The illustrations in this book are amazing!  Strong enough to earn a recommendation all on their own.  To be honest, I found the story that accompanies them to be a bit convoluted and hard to follow, but there’s something so magical about the illustrations that I’m left feeling like my failure to follow the tale is somehow a lacking of imagination on my part.  It tells of a boy (at first called Nightlight, and later Jack Frost), who is best friends with the Man in the Moon and has sword an oath to the parents of the Man in the Moon to watch over and protect him, but after a battle with a nightmare, he falls to earth and seems to lose his way for a while, but the Man in the Moon remembers their friendship and keeps watch and eventually brings him out of his loneliness, by helping him to remember his oath, which he ends up turning toward the children of earth, and gives him purpose.  Interestingly, the book jacket recommends it for kids ages 4-8, but I thought it was more for older children, a picture book suitable for ages 8-12.  I think it takes the older kids to be able to follow the story, but maybe it takes the littler kids to lose themselves in it?

Wow!  I love this book! Completely cool and fabulous and amazing.  Gives me the shivers.  Must get the rest in this series.  The illustrations are incredible, drawing on imagination and shifts in perspective to gradually guide the eye to two completely different pictures at once, depending on what part of the art you are looking at, but not like those cheesy black and white optical illusion things; more like an attention to detail and focus exercise.  While the artwork is the main draw, the text which accompanies it is poetical and draws one in even more to ponder the world of imagination.  The poems and the artwork each add to the other.  With young children, they’ll be drawn into the beauty and fun and the magic of it, but I think for older audiences there’s also things to be gained from this to be shared in art classes and poetry classes, too.

I recommend this one with reservations.  Consider your audience.  It tells the true story of a boy and woman in New York who struck up a friendship after young Alex asked for spare change on a street corner, and Laura shared a meal with him instead.  They began having weekly meals together and Laura invites Alex to spend Christmas with her and her family.  It’s written from Alex’s point of view, but the focus seems to be on how kind and generous and wonderful Laura is.  As a story to share with middle-class kids to encourage them to reach out to those less fortunate, showing that even small acts can build strong relationships and make big differences, I think it’s great.  But I wonder how students who are living in poverty will feel reading it, wondering why they haven’t had someone swoop down and offer them all these things?  For that matter, the story tells us that Alex has two sisters and a grandmother and mom, but there’s no mention of any of them being invited to participate in Laura’s generosity? One wonders how they felt about that.

A nearly wordless book, the story is mostly told through the pictures, but the connecting thread running through the whole book is a single word accompanying each picture, and as the reader proceeds through the story, that single word changes by just a single letter each time (plan, plane, planet, plant…until it circles all the way back to plan again).  The chain of words provides a wonderful way for young students to consider word structure, and how that single letter changes the word, and the illustrations turn this chain of words, that would otherwise be connected by nothing else, into a story of a young girl and her dog on a farm, who find a photo album telling the story of the old bi-plane in the yard, and cook up a plan to resurrect it with her father to bring it back to new adventures.  It even manages poignancy within the simple tale, as the word pain is accompanied by the illustration showing the family laying flowers at mom’s grave in remembrance.

The illustrations are classic De Paola, and the environmentalist message is certainly as relevant now as it was when it was originally published in 1975, but it’s an odd little story.  Never once is any reference made to explain why Michael is a Bird-Boy, who wakes up every morning and puts on a bird suit.  And when he complains to the boss-lady about all the smoke her factory is producing, she had simply never considered where she could get real bees, and presto-chango everything is better.  I don’t think DePaola’s illustrations are enough to carry it.  I think there’s a reason why this one hadn’t surfaced with all his other classics in the last forty years.

Apparently the sequel trend is not a new phenomenon, as this one was originally published in 1954.  Not sure why it’s been under wraps for more than 60 years, but it might have needed the new updated illustrations to bring it up to snuff.  I tend to be a bit suspicious of sequels, but I like this one.  It’s written by the original author of the original story, and shares the same style of being written in rhyming couplets.  There are a few times when the rhyme is a bit awkward, but I like the story:  it picks up in the preparation for another Christmas, when the other reindeer are jealous of Rudolph’s fame and have started to turn on him, so he is feeling left out.  He gets so depressed his nose goes out, and seeing himself as now of no use, he heads out, sad and lonely, on his own.  While wandering in the woods, he comes across a family of rabbits who have lost two of their little ones, so he sets out to help.  Forced to rely on his other skills (sniffing and listening), he still manages to find the lost rabbits, just in time to save them from the prowling wolves.  Upon reflections, he realizes that others have problems much bigger than his, and even without his glow he was able to be of help, so maybe he can still be of help to Santa.  And on the way home, through fog of course, having abandoned his whining and weeping and thinking of others, his glow comes back, and he returns to find the other deer sorry for their pranks, welcoming him home. It’s nicely sentimental  for the season, and has a good message.

The series is a popular one, and kids will gravitate to the familiar character.  The rhyme helps build literacy skills.  The situation is one that many students can relate to:  little Llama is going on his first overnight sleepover at his grandparents’ house, but he leaves his treasured stuffed llama in the car, which leaves him feeling nervous.  When he finally confesses, grandpa comes to the rescue by sharing his own special toy from when he was young, emphasizing the point that we all were young once, we all get scared at times, and we all cling to our special somethings.  Literature snobs may cringe at the poor grammar, as the whole thing is written in sentence fragments, but as my high school English teacher told us, once you know the rules well enough to break them intentionally, you’re allowed.

This is a fabulous little book for young children.  I think it’s got all the makings of a classic:  it’s got the rhythm and rhyme and repetition that is so helpful with emergent readers; the illustrations support and extend the text, and set readers up for opportunities to make predictions.  And besides, it’s fun:  the rhythm is catchy; the pictures are cute; the situation (a dog venturing forth to explore beyond his yard, and then getting spooked, and deciding home is best — a little like Goin’ on a Bear Hunt) is one that kids can relate to.  Even though it’s audience may be limited to the very young, I still highly recommend it.

Both beautiful and informative, this non-fiction picture book describes physical traits and behaviors and challenges faced by all bears, and it also dedicates a two-page spread to each of the eight species of bears.  For each species it gives the scientific name, common names, size, as well as detailed descriptions of the habitat, features and behaviors specific to that species.  The beautiful illustrations support the text and draw the curious eye.  A world map in the back indicates where each species lives, and a habitat glossary uses illustrations as well as words to explain the terminology of land features.

Beautiful watercolor illustrations combine with informative text to tell the story of train travel across The United States.  Starting with the fluster of activity on the platforms of an eastern urban train station as a commuter train gets ready to pull out, the story describes the actions of conductors and passengers and the passing views until it reaches another station where we see a passenger train just pulling out to cross the country-side.  Again we get a full description of events and sounds and sights until it pulls into a midwestern city, where we meet a freight train.  And so it goes until the overnight train crosses the Rocky Mountains and encounters a high-speed train heading into a new urban station on the west coast.  Besides being informative about all different kinds of trains, it’s a lovely example of descriptive detail.  Like a virtual cross-country field trip.