It’s bright and colorful, and provides a good example of traditional aboriginal artwork as well as an introduction to 26 critters indigenous to Australia.  It’s an ABC book in which Anteater is anxious to share something amazing with Bilby or Chuditch or Dingo, etc. But every critter it approaches is too busy doing something else, until after Zebra Finch is too busy snoring, and the illustrations show us that Anteater is enjoying a book; upon noticing what a good time Anteater is having, all the other animals decide they’re not too busy after all.  The illustrations are fun, and it could be used as an introduction if a class was about to start researching Australian animals, but really the text is a bit repetitive and less than stellar.

An illustrated poem that lists several different types of birds and puts words together to sound like their calls, but keeps coming back to the refrain, “But have you heard the nesting bird?”  It concludes with the hatching of the baby robins.  At the back of the book, and endnote answers a series of questions as if the bird were being interviewed about its nesting habits. The illustrations are all in earth tones, which might not hold immediate appeal for young readers, but they really are quite beautiful.  A good introduction for young scientists to observe the birds in their yards, looking for words to describe what they hear.

Every library should have The Little Engine that Could.  It’s a classic tale with a timeless message that every child needs to have access to.  This particular edition is a board book and “an abridged edition.”  I’m not usually a fan of abridgements, but if it hadn’t declared itself so on the cover, I wouldn’t have noticed, as it did a good job of keeping all the pertinent meat of the original tale.  And though I don’t usually select board books for my shelves, I do recommend having a basket or two on hand for use with the special needs classes who come, so the kids can enjoy the books without destroying the general collection.

It’s a celebration of imagination, and the scope for it that a small boy finds playing outside on a snowy day.  While big brother sits inside, watching TV and playing on the computer, little brother heads outside to play in the snow.  The illustrations share with the reader the wonder of the boy’s imaginings as we see a snow-covered tree take the shape of a friendly snow-monster, the snow-monster he makes come to life and play with him in his snow castle, until he flies home on the dragon of the sunset, only to find his brother finally ready to come play with him in the snowy dusk.

It’s not bad.  It’s got rhythm and rhyme, and the illustrations are bright and play with perspective a bit.  But I can’t figure out why it got the “Moonbeam” award sticker on its cover.  It can’t claim to have much of a plot. It basically does exactly what the title says, capturing a moment with a family of four sitting on their front porch, with one brother listening to his tunes, one brother drinking a soda, dad snoozing, and mom taking a picture of the moment.  There’s just not much to indicate why we’re supposed to care about this particular family or this particular moment.

An everyday story that reminds us all to be grateful for the things we do have, rather than counting the things we wish for.  It begins as CJ leaves church with his grandmother and waits in the rain to catch a bus.  Throughout their journey, CJ is full of questions and complaints (Why do we have to wait in the rain? Why don’t we have a car? Why do we have to go here after church?), seeming determined to feel sorry for himself, but for each of his negatives, Grandma is able to point out a positive — the drinks the rain provides for the trees, the people they get to know on the bus, etc.  By the end of their journey, CJ is full of wonder at how his nana always fins beauty where he doesn’t think to look, and announces that he’s glad they came, and the illustrations show the readers that he and his helping serve meals to those less fortunate than themselves.

Another fabulous story from the author of Bats at the Library and Bats at the Beach, this one follows the bats as they wake from winter’s hibernation anxious to make a little noise.  Finding a window open at a deserted summer theater, the bats indulge in an evening of music-making.  Told in rhyming verse, with illustrations depicting some bats with actual miniature instruments while others play on improvised hand-made instruments, the story winds its way through the bats’ concert, describing an assortment of different types of instruments and different types of music along the way.  It celebrates music of all kinds.

An absolutely fabulous blend of poetry, science, and art, this book is both beautiful and informative.  Centered around a theme of nature’s adaptations for surviving the harsh conditions of winter, each two-page spread is dedicated to a different animal or plant, with a poem and a scientific blurb describing how that animal adapts.  The illustrations are beautiful and support the text while contributing to the mood of the poems.

Kepri, the sun dragon, has shiney white and yellow scales and can shine a rainbow from her mouth. But, suddenly Kapri turns up sick from dark magic. Griffith, the wizard, brews a medicine in hopes to make her well, but it offers no results. Everyone was very worried when suddenly Worm, Drake’s Dragon who has the gift of telekinesis, teleports everyone, including Kepri to Kepri’s homeland. It is then that the Dragon Masters kids remembered sun dragons have a twin that is called a moon dragon. When Kepri sees her twin, she starts feeling better and soon makes a full recovery. After a while, they know they must return home and Worm teleports them safely back again. The illustrations are sweet and demonstrates specific details of the story. This is book two in the beginning chapter book series, “Dragon Masters.”

