In a celebration of the relationship between father and son, this story tells the classic story of a boy who is stalling going to sleep at the end of his bedtime story: he tells his dad he loves him, and when his dad confirms he loves him, too, the son goes on to say he loves dad three.  Once they reach the number five, the son moves on to other descriptors, declaring he loves his dad more than the toys in the toy box, more than all the flowers of summer, more than all the fishes in the sea….  Each time Dad insists he loves Son more and tells him yet again to go to sleep.  Eventually Dad falls asleep, and it’s the son who does the tucking in.  My only critique is that there seems to be a bit of a disconnect in mood between the text (rather sentimental and mushy) and the illustrations (more bright and cheerful and cute).

What a delightful, charming, inspiring picture book biography!  It tells of the childhood of Clara Barton, describing her relationship with her older brother and detailing several experiences that served to nurture her interest in nursing, culminating in an accident which nearly took her beloved brother’s life, and left him in a depression from which Clara helped him recover.  An author’s note in the back goes on to describe Clara’s later years and her societal contributions as founder of the American Red Cross, as well as the author’s own family connection to this great lady.

As is fully explained in an afterword at the back of the book, the text is made up of the words to an old folk song with German origins.  The charming illustrations create characters and a setting which expand on the words of the song to round out the story:  that of two bears on a fishing trip, when the younger bear notices a hole in the bait bucket and pesters the older bear about what is to be done, but since the older bear is more absorbed in the fishing than the bothersome questions of her companion, the bait escapes before the problem is resolved.

With only a few words on each page, and much repetition, this is definitely targeting very young children.  It begins by listing many scary sounds a young boy may hear, before describing his coping strategy of sitting down, closing his eyes, and telling the scary to go away, and then lists all the joyous things he sees around him as he goes on his way.  The illustrations are childlike and support the text.  It’s okay, but there’s not really enough substance to the text to rate it an actual recommendation.

It’s one of those books that combines fiction with non-fiction:  on one level it a a fictional picture book telling the story of a dog who is invited to visit the international space station as part of a program to honor Laika, the Russian dog who was the first living creature to travel in space.  As the story goes along describing Max’s fictional training and experiences on his adventure, extensive sidebars on each page describe the facts supporting/inspiring that part of the story.  The illustrations are detailed and realistic, contributing to the educational nature of the story.

Though the title implies it’s a Christmas story, it’s really a story about the challenges of moving far away and adjusting to a new culture.  The story opens as Eduardo and his family leave their village to move to a new home, where football means something different.  As he wonders when he will ever feel at home, his uncle gives him some signs of the passing of time to watch for as they wait for Christmas: hills turning the color of the sun, pumpkins smiling, and trees riding on cars.  Though these ideas seem strange to Eduardo, he does indeed see each come to pass, indicating it is finally time to open his treasured Christmas box, containing the nativity figures he carved with his grandfather.  Connecting his past traditions with his present location finally helps him feel at home.

A beautiful picture book, recounting a little know, but important bit of American slavery history, this story tells the tale of the beginning of the end of slavery in Massachusetts.  During the days of the American Revolution, Mumbet worked as a “servant for life,” in the home of Colonel John Ashley of Berkshire County, Massachusetts.  In the course of her work, she was able to overhear the words of the declaration of independence and the new Massachusetts Constitution, and was able to turn the words of freedom and equality on her own situation, suing for and winning her freedom.  According to the author’s note in the back, two years after Mumbet won her freedom, slavery was declared unconstitutional throughout Massachusetts, and freedom was granted to all slaves in the state.

It’s a wordless book, showing a young girl picking up a single line and wiggling it into assorted shapes from her imagination.  I know the artwork is meant to look child-like, but it really just looks kinda sloppy and gray and unattractive, with lots of smudge marks across the whole thing.

A cute story of cooperation, it’s got a lot of repetition in the text, which gives it the flavor of a folk tale that might have been handed down by word of mouth, and makes it good for beginning readers.  It tells of a group of animals who are trying to reach the moon to take a taste:  One animal after another finds it just out of reach, and calls upon another animal to climb on it’s back, until there is a whole tower of animals.  The moon, thinking it is a game, keeps moving out of reach, until it grows bored with the game and decides the small mouse at the top of the tower can’t do too much damage, so he lets the mouse take a taste, which he shares with the others.  A fish who watches the whole thing can’t imagine why the others are all working so hard to reach the moon in the sky, when there’s another so much handier in the water.

I absolutely love the illustrations in this book:  they evoke the mood, create the setting, and give personality to the characters.  The story itself is a nice tale of a young harbor cat who listens to the stories of the old cat who’s travelled the sea.  When young Jim insists he wants to share in such adventures, the two set off together to stow away on a sea-going boat.  And adventures they find, including seasickness and rats and waves and storms.  When they do make it safely back to the harbor young Jim is ready to return to the safety and familiarity of the harbor, but the old cat says he’s had enough of land and is setting out on one last voyage.  By the end of the story Jim has become the old cat telling of stories of adventures at sea to the younger kittens on shore.  My biggest gripe with this book (keeping it from getting a better rating) is not with the author or the illustrator, but with the editor/publisher — whoever it was who decided on the text layout.  Someone made the decision that the lines of text should be aligned along their centers, giving it the look of poetry, though it’s not, which interferes with having any proper paragraph indentations to show when their is a change in speaker: the result is that there are times when confusion over who is speaking interrupts the flow of the dialogue and the story.