I admit I’m biased:  I pretty much love all Steve Jenkins’ books.  The one limitation of this one is that it is limited to very young students.  It is set up as a guessing book: a two page spread illustrates many features of a particular animal and asks, “Who Am I?” and the following two page spread answers the question, showing an illustration of the whole animal.  The guessing part is really targeting PreK-K kids, as the features given as clues make the guessing pretty obvious.  The predictability and illustrations to support the text extend the usefulness to emergent readers in first grade.  There are some information pages in the back that add a little more meat to the substance offered on each animal.

It’s one of those how-to-adapt-to-a-new-baby-in-the-house stories. Leon is not sure where his new little brother is going to fit in their lives:  can’t be on mom’s lap, as there’s only room for Leon there; can’t be in mama’s arms (they’re just the right size for cuddling him, so obviously too big to cuddle a tiny baby); can’t be between mom and dad while holding hands (Leon holds both); can’t be on dad’s shoulders like Leon (baby’s too tiny).  After much hemming and hawing, Leon is about to conclude they have no place to put a new baby in their home, when he realizes his own arms are just the right size to snuggle a baby.  The illustrations are simple and child-like.

The illustrations are gorgeous — rich, saturated jewel tones.  The story is told in rhyme, beginning in the ancient days of cathedral building, describing the purpose of gargoyles to stand watch and keep evil spirits away, before fast-forwarding to the days when folks had forgotten the original purpose of the gargoyles, seeing them as ugly demons.  As the story continues, we see how hurt the gargoyles are when they overhear what people think of them, but we see too that angels see the gargoyles’ pain, and venture near to ease it.  One stormy night the angels come help the gargoyles take flight over the earth below, where they see others who feel lonely, but they are able to see that they aren’t truly alone:  each seemingly unwanted soul is being loved and guided and cherished by an angel of his/her own.  I do have one gripe with this book.  I’m sure as an artist, the author had a very good reason for making the decision he did, but as an educator, I am frustrated that there is not one single capital letter in the entire text — a poor example for young students who struggle with proper grammar rules already.

It’s a high-interest topic (aircraft carriers), and a highly-appealing format (the hard-cover book begins with a code that matches it to an online, bilingual e-book).  The introductory page offers instructions for accessing the ebook in both languages (English and Spanish).  The rest of the text of the book is in Spanish only.  The text is simple, and well-supported by the full-page color photos.  Useful both as a tool for Spanish-speaking students who are beginning readers, as well as for those who are learning Spanish.

Ah, the power of a comma! This is a story meant to mislead until the twist at the end.  The story unfolds with the fox family tending their garden and declaring it’s time for their prize-winning rabbit stew.  As they list off all the ingredients they’ll need, the illustrations show the worried rabbit watching the foxes gather said ingredients.  And then in the end, we see that they’ve gathered all this lovely food for their favorite Rabbit, Stew, and his family too.  So it turns out Stew isn’t the main dish, but the recipients of this feast.

It’s cute and it’s relatable.  When the main character spills juice all over a chair, she’s so distressed she decides to run away to the library until she’s grown up.  On the way to the library, she meets a number of friends with their own disasters, who decide to join her. After a series of catastrophes piling up like a chain of dominoes dropping on each other, a little bird interrupts her cries of calamity to remind her that it was just an accident, which we’ve seen through the story, can happen to anyone. Instead of running away, our main character learns to apologize and make things better.

It’s a sentimental love poem offered by mother for daughter, declaring her undying love.  The illustrations begin and end with mom tucking daughter into bed.  In the in-between pages, the illustrations are fanciful: showing mother and daughter flying through the night sky on a cloud shaped like a whale, landing in a wild countryside, and scampering through a variety of landscapes that support the analogies of the poem itself.  A nice detail in the illustrations is that daughter has curly hair and a slightly darker skin tone than mom:  is this a mixed-race family?  Could be.  If so, it’s just presented as is…no big deal.

It tells the story of an often neglected bit of American history:  the role of women during WWI, who helped the farmers tend the fields when all the farm hands had gone off to fight.  It focuses on the tale of Helen Stevens, a New York college girl who wanted to do her bit, so she left the big city to join a camp in upstate New York that was training “farmerettes” to tend the jobs that needed doing.  Even after training to learn new skills, she and her friends still faced the prejudice of local farmers who didn’t think girls could do the same work as men.  They had to offer a day of work with no pay to show their worth, and still had to negotiate firmly, but prove their worth they did.

It’s a mash-up between that typically associated with attracting boys and that typically considered girlish:  fart humor plus tea parties. The illustrations are cute and frilly, showing a gathering of three little girls having a tea party in the yard with all the trimmings.  The text trying to outline the rules for tea parties, with repeated interruptions to accuse somebody of tooting, and every time the accused blames somebody else.  The final rule declared is that there’s no tooting at tea.  But just then the tea kettle toots to let them know the water is boiling, so they have to revise their rules.  It’s cute.  I may be guilty of succumbing to stereotypes, but I think it telling that it was written by a guy.

I love the illustrations. I like the idea of picture book biographies, especially more multi-cultural ones. From what I read, he certainly seems to have been a ground-breaking musician, so perhaps this book will help him become more well-known.  I know I don’t have a huge musical background, but even the illustrator mentions in his note in the back that he was unfamiliar with Esquivel’s music as well, so it makes me wonder how many of my elementary students will bother to pick it up.  I’m afraid its readership may be limited.  And one fault I think will make it harder for those who do to wrap their heads around:  there’s no indication in the body of the text to give a time frame context to the musician’s life and work.  A reader needs to read carefully in the end note (which few elementary students do) in order to place the bulk of his career in the 1960s.