Eight year old Drake was an onion farmer until he was swept away to King Roland’s Castle to be a Dragon Master. Griffin, the king’s wizard introduces Drake to three other Dragon Masters who all have dragons. Each of their dragons have amazing talents: one can shoot fire from its nose, one can spray water from its mouth and another can shine bright light from its mouth. Drake is introduced to his dragon which resembles a worm, thus its name. Unfortunately Worm can’t perform any of the amazing tricks the other dragons can do. After the dragons’ cave collapses and everyone is trapped, Worm’s true skill comes out when he moves all the rocks out of the way using telekinesis. Very cute illustrations demonstrate the story well. This is a great beginner chapter book.

A brief introduction to Sioux Indians, discussing their traditions, daily life and more.  Outstanding layout, beautiful color photographs, and captions that are easy to read make this a wonderful book for students doing research.  This book is part of the series  “Native Americans” printed by ABDO Publishing including 8 separate tribes.

This sweet story begins, ” I’m  giant turtle, and I’m as BIG as an island.” Turtle is lonely in the big ocean until cat, bear, owl, and frog get shipwrecked on him, and he becomes their island home. They work together and are quite happy until cat, bear, owl, and frog decide to leave because they miss their families and friends. Turtle is at a loss. Turtle is lonely again. Then bear, cat, owl, and frog return with their families and friends. “This is how Turtle Island started… and how we continue to grow.”

Yes, the story is sweet, but it lacks pazazz .

For purposes of this review I examined the Farsi-English, Arabic-English, Russian-English, Turkish-English, Italian-English, and Portuguese-English volumes.  Each is designed with clean white pages and labeled photographs organized by category chapters: animals, human body, house, clothing & personal objects, etc.   The same photos are used in each volume, and each volume includes tables of contents, page headings, and indices in both languages, as well as the labels next to each photo being listed in both languages.  The English biases are revealed in that the index is alphabetized according to the English vocabulary; it would have been nice if a second index had been included where the vocabulary was alphabetized according to the other language.  It also would have been nice if a pronunciation guide had been offered for both languages, as only the spelling is included next to the pictures (although there is also a CD included with each volume).  They’re fun for curiosity’s sake, and could be useful in schools with a lot of foreign-languages spoken, as a way of getting some basic vocabulary across, but I’m not sure they are the most useful tools available.

It’s okay as a very introductory text, but the information is limited to a sentence or two per page.  On the front and back covers, and on the title page, the Spanish precedes the English, but on the internal pages, the English comes first.  It seems like it would have made more sense to be consistent one way or the other.  The Spanish is a good translation of the English, and it would make a good tool for beginning language learners of either language, but is less useful for teaching much about weather.

The information is shallow, and the graphics detract, rather than add:  the color photos of the birds in question are surrounded by lots of bright neon colors and patterns, sometimes to the extent of having had the natural backdrop of the bird edited out — it’s rather jarring and distracting, and just plain doesn’t seem to fit.

This is one of those instances (biographies of current sports stars or other celebrities of the day), when I figure it’s not really necessary to invest funds in the solid sturdy library binding:  a cheap paperback will probably last as long as their stardom, and by the time it wears out, there will likely be some other latest celebrity of the day.  I do have to admit the Lionel has a pretty good story (involved in soccer since age three, overcoming health concerns, giving back to his community…).   My biggest gripe with the book is the failure of the photos to support the text.  The first half of the book is talking about his childhood, but all the photos are of his adult soccer career:  the text is talking about when he was three or six or eleven, but the accompanying photo on that page is most definitely not a child — it doesn’t fit.

This is one of those bilingual books that definitely work better in English than in Spanish.  In English, it’s told in rhyming verse, listing different kinds of things that might make someone happy and how it might be expressed.  The translation does an adequate job of expressing the same ideas, but it looses the charm of the rhymes.  Double-page color photo spreads support the text, with lots of multi-cultural kids smiling away.

