Good rhythm & rhyme. Cute pictures depicting the secret life of toys playing on their own while their boy is away (sounds like Toy Story — already been done, with more style). A few brief words on each page tell a simple story of stuffed dogs as traffic cops. It’s fine. Some kids will like it, but there’s nothing about it to really make you go oooh. Strictly for the younger set.

Fourteen common and exotic birds are captured in this volume, each with it’s own two-page spread including a vibrant, close-up, full-page photo, a paragraph of factual background information, and a poem to capture its personality.  Obviously put together by folks who love the birds involved, this book is sure to capture the appreciation of folks who didn’t know they cared. It’s lovely.

The illustrations are bright and colorful and fun, but the story doesn’t quite live up to them: it’s basically one long request of a young boy asking his local librarian if he can bring a woolly mammoth to the library.  He anticipates potential problems and offers solutions, and then eventually decides Woolly would be homesick, so instead he wonders if a Saber-toothed tiger could visit instead.  It sort of seems to lack a climax or point.

The fourth book in this series of graphic novels for younger readers finds the inhabitants of Mr. Venezi’s pet store faced with the need to adjust to a new helper in the store.  When Mr. Venezi takes on a teenaged assistant, she starts organizing everyone out of their comfort zone.  As usual with this crew, misunderstanding abound until the animals save the day.  When I first read one of these books, I thought it was kinda cute, but wasn’t sure how kids would respond.  The first two books have had nothing but positive feedback from students — I’ve had both gifted and reluctant readers asking me for more.

Fifteen different types of homes from different parts of the world and different periods of history are each described on its own two-page spread, illustrated by rich, detailed collages.  For every home, the introductory paragraph begins with, “If you lived here…”  After sharing some anecdotes of what life would be like in that house, individual paragraphs are dedicated to sharing the facts about house type, materials, location, date, and one fascinating fact. A world map in the back of the book plots locations for all fifteen homes.

The illustrations are really kind of cool, which is what led me to pick the book up, but the story is really pretty lame — the main character is an obnoxious little snot who whines and complains and is basically rude in every way (with a parent who apparently lets her), until she falls asleep one day and dreams about a circus where each performer insists that she demonstrate some iota of politeness before she is allowed to participate; when she wakes up she’s a new child, all politeness. Ugh.

On the one hand, it’s got cute, colorful pictures, and sneaks math into the story, but really it’s a bit contrived and not as charming as I hoped for.  The new bunny in the balloon factory who’s charged with counting all the balloons isn’t observant enough to realize he’s popping them all as he goes?

The cute cartoonish illustrations on a clean white background are very eye-catching, and draw the reader in to examine the details.  Each two page spread contains 100 of something (mice, moles, elephants…), broken up into chunks of ten, to aid young counters, and each page suggests some other detail to search for and count. At the edge of each page there’s a hint connecting it with the page to come.  It’s charming!

Oooh! What a gem! This beautiful book illustrates a poem listing all the things a leaf can be.  The gorgeous illustrations draw the reader in and expand upon the text: when the text declares that a leaf can be a “soft cradle,” the illustrations depict cocoons nestled upon leaves; on the facing page we see a lamb slurping water that has been captured in the curves of a leaf as “water ladle.”  Just in case the reader didn’t get it from the illustrations, the back of the book contains the author’s explanations for each of the potential labels she attached to leaves.  A wonderful book on so many levels, it would be a great edition to a nature study unit.

A companion to The Quiet Book, this book begins with the premise that, “There are lots of louds,” and then it proceeds to list them, one illustrated on each page.  Examples include alarm clock loud, last slurp loud, and home run loud.  The illustrations are sweet, and serve to expand upon the simple text.  All students would find something in this book to relate to, and it could serve as a great discussion builder with young children, providing a launching pad for them to recall similar louds in their own experiences.  Aw heck, I was going to give it an R, but I think I’ll go ahead and bump it up to an R*.