Well it kinda feels like it falls into the category of a book you just have to have in your library, if only because all the little fans of the other Click Clack books who know there is a Christmas one, are going to want it.  It’s fun.  It’s got the same characters from all the other books, and it opens with Farmer Brown hanging the stockings while listening to sounds outside that send him to bed in anticipation that Santa is near.  All the while, the illustrations are showing the reader that it’s really Duck in a Santa cap playing on the roof that Farmer Brown hears, but when Duck gets himself stuck in the chimney and all the other animals are trying to help, but getting themselves stuck, too, we do see Santa’s sleigh silhouetted in the distance, and sure enough Santa comes to the rescue, because of course he never gets stuck in a chimney.

The illustrations are really charming, but the story is a bit flat.  It tells of a young girl (about age 6 give or take a couple years?) riding the bus by herself for the first time, to go visit grandma.  Who let’s a kid that young ride a bus by themselves?  Now granted, it’s obviously not meant to be taken seriously, as all the other passengers on the bus are animals dressed as people, but still.  The text is mostly just a ramble of the girl’s thoughts, and the story is mostly told through looking at the details of the pictures, and that is mostly just a story of watching the different characters come and go.  At the end of the ride, we see the girl connect with her grandma, proclaiming that she’s got so much to tell.  But really not much happened.

Rhyming text celebrates all the different kinds of boats.  The illustrations are beautiful, and support the text.  Both words and pictures are fairly simple, contributing to its charm.

The question-answer format invites students to ponder their own ideas about where they see numbers in nature.  The illustrations are beautiful.  The examples given of number sets in nature are all things kids can recognize (birds have 2 wings, clovers have three leaves, etc.), and after reaching ten fingers and toes, it asks what comes in numbers too big to count, and suggests the starts.

A fun romp celebrating the power of imagination.  Told in the style of a graphic novel, all the words and dialogue tell the story of a dragon encountering what he thinks is a pirate, but turns out to be a ship’s captain whose ship has been stolen by pirates, and they work together to rescue the ship.  The bright-colored illustrations go back and forth between images of what the boys see in their imaginations, and the prosaic realities of the boy in the dragon suit playing with the boy in the sailor’s hat in the backyard while the moms do laundry.

A good book to have on hand to help students who may be watching their parents go through something similar.  As seen from a young boy’s point of view, it simply tells what it’s like to watch as his father who used to like to go for walks in the big wide colorful world starts to lose interest and says he’s lost his color and spends all day in bed, and throughout the boy keeps worrying that he’s done something wrong, but Dad keeps telling him he didn’t.  Eventually Dad visits people at the hospital who give him medicine for his brain and has someone he can talk to, until gradually the color starts coming back and when the boy fixes him a cup of tea he enjoys it and they return for a walk and a hug and his dad is back.  The book doesn’t pretend it all happened suddenly, but it does provide hope and a sense of empathy for others who might need reassurance.

A sweet story about the benefits of patience and dedication:  a young mouse is disappointed (at first) with his grandfather’s birthday gift of some seeds, but his grandfather assures him that if they plant one and water it every day and wait patiently, soon it will grow into something that will provide both food and a play place.  After planting the seed together, the young mouse rushes out the next day to see what he’s got, only to learn he must be patient. Eventually he is rewarded with a small sprout, which still seems a little disappointing.  One day he runs off with his friends to play, only to return to find his neglected sprout wilting.  He apologizes, and returns to his efforts, and calls upon others for help when he is ill and cannot tend it himself, and in the end he has a beautiful tomato plant that he and his friends all play in while enjoying its fruits.

Ahhhh… There’s something sort of Velveteen Rabbittish about it, in its softness and gentle lesson about what it really means to be alive.  It tells the story of a stone lion outside a library who longs to be real and alive so that he could run in the park and swish his tail.  The wise gargoyle nearby tells him that sometimes stone animals are granted the opportunity to become real for a short time, “if they desire it greatly, with a generous heart.”  As it turns out, when the lion does get his chance to come to life, it is so that he can rescue the homeless girl and her baby brother, who have come to visit him so often, from a terrible snow-storm, by dragging them into the warmth of the library.  Though he never gets the chance to run and frolic, he builds relationships and shared memories that give him a better understanding for those who visit with him, making him feel alive even when he’s stone.

A good book for units on insects, or on habitats, or on animal adaptations/camouflage.  Or just a fun book for kids who like to hunt for the hidden things in a picture, and who like bugs. One two-page spread showing and telling briefly about a particular habitat, with all the bugs kind of hidden, is followed by another two-page spread showing those bugs on a plain back-ground and giving more detailed information about each.  This set-up allows the reader to test their eyesight hunting for what they think they see, and then checking their finds when they turn the page, going back when necessary to find something they may have missed the first time through.

It’s a cute story, with a good message, and one many children can relate to, even if they don’t have a pet elephant.  It tells of a young boy who has a tiny elephant for a pet, and while he shares the joy he takes in his friend, he admits that it means he never fits in because nobody else has a pet elephant.  One day he sets out for Pet Club day, only to find a sign declaring no elephants allowed, and though sad at first, he befriends another sad girl, who was not welcome with her pet skunk, either.  Together they decide to start their own club, and find themselves joined by children with pets like a hedgehog, a swordfish, an armadillo, a penguin, a bat… And at their club, all are welcome.