I have been consistently impressed with books in Scholastic’s True Book series, and this one is no exception.  The text is detailed enough to be truly engaging and informative, yet organized and clearly stated so as to be accessible to young readers.  Text is broken into reasonable chunks, in a large enough font so as not to be intimidating.  Diagrams and illustrations and photos support the text and catch readers’ attention/interest.  The graphics/layout support and attract without distracting.  My one gripe is one I’ve had with a lot of non-fiction books lately:  listing facts horizontally by date and calling it a time-line, even though nothing about the line represents the passage of time (everything is equally spaced, whether the events were separated by a year or three centuries).  All in all a solid choice.

First problem:  it’s a lift-the-flap book, and is not particularly sturdy in its construction, which makes it a poor choice for libraries.  Second problem, it’s definitely targeting the very youngest readers, which leaves it a limited audience in a school library.  The biggest problem is that it makes declarations that aren’t necessarily true: the first page says, “come with me to find out all the emotions we can feel!” but the range of human emotions is much more broad/complex than is going to be captured by a simple picture book; the page that describes anger states that if you take a breath and smell flowers then the next day you will feel really glad, but this presumes that all children’s issues are short-lived, which may not be true for some readers.  Yes, it’s a good idea to teach small children about emotions, and yes, the colors in this book are bright and eye-catching, but there are much better choices available:  This one is over-simplified and clunky.

It’s okay I guess.  The text is simple, as it is targeting young readers, and some of the information is so basic that kids don’t need to read it to know it (such as the fact that some jobs are inside and some jobs are outside).  It covers such ideas as needs/wants, the value of money, the differences between jobs that must be done by adults and jobs that kids can do, and mentions giving to charities as well.  It is illustrated with color photos and offers ideas of how some kids might earn money and what they might choose to do with it.  My gripe with this book is that it’s got a decidedly middle-class and up bias:  children who are living in poverty are not going to be paid by their parents to fold the laundry or wash the dog or rake leaves — they’re just going to be expected to help out around the family because it’s needed.  The last sentence of the book states, ” By earning money, kids can buy what they need, save for what they want, and still have money to share with others.” But really the rest of the book is operating under the assumption that kids are being provided with their needs.

A solid informational resource for students/families coping with asthma.  The information is detailed, well-organized and understandable.  It includes chapters that define asthma, discuss causes, diagnosis, treatments and prevention.  Illustrated with color diagrams, photos, microscopic enlargements, and drawings, the layout aids in making the information accessible.  I learned a lot.  Knowing how many children are affected by asthma, this book, or one like it, would be an important addition to any school library.

An informative book about animal behavior that provides various levels of accessibility:  for the youngest students, a rhyming couplet (in large font), supported by illustrations, provides the basic information on each type of tool-using animals; for interested audiences, a paragraph in smaller print goes into more depth to describe the tools mentioned in the couplet; for particularly curious students, the end-pages at the back of the book provide even more details.  On the opening page, as well as in the end notes, it does say that there is no agreed-upon definition within the scientific community as to what constitutes tools and tool usage, and states that for purposes of this book the author was including any object an animal uses to accomplish a goal.  This is a pretty broad definition, which allows the inclusion of several animal behaviors that would be open to debate as to whether or not they really count as tools, but I think it’s good to engage children in the debates of the wider academic community, so that they know science is not completely cut and dried.

It’s cute.  Small children will relate to Tiny Rabbit’s wish to grow as big and powerful as all the things around him.  But as time passes he only grows a little bit, but he does grow two powerful ears, which he comes to appreciate (along with his small size) when they help him hear the approach of the huge hungry lion and escape down his tiny hidden den.  A good tool for opening a discussion about learning to appreciate ourselves just as we are.

With the text limited to a few words per page in voice bubbles, the story is mostly told through the illustrations:  three small children meet a hat-wearing elephant named Phil at the bus-stop and invite him to come home with them.  When they realize that their parents are not likely to approve, they try to hide Phil, but to no avail.  As soon as mom & dad see Phil, Dad insists they need to take Phil back where they found him, but  when they get to the bus stop Mom whispers to Dad, and then Dad announces Phil can stay.  It’s kinda sweet, and the pictures are cute, but there’s not much to it.  I guess it would be good for pre-readers and early emergent readers, but I’m not sure I would invest limited funds on it

The non-fiction books now available are a visual treat.  The digital photography can capture a bird in flight with a crystal-clear image.  This book is a good example of this current technology.  The information is written for primary age children with text corresponding to images.  A picture glossary and index are included at the back.  This book would be a good addition to a library collection.