If you were born in the sea, and lived your whole life by the sea, surrounded only by those quirky characters who are somewhat broken and can only exist by the sea, then it seems that your whole belief system, what you know to be true,  is based on the fractured lives of those around you.  So it is for a 10-year-old girl, born in the sea by a laughing, footloose and fancy free young woman, named Meggie Marie.  Meggie Marie is irresponsible and irrepressible, and when her daughter is three, she swims off, literally, yelling to her housemate, “Keep her!”  Signe, the housemate, is a mere 18 years old and suddenly becomes mother to the girl, now known as ‘Keeper.’  Signe came to live with Meggie Marie as a 15-year-old runaway, who needed freedom from her family.  She was there at Keeper’s birth.  Trying her best to do right by Keeper, Signe perpetuates the myth that Keeper is a ‘merchild,’ born in the sea, and her mother, a mermaid.  Keeper listens and learns all about sea lore from neighbors and friends, and believes she herself has a special connection to the sea.  On a day when everything in the world seems to go wrong, Keeper sets out, with her dog, in a small boat to go to the sandbar where she believes her mermaid mother waits for her.  Things continue to go wrong; the tide, the waves, the darkness, the time, until Keeper experiences memories and fears when she realizes her mother wasn’t a mermaid, she has no special connection with the sea, and that her mother abandoned her.  She realizes it is really Signe who is her real family.  Exhausted and unable to stay awake any longer, Keeper succumbs to sleep.  While dozing, a merman (with a connection to one of those quirky neighbors) pushes her small boat to safety and rescues her dog.  Appelt does a good job with character development, and although the story moved at a decent pace, it took pages and pages for it to do so.  It is 399 pages, however, half of those are pretty much white space.  A poignant story of how we should not fabricate stories of lost loved ones.  The truth, no matter how painful, is necessary in order to survive.

This 1989 picture book story tells of mother, father, and young daughter traveling to a small farm in autumn to pick a bushel basket of apples from the orchard and a pumpkin from the vine for Halloween. As the story ends, mother is giving the apples* away to trick-or-treaters, while on the following page the daughter is given a candy bar for her trick-or-treating fun.

Simple illustrations with just enough detail to please the eye of young and old alike.

* I enjoy fresh apples, but does anyone give them out for Halloween anymore?

The first 16 pages of this small book (7.5″ x 6.5″) for small hands with small vocabularies has a 5.5″ x 5.5″ color photo in combination with one sentence. (Example sentences: “Leaves grow on stems” from p. 6, “Some plants have small leaves.” from page 12, “Pine trees have leaves like sharp needles.” from page 14)

Includes 6 photos entitled, “All Kinds of Leaves” on pages 18-19: Leaves with one blade, Leaves with more than one blade, Leaves that change colors, Leaves that stay green, Big leaves, & Small leaves.

pages 20-21 randomly lists 8 “Facts about Leaves”.

This is one of six biographies from the Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses, each focusing on a powerful princess from history.  The others in the series include:  Hatshepsut of Egypt, Isabella of Castile, Nur Jahan of India, Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman, and Sorghanghtani of Mongolia.  This series appeals to our student population due to the engaging writing style, interesting topics, and engaging visuals.  The maps, illustrations, and pictures are excellent and the page layouts add to the flow of the text.  In this volume, the author focuses on the time period of the Persian Wars in Greece when Artemisia proved a wise regent queen and admiral in a time when women were generally powerless second class citizens.  Although the author makes a point that there is no information available about Artemisia’s early years, there is no mention of the later years of her life.  It seems likely that after playing such an important role in the Persian empire, there would be some record of the rest of her life.  I would have liked to read more about her.

This is non-fiction book about the Aztec Empire from Scholastic’s “True Book” series.  The author provides a general background about the Aztec culture, rise to and fall from power, language, diet and way of life.  The pictures and illustrations in the book are interesting, colorful, clear and enrich the text.  The writing was easy to understand and should appeal to an audience of 3rd to 6th graders.  I would have liked a bit more detail about this rich culture, but it is enough to be interesting.

This fictional chapter book was written by one of the great child authors of her time, but who didn’t live to see the completion of her work.  Eva Ibbotson died at 85 while working on her last book, One Dog and His Boy.  Her writing is easy to follow and pulls the reader along through the chapter book with ease.

The main character Hal, wants a dog more than anything.  Finally, his parent relent.  Or at least appear to.  He’s allowed to select a dog from “Easy Pets” for his birthday, but unwittingly selects one named Fleck that will need to be returned to the pet rental agency after the weekend.  When Hall comes home Monday after school and finds his dog missing, he sets out on an adventure with his friend to retrieve his beloved pet.

As is typical with the newer nonfiction books, this is a 24 page book with pictures and text geared for elementary level students. The text is fourth grade level vocabulary, but with approximately three paragraphs per page.    Includes captions with photos, index, glossary and suggested websites.

This nonfiction book is best suited for primary elementary grades with every other page a full photo of an unusual weather phenomenon.  As is typical of most nonfiction books, the reading level is aimed at fourth grade with vocabulary, but even younger with amount of short text per page–approximately one paragraph.  This is a high interest book that is only 24 pages total, including the index.

Yes, I gave this book a R** rating; one star just wasn’t good enough.  This is Sue Cowing’s first novel and it is absolutely brilliant!  I can’t say enough good things about it.  Parker is an 11-year-old boy who lives with his mom.  He tries to get along and do what he is supposed to do, but the thing is, he really doesn’t know what he wants; he’s easily influenced by others.  Parker and his best friend, Wren, are bicycling through a junkyard when Parker finds an ugly hand puppet and, on a lark, puts it on.  Funny thing is, he can’t get it off.  No matter how hard he pulls, the puppet squeezes painfully tight and won’t come off.  Then the puppet begins to talk to him.  His name is Drog and he has lived many lifetimes all over the world.  He loves to reminisce about previous times and is quite an attention getter and lover.  That’s when Parker’s trouble really starts.  At school, Drog comments and talks back and makes questionable remarks.  Parker is sent to the principal’s office, who, along with Parker’s mom, decides he needs to see a therapist.  The therapist is okay, however, it’s when Parker meets Sensei that he finds someone to help him.  Sensei invites Parker to join his Aikido class and that is where Parker learns how to understand what he wants.  He learns how to talk to others and understand how they feel.  He has made a real breakthrough and, apparently, what has been troubling him is his relationship with his father.  His father moved to another city for a job, divorced, and now has a new wife and daughter.  Parker didn’t know how he fit into his dad’s life anymore, but Drog and Sensei together, gave Parker the courage to make the first step towards building a relationship.  Even at the end of the book, I didn’t know if Drog was really magical or if it was Parker using him as an alter ego, which is what everyone else thought.  No matter because it was a terrific story.  My only complaint is that the book jacket art is ugly and almost stopped me from reading this book.

This is a cute rhyming book.  The cat is tired of the noisy farm so he changes the voices of the animals.  The next morning the rooster says, “squeak, squeak,” the pigs say,” cluck, cluck,” the hens say,”oink, oink.

The farm animals decided they needed to do something so cat would change them back.   They chased cat up a tree and made so much noise that cat said,”you win.”  “With a flick of his tail, the spells were undone.” But every morning the cat wakes up saying, “cock-a-doodle-doodle-doo.”

The illustrations are wonderful, bright and colorful.