Not one of my favorites.  The pictures are bright and cheerful, and kids who are familiar with other Hot Rod Hamster books may enjoy it, but it’s one of those books that seems to sacrifice story for the sake of keeping the vocabulary and format in the target range for early readers: the result is that the story is a bit flat.  It tells of a day at a water park for Hot Rod Hamster and his friends, getting ice pops, choosing floaties, racing on the water slides. There just doesn’t seem to be any climax or purpose.

A really fabulous book that offers a sampling of the wide variety of backgrounds and circumstances lived by those in the United States who call themselves Latino or Latina. Each of the dozen chapters begins with a first-person (fictional) vignette, written in a free-verse form, sharing one individual’s story, followed by several pages of non-fiction information about one branch of the Latino community, which sets that vignette in context.  Through this book, the reader gains insights into the similarities and differences of the experiences of families whose roots are Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Sephardic, Zapotec, Peruvian, and mixed; who are documented and undocumented; who are first-generation immigrants or who have been here for many generations; pursuing many different careers and dreams and facing different challenges. The pairing of the fictional vignettes with the non-fiction passages allows each to enrich the other, and the voice throughout is one of respect and authenticity.

A beautifully told picture-book biography about a little known bit of sports history.  Even though an all-woman’s baseball league may not have come to be until WWII, when all the men were overseas, but all-women professional teams go back at least until the 1920s.  This book tells the story of Baseball Hall-of-Famer Edith Houghton who joined the Philadelphia Bobbies (an all-female team, so named because all the players bobbed their hair), as starting short-stop at the age of 10.  In 1925, at the age of 13, when most people she knew had never been outside of Philadelphia, Edith traveled with the Bobbies to Japan and spent two months traveling from town to town playing against men’s teams.  The text is rich in details that really tell the tale, and the water-color illustrations do a fabulous job of setting the scene and capturing the mood of the era. It is a wonderfully inspiring bit of history.

Densely packed with a lot of really complex ideas, yet written in a manner that makes that information accessible and non-threatening.  The illustrations a cartoonish, in the style common to the rest of this series, and they offer support for the text, which is itself very readable and clear.  It is guilty of one of my major pet peeves — a “timeline” on the initial end pages that fails to represent the passage of time properly, spacing all the dates equally, regardless of the amount of time between them — but given the quality of the rest of the book, I’m willing to forgive this fault.

A fabulous read!  This collective biography introduces readers to twenty famous scientists who shaped the history of human understanding.  The collection does a good job of drawing from a variety of cultures and scientific disciplines, going as far back as China in the early years of the Common Era.  It includes the famous names students are likely to have heard of (but may or may not know much about), such as Galileo and Newton and Einstein, as well as many that were new to me (e.g. Zhang Heng, Ibn Sina, William and Caroline Herschel).  For each scientist, the book provides the basics of the significance of their discoveries, but the main focus of the book is adding personality to the names, to get the sense of what kind of person each was, giving context to their lives and their work.  It’s very readable and interesting.  Elementary librarians should be aware that some parents may complain as their are a few references to some of these great names having extra-marital affairs, but such references are brief.

What librarian is not going to recommend a book where the characters from books come to life through the power of imagination to rescue the little local book shop from destruction. Little Joey is on his rounds delivering newspapers around London when he learns of the book shop owner’s distress that there are plans in the works to knock down his shop to make way for a super store.  Little Joey immediately whispers into his news bag and Origami Girl bursts forth to help.  Needing help, she heads into the book shop, tapping assorted children’s favorites until an army of favorite book characters has burst forth, but when they find the leaders of Parliament snoozing, and the Mayor and the workers about ready to break ground, they know they’ll need even more reinforcements, so they head to the library.  When the Mayor shouts at his workers to destroy them because they’re only made of paper, they respond my shouting back that they are made of ideas and imagination, things that can never be destroyed, and since the workers’ children have followed the characters to the work site, they’re not about to battle the stuff of their dreams before their very eyes, so the Mayor knows he’s beat, and the book shop is saved.  The illustrations provide a great opportunity for young readers to see which favorite characters they recognize, and to start a discussion about their own favorites. It’s a winner.

It’s your basic bed-time stalling story:  when Mom calls Alfie to say it’s time for bed, he insists he must find Sharkie first.  The story consists of the dialogue back and forth between Alfie and Mom before she finally insists they’ll have to look for Sharkie tomorrow, but when Alfie finally gets to bed, he finds Sharkie has been there all along. The scenario will definitely be familiar to young children, but it doesn’t really offer much in the way of originality, and I confess, I find the illustrations a bit drab.  All in all, not bad, but not great.

I’m sorry.  My reason for not recommending this title may seem petty, but given how many different options one has for learning about different countries, I find myself lacking any patience for paying good money for a book with inaccurate/contradictory information, just because the publishers couldn’t be bothered to edit carefully.  On p. 28, the text offers a description of the Malaysian flag and the symbolism there of, including stating that the flag has 14 stripes and a 14-pointed star, representing the 14 states; yet every picture of the flag in this book, including on the cover and directly above the paragraph describing it, the flag is pictured with only 13 stripes.  I expect accuracy in my non-fiction.  Kids will count.

A really fun extension of the famous nursery rhyme, I almost rated this as highly recommended, but for a few places where the rhythm of the rhyme is a bit tricky to maintain fluently.  The illustrations include all the famous nursery rhyme and folk tale characters joining in the fun of a ball put on by this merry old soul. Unfortunately the king is worn out by all the preparations and falls asleep at his own party.  All the guests make unsuccessful attempts to wake him in the manner most suited to their character (i.e. Boy Blue blows his horn, the Mother Hubbard’s dog barks, Bo Peep’s sheep baaa…), but the king sleeps through it all until his Queen of Hearts, who knows him best, arrives with some freshly baked tarts.  One sniff and the king awakes instantly, ready for a treat.

The illustrations are fun and eye-catching, and the story offers readers encouragement to make their own fun.  The story begins with a gathering of ravens sitting around complaining of their boredom, until a brightly-colored, high-spirited strange bird crashes into their midst.  When the newcomer questions the group as to why they aren’t happy, the ravens reply by asking why they should be happy, to which the bright new fellow replies that they don’t need a reason to be happy.  The paradise bird then proceeds to give them lessons in fun, helping them make up a silly song & dance that suits their croaky caws, getting them all laughing before encouraging them to share what they’ve learned because, “Happiness stays with you when you spread it to others.” As part of the merry making, the paradise bird had shared with the black ravens some of his own brightly colored feathers as inspiration, which he leaves with them as reminders when he flies off, his mission accomplished, a nod to Pfister’s most famous book, The Rainbow Fish.