It’s boring. It tells the story of a sloth who ventures out once per year to attend a sleeping party with a bunch of other animals. They all bring their comfort items, scope out the best place to sleep, watch the pajama parade, and fall asleep during the first lullaby.  And the next morning everyone goes home.  And sloth goes home and goes back to sleep.  I’m not sure what the point is supposed to be.

A reasonable selection for those with a large preschool population, but it will have limited audience in most school libraries, as it seems to be targeting the youngest set.  When Pig shows up for a camp out with Rabbit, the shadow cast by the lantern startles Rabbit.  When Pig insists she’d not be scared even if there was a monster, Rabbit goes on to offer a series of what-ifs, to which Pig answers each with a brave plan, until Rabbit suggests turning out the light, at which point Pig has to admit she’s scared of the dark. In response, Rabbit points out how well the stars shine in the dark, and they end with a plan to watch the stars together and scare off whatever monsters come around, also together.  It’s got a good balance of recognizing that we all have things we are scared of, but the power to stand up to our fears with a little help from our friends.

Some of the illustrations are cool.  The bright colors of geometric shapes overlaid to create pictures was what caught my eye, but some the pictures have so many shapes and colors layered on top of each other that the point of the illustration becomes muddled, which is sort of fitting, as the message of the text is also less than clear.  It begins by talking about how humans used to walk everywhere, then it goes on to describe all the inventions and developments that have allowed us to take traveling great distance at ease for granted, then it shares how some of the animals manage to travel even greater distances, or at greater speeds, but then points out that the animals do so without disrupting the balance of our planet, while human transportation feats reshaped the landscape and cause pollution.  I’m not saying it’s not a worthy message, I just think neither the illustrations nor the text manage to deliver it very effectively.

When Monkey sees a sign advertising a rhyming contest in which the winners will win a three-day cruise, he spends the bulk of the story attempting to talk Duck into being his partner for the contest.  Monkey suggests rhyme after rhyme to get Duck into the spirit of things, but every time it’s Duck’s turn to finish the rhyme, all he says is, “Quack.”  In the end Monkey figures out how to work with Duck to make their team a success.  Kids will  enjoy making suggestions for what Duck ought to say each time, they’ll probably predict the solution before Monkey figures it out, and they’ll enjoy the little surprise twist at the end.

Does any child make it through growing up without wanting to run away at some point?  Little Loula is fed up with her little triplet brothers, so she decides to set off on her own, being sure to pack the true essentials:  her stuffed cat, her tea set, and her best drawing.  Wanting to get as far away as she can, she announces to her family that she’s leaving for Africa, and proceeds to climb a large tree in her front yard.  When the family chauffeur, Gilbert, stumbles across young Miss Loula, he enters into her adventure and accompanies her around town in their search for Africa, with all sorts of everyday things they encounter taking on African guises within their imaginations (e.g. the sandbox in the park becomes the desert they must cross, the kids on the monkey bars become chimpanzees).  After a full day, in which all the essentials she packed play a part, Gilbert leads his tired mistress home.  It’s just sweet, and I think kids will both relate to the sentiment and enjoy spotting the differences between the imagination-laden text and the reality portrayed in the illustrations.

A cute story, with childlike illustrations that teaches an important lesson about the downsides of greed and the importance of moderation:  as the story begins, Mr. King is living in a little house on top of a big hill, but he wants a big caste, so he starts chopping off pieces of his hill to create the blocks to build his big castle, not noticing the holes he’s leaving behind; by the time he’s finished and proudly looks out his window, he realizes there’s not much of a view anymore, and his friends are complaining about things they miss.  In the end a nice compromise is found when they work together to put things back mostly the way they were before, surprising Mr. King with a little castle.

It’s an adequate selection for libraries wishing to add books about adoption, but I think there are better choices out there.  This one is a fairly straightforward account of a young girl describing what it means for her that she was adopted, covering the usual basics: not looking like one’s parents, having both a birth mom and a forever mom, attending cultural classes to stay connected with where she was born, knowing that she is loved and belongs right where she is.  I thought the connection to the title was a bit clunky, an I can’t say I was thrilled with the illustrative style as a fit for the story, but it’s okay.  Like I said, adequate.

Not impressed.  I’m not sure what the point of this book is.  I guess it could be used to teach days of the week, or using your imagination, or career possibilities, but there are better books for all these things.  The only audience for this would be very young kids, and since Pre-K kids don’t come to my school library, I wouldn’t actually spend money on this.

I liked it.  There’s something every so very childlike in the simplicity of both story and illustrations. It’s rather Madeline-esque.  A rhyming tale set in London of a boy venturing through the city to visit the possum exhibit at the London zoo, while dragging his doggy pull-toy behind him, never noticing that when he left the exhibit, the five baby possums followed nose-to-tail with the doggy all the way home again.  The young boy takes it all in stride and is busy fixing a picnic for his guests when they next grab onto the string of some helium balloons, which end up carrying them right back home again.

It’s a lovely story that rings very true.  After visiting her famous grandfather in Japan, and being enchanted by his violin playing, she has decided to take up violin herself.  Now, after only three lessons she decides she wants to perform in the school talent show.  Her big brothers scoff at her plans and run from the house when she practices.  When it comes time to go out on stage, Hana is struck by fear that her brothers may have been right all along, but she looks for the reassuring faces of family and her best friend in the audience, and imagines just playing for her grandfather.  Rather than playing a particular song, she shares with the audience the different sounds around her that the violin can mimic, just as she  remembers from when her grandfather was playing:  a mother crow calling her chicks, rain on paper umbrellas, a neighbor’s cat at night.  When she declares she has her own way of playing the violin, even her big brothers come to appreciate it for what it is.  Some inconsistencies in the illustrations (too much changing of the audience and violin from right hand to left hand and back again) were a little big distracting.