Bright, vivid illustrations accompany this cajun version of the folktale of The Fisherman and his Wife.  Something about the text draws one into feeling the urge to attempt a cajun accent while reading the story of the poor but happy fisherman and his wife who one day catch a magic catfish.  Though the fisherman is content enough, his wife comes up with more elaborate wish after another to ask of the magic fish, each granted wish leading to more wants, until having all her wishes granted land her in ruin and she realizes there’s nothing she really needs.  A brief glossary at the end offers explanations for the Bayou lingo sprinkled throughout, though context is usually sufficient to make the meaning clear.  It’s a fun read, which gives the reader something to ponder.

It’s a rather odd little story about a family having guests to dinner in the middle of a rain storm.  When a crocodile arrives unexpectedly, he is invited to join the party, and proceeds to calmly eat each of the guests (who, granted, were not terribly polite), and then goes away again.  The illustrations do not particularly enhance the strange story,  as they appear half-finished.

Definitely a book for the very youngest students.  It’s got lots of repetition and rhythm and the illustrations support the text, which makes it useful for beginning readers.  It would also be helpful for building enthusiasm for a reluctant swimmer about to face lessons:  it consists of repeated phrases describing different aspects of swimming, interspersed with the mantra, “Learn to swim!”

A small book, written for early learners, it’s got color photos illustrating the two sentences per page which describe what coins the child in the picture has, and how much cents that equals.  It’s broken into chapters by type of coin. It’s got other text features of non-fiction books (table of contents, glossary, index). It’s not that it’s a bad book.  It’s just that there’s not much practical point to it:  no child is going to choose it for the fun of reading, and it’s not particularly necessary as a teaching tool, as actual money that children can handle would work better, so I don’t know that teachers would find the book particularly helpful.

The illustrations are fun, and the colors are bright and rich.  The text is written with good rhythm and rhyme, telling the story of a young squirrel whose mother sends him off with a shopping list, insisting that the most important item on the list is cheese, as she’s planning to make pizza for dinner.  When Simon Squirrel and his friends see the moon, they declare that everyone knows it’s made of cheese, so they borrow a hot air balloon to go fetch some, but a comet blows them off course, so they end up shopping for the other items on their list at various planets.  After a meteor shower punctures their balloon they head home, but realize they still forgot the cheese.  Though it lacks enough purpose or cohesion to rate a recommendation, it’s silly and fun and kids would enjoy it.

I thought it was really rather lame.  It didn’t really seem to flow very well.  It’s about a girl who really wants a dog but can’t have one because she’s allergic.  In the winter she makes a dog out of snow (and for some reason kids laugh and tell her there’s no such thing as a snow dog, but they don’t seem to have any kind of reaction when it comes to life and starts following her around).  Similar scenarios repeat each season as she makes a dog out of flower blossoms in spring and sand in the summer and leaves in the fall.  For some unknown reason, although the snow and sand dogs look pretty much the same in their live forms as they started out, the leaf and flower dogs stop looking like they’re made from leaves or flowers when they come to life.

It pains me to say it, as I’ve really enjoyed other books in this series and other books by this author, but I was disappointed with this book.  It’s like it never really committed to deciding what it was meant to be about.  It’s a little about labor unrest of the time, a little about attitudes towards the mentally handicapped, a little about the rights of women and animals, and a little about the great Chicago fire.  It’s got good characters and I started out enjoying it, but it never seemed to develop any kind of focus or purpose; it just sort of rambled on for a bit, and then there was an epilogue tacked on the end to wrap up the loose ends, but there was never any kind of actual conclusion.

A delightful story of the hidden world of mice that mirrors that of humans.  Set during the jubilee celebration of Queen Victoria, the basic premise of the tale supposes that for every human job, there is a mouse with the same job, scurrying about in the hidden spaces, staying away from human eyes.  The hero of this story grew up in the Mews outside Buckingham Palace, but has never been given a proper name, as no one seems to know his parentage:  he is simply called according to the distinctive shape his tail falls into.  A series of scrapes and adventures amidst the flurry of castle preparations for the grand celebration eventually lead the the revelation of his true identity.

It’s big on the cool factor, with lots of color photos of cool cars, and lots of data on different cars from different years, just the kind of thing my brother has always loved to read, and I’m sure it will be a hit with the boys.  It nearly got a “Recommended” rating, but for a gripe I had with the design of the layout:  there are all these yellow pages inserted into the body of the book, with “Smokin’ Facts.”  If the layout had been reconfigured, so that these fell between sections (or at least between paragraphs), it would’ve been better.  Falling as they do, often mid-sentence as the reader turns the page, the result is that they interrupt the readers’ flow, making for choppy reading (heck, a hyphenated word that starts on page 39 isn’t finished until page 43).

Though I’m certainly not the target audience for this book, I can certainly imagine some of my boys thinking it’s really cool.  And they’ll actually be getting some solid information into the bargain.  This little volume does a clear job of describing the history of drag racing and explaining the differences between different types of cars and events.  It nearly got a “Recommended” rating, but for some gripes I had with the design of the layout:  there are all these yellow pages inserted into the body of the book, with “Smoking Facts.”  if the layout had been reconfigured, so that these fell between sections (or at least between paragraphs), it would’ve been better.  Falling as they do, often mid-sentence as the reader turns the page, the result is that they interrupt the readers’ flow, making for choppy reading.