete its alphabet.  Some of the words selected are specific to one sport or another; others are general terms that apply to many sports.  Each page is dominated by a large full-color photo supporting the brief text explaining the given word.  A good tool for early readers with an interest in sports, though not heavy on information.

There’s always time for one of these brief folk tales.  Each of the ten stories begins by telling the tradition from which it comes.  It is then re-told in an engaging yet compact manner.  Besides the time benefits of these short re-tellings, the spare nature in which they are told leave room for inference as to the morals of the stories, thereby providing a springboard for discussion about the stories.

It’s trying to use the graphic novel format to make math cool, but the characters are flat, the math is forced, and the plot is trite, so even though it’s a graphic novel, it’s still a dud.

“So Much Closer” is the story of a journey.  Initially Brooke, who is a senior in high school, thinks her journey is the transition she makes from living with her mother in New Jersey to living with her father in New York City.  This she does to follow her crush, Scott Abrams, who has moved to NYC himself.  Obstacles along the way include leaving her two best friends in the world, moving in with a father who ignores her, and the realization that Scott has a girlfriend.  In this girl-likes-boy, girl-gets-boy, girl-loses-boy story, the reader learns that what we think we want isn’t what’s necessarily right for us.  The book wraps up with Brooke realizing that her journey to NYC was actually what she needed to discover herself as she puts together a plan for college and a major she feels passionate about, while learning about healthy relationships along the way.

It’s got a sturdy binding and it’s colorful, with all the cool graphics to make it appealing and all the appropriate non-fiction text features to make it a good educational tool.  It’s even got good ideas.  My only concern is that it is perhaps overly optimistic/rosy in creating an image for kids about the grand success they can expect, when the reality might not turn out as picture-perfect as what the book sets forth.

It covers a topic that will be of interest to many students, and it uses all the appropriate non-fiction text features to serve as a useful introduction to reading for information, but the information itself is somewhat vague and limited due to the breadth of the topic: because it is lumping together all stadiums for all sports in one brief volume, there are a lot of generalizations.

This book does a good job of taking an innately interesting topic, about which many stories and myths have been developed, and sifts fact from fiction.  Information is presented in a consistent format:  briefly stating a commonly held perception about pirates, and then examining the historical accuracy of that perception.