This is a 48 page non-fiction book (AR level 5.7, .5 points) about the history of the Transcontinental Railroad across the US.  The information is presented in a clearly-written manner with a format full of actual photographs and illustrations depicting the subject.  The books in this series are very approachable for kids and even the cover art entices the reader to pick it up and check it out.  The prices is reasonable as well for a hardcover book.

This is a great book about the military using Humvees and how they came to be.  There are interesting fact about the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV).   Student will love to read this and find out more about the vehicle that does so much for the military  not only in our country but in more then 60 nations besides the United States.

This is a cute story moving through the life of two caterpillars.  It may come as a surprise to young readers that they both did not turn into the same thing.  The story has colorful fun pictures and is a quick read.  It is a fun book.

This is a book for children who  are learning to read.  It is a story about a boy, Rico, who has a robot.  They go to the beach to fish but Robot gets bored so he finds a little girl who is building a sand castle and he decides to build one too.

This book has a list of story words in the back, and some information for parents and caregivers in the front.

Wow!  Was I surprised when I read this book–I loved it!  The language is simple and just right for beginning readers.  The illustrations are clever and colorful.  The storyline is exciting and funny.  This is a great book for kids who haved learned some basic sight words and phonics to begin their lifelong love of reading.  I will be sure to add the other books in the series to my school library.

South Pacific Mythology is a very well-written and put together book.  The reader will learn that the South Pacific is called Oceania, and that is divided into four main regions.  Each region is composed of several islands and cultures.  What is interesting is that although the regions are near each other and share many characteristics, the myths of each culture is different and not many, if any, overlap.  Another interesting point is how South Pacific mythology differs from other cultures, such as, Gods are created out of nothingness.    In other aspects, this book has a distinct color palette of earth tones running through it.  There is also an upper and lower border along each page using an Aboriginal pattern which unifies the book.  Each chapter encompasses two complete pages, defining the origins of the myths, giving an example, and using a visual graphic.  This is a complete book of mythology and should be included in every school library’s mythology section, along with the Greek and Roman mythology.

“Showoff” is book 4 in the Griffin Bing series, so fans of “Swindle,” “Zoobreak,” and “Framed” will be excited there is more to come.  The venue is  a Mall Dog Show, where chaos erupts with Luther ruining the chances for 3-time winner, Electra, of defending her title in the upcoming Global competition.  The boys devise a plan of turning Luther into a prizewinning show dog in order to raise the money to cover the lawsuit expenses.

Dog-lovers will be amused by this romp.  I think this book is best-suited for an elementary school library.

The Comanche were pretty fearsome people.  They raided and fought both other Native American Indian tribes as well as the white man.  From an early age, boys were trained to become warriors.  This book has a couple of  ‘Comanche Facts’ interspersed, one of which, Quanah Parker (his mother was white and named Parker, and his father was a Comanche chief), is interesting and should be given more respect than given.  His name isn’t even in the back section of  ‘On the Web’ which gives more websites to find further information.  so why bother even giving his name in a fact?  Yes, kids love the military and warriors, but let’s give them some interesting and complete information instead of just showing them pictures of weapons.  This book seems very incomplete to me and not worth the high price.

This book highlights the African Zulu tribe’s fighting weapons and techniques.  The book begins by stating that in the late 1700’s, Shaka Zulu rose to power.  Not so.  Shaka was born in 1787 and was the son of the Zulu chief.  However, when Shaka was six years old, his father sent both him and his mother back to her tribe in shame.  Shaka hated his father.  It was in 1815 when the chief died that Shaka went back to the Zulus, killed most of his relatives, and began building the Zulu empire, using great military organizational skill.  He was ruthless and reigned with terror.  His mother died in 1827 and he was devastated, became depressed, and made several tactical errors.  A year later,in 1828, he was assassinated by two half-brothers.  This book doesn’t speak to any of these facts, but leads the reader to believe that Shaka ruled for many years, until defeated by the British.  It’s an interesting subject but so much has been left out that the facts that are there are skewed.  There would be so much more to say about the warriors than the little that was mentioned here.  Not worth the expense.