D and the other letters are a bit put out with Apostrofee for gobbling up so many letters and taking their places. It’s full of examples to show the purpose of an apostrophe.. It’s cute, but I think I’ve seen other books that do the job better. A lot of the examples in this one are not common uses and/or don’t follow the usual pattern, and yet no explanation is given (i.e. shan’t, d’ssert, s’pose, d’plorable). At first I wondered why they misspelled Apostrofee’s name, but then I noticed the author is from Quebec, so it could be a Canadian spelling.

I need to buy several copies to have on hand for baby shower gifts. It’s a beautiful book, best shared between parent and young child. The illustrations are gloriously beautiful and whimsical. The text is sentimental and full of hope and wonderings for the future. It’s full of comparisons of child and nature, opening with an acorn sleeping beneath a blanket of leaves until it begins to grow, just like the child tucked into a warm bed. The voice is that of the parent speaking directly to the child, offering a wide variety of possibilities and analogies. It makes my heart warm and fuzzy!

It’s a fun, simple, “sweet” read, with a devilish twist at the end that will appeal to the older elementary kids as well as the young ones. When Sloth and Lemur happen upon a rather lovely cake, they ponder having a party, but all the guests they consider inviting seem problematic in one way or another. They finally conclude there’s just no one left to eat it except themselves. As they lay about among the crumbs with full bellies, along comes Tiger, outraged that the lovely cake he’d made himself for his birthday is gone. Sloth apologizes, but Tiger tells them not to worry…(page turn)…he can still get it back…(page turn)… And the final page just shows the Tiger walking away with a satisfied expression from the plate of cake crumbs, with no Sloth or Lemur in sight. Draw your own conclusions. I like that it leaves it open to the readers’ interpretations — a good opportunity to talk about inference. It reminds me a bit of my favorite Jon Klassen books. My only critique is that it is told entirely in dialogue without any quotation marks or he said/she said (it uses different fonts to distinguish who says what), and it could have been helpful if the different fonts were a little more different to be really clear.

Well I pretty much love most things Melissa Stewart has written, and this one illustrated my another of my favorites, Steve Jenkins. The book shares details about fourteen different kind of monkeys that all live in the Manu National Park in Peru. It begins by pointing out that it is unusual for so many different kinds of monkeys to live in the same area, and that it is possible because they each live at different heights above the ground, behave in different ways, and eat different foods, meaning they don’t compete with each other for food or space. Each two-page spread is dedicated to a different kind of monkey, with a two line rhyming stanza in a large font for younger readers, and a more detailed paragraph for those seeking more information. Accompanying each illustration is a silhouette of a tree marking the height within the rainforest that that monkey occupies. In the back of the book a larger version of the same silhouette shows all the monkeys on one, and an illustration depicts all the monkey sizes in relative scale, alongside the shadow of an adult human for comparison purposes, and further statistics such as lifespan, scientific names, diets, and predators are listed for each monkey.

So I looked online at the professional reviews posted on the Titlewave website, and they were all more or less generally positive, but I’m just going to be honest and say I didn’t like it. I couldn’t find a plot or purpose to it. The illustrations depict a town made up of 51% vampires, and are suitably dark for such a setting, and yet are silly and cartoonish for a young audience. The reader is invited to come visit this town and is shown assorted scenes one might find looking down upon the town on a typical night. The text isn’t so much a narrative as a series of captions.

It’s a cute, simple story outlining the differences between rabbits and hares. Cartoon-like illustrations depict a conversation between a hare and a ground squirrel as they walk through the dessert. The hare takes objection to being called a rabbit by the ground squirrel, and in the process of arguing his point he gets so riled up that when the coyote that’s been stalking him throughout the book finally pounces with a, “Gotcha, Rabbit!” the hare punches him out with an, “I’m a hare! So there, Jackal!” The back of the book lists some other animals that are similar, but not the same, and outlines distinguishing differences; and also offers readers a Can-you-find-them list of other desert creatures that made appearances in the illustrations so they can go back and hunt.

I like the concept of the book, but I wish it made its point clear more consistently. It’s about the idea that size is relative and how something that may seem small to a person could seem huge to an insect. It tries to draw relative comparisons, such as pointing out that some fleas can jump up to 100 times their own height, and then declaring that would be like you being able to jump to the top of the Eiffel Tower. But then it says that the Eiffel Tower is 1063 feet tall, and since I don’t know any 10-foot tall people, that comparison doesn’t compute. And the comparison to “If your foot could grow as fast as a caterpillar can…” comes out as a bit awkward, because it’s not comparing to how a caterpillar’s foot grows, but the whole caterpillar, but for the person it’s got the foot growing independently of the rest of the human. It’s just a bit clunky.

I don’t like it. It’s supposed to be a Level One early reader, but it’s got a lot more big words than the level two books I’ve read from the same series. It tries to invite interaction by telling the reader to give Bunny a high five or poke him on his elbow, but the story is kind of lame: Bear tells us that Bunny is noisy everywhere, they go to the library, Bunny is noisy there too, and then they go to a movie where they both get shushed by others in the audience for talking about how hard it is to be quiet.

It’s very much a VERY early reader (Ready-to-Read Ready-to-Go!, which comes before Pre-Level one). It has only one to two sentences per page, and those are very short, direct, and repetitive, to the point of stilted reading. Normally stilted writing annoys me, but this works almost like a wordless book, where the bright, amusing illustrations tell a complete story even without the text: Cat and Dog play tricks on each other, taking turns claiming possession of a stuffed dinosaur until one of the tricks backfires and the dinosaur falls down a hole, where Mouse gets to claim it; Cat and Dog solve their problem by working together to put on a play to earn enough money so they can each purchase their own stuffed toy, which makes Mouse happy too, since he’s the storekeeper who gets their money.

I’m picky about early readers, and I like this one. The familiar characters (Farmer Brown and his crew) will draw kids in, and the amusing illustrations support the text. The sentences are simple and repetitive enough to support emergent readers, but they still manage to tell a story kids can relate to — heading off on an adventure, everybody enjoying their own preferred amusements, and then coming together to roast marshmallows over a campfire.