It’s okay.  The illustrations are humorous, as is the premise of the story:  a young boy has spent the day with his aunt, and can’t understand why she seems so distressed when he’s been trying to be so helpful.  The text basically consists of a list of one attempt to help, which turned to disaster, after another, described in rhyme.  I kind of wish the fluency of the text rolled a little easier off the tongue — a bit stilted at times.

It’s okay, I guess.  It’s a book about moving and saying good-bye.  To try to cheer themselves up, some friends who are facing one of them moving away decide to throw a good-pie party instead, for the whole neighborhood, and after the party they gaze at the moon, referring to it as a pie they will always be able to share.  There doesn’t seem to be any real climax that it builds to, or any surprise or humor or compelling reason to make the reader care.  A little on the bland side.

The illustrations are soft and brown-toned, lending a sentimentality to the book.  The facial expressions of the characters capture a sense of wonder.  The story is a simple one: it begins as a Max shares a good-bye moment with his grandfather, who assures him the moon will always shine for him.  Throughout the long car ride home, Max keeps his eyes on the moon waiting for it to disappear from sight like his grandfather did, but instead it follows him home, disappearing from view only briefly, once as they travel through a tunnel, and once when a cloud temporarily covers it.  Although kids who live around here may experience more often that the clouds could cover the moon for days (or weeks) at a time, they’ll still enjoy the reassuring concept of the ever-returning moon.

Two bear cubs, upon finding their campground deserted, decide to go exploring.  They come across a school and wander in to investigate.  Though it is completely beyond believability to think two bears are going to be able to wander from room to room throughout the school before anyone notices, these two manage to visit the music room, art room, gym, science room and cafeteria before being discovered, creating all sorts of mischief along the way.  Upon discovery the fire alarm is pulled, emergency folks arrive and calmly cart the bears home in the back of a squad car, so all ends well.  The illustrations are cute and idealized, and kids will enjoy imagining what it would be like if bears visited school.  Plus the book would make a good read-aloud for September Kindergartners as a spark to start discussion about different parts of the school.

Eh.  It’s another take on bedtime monsters, as the title indicates.  In this one we see a little boy playing monster before bed, and then wanting to sleep with his parents for fear of the monsters that may materialize.  Mom has little sympathy, and sure enough, a series of monsters present themselves, each declaring that they are afraid of some other monster (which is sure to be the next one to arrive), and crawling into bed with Arnold, until it is quite crowded.  The last monster says he’s scared of Arnolds, and so when Arnold declares his identity all the monsters scurry off to their corners and Arnold has his bed back to himself.  The most interesting page is at the end, when the illustration shows all the monsters lurking in the parts of the room where we can see what real items in the room inspired their births in Arnold’s imagination.  All around, it’s okay, but I wasn’t particularly wowed.

The illustrations are fabulous — they’re silly and fun, and they do a great job of evoking the joys and absurdities of family reunions, which is essentially what this story is about.  The text itself, though, doesn’t really live up to the illustrations.  It’s trying to be a poem, but it doesn’t have good rhythm/flow for reading aloud fluently, and it’s not really clear about the point of it all.

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of pedantic stories that are purposely written to teach some moral.  I think they’re kinda patronizing to kids.  That being said, this story is not bad for that kind of thing.  It tells of a little pig who always wants to be first, until he races to be first to respond to a call, “Who would care for a sandwich?”  It turns out to be a sand witch who needs caring for, and who holds him to his word until he learns his lesson.  It would be better simply by removing the banner across the front cover that proclaims it “A Story About Learning to Take Turns.”  Why couldn’t they let kids think it through themselves as to what the story is about?

Following a similar pattern as Cheer Up, Mouse, this one tells the story of Mouse’s trouble getting to sleep, and all his forest friends trying to help.  Each animals makes a suggestion based on their own personal preferences (Frog suggests a bath, Rabbit suggests some exercise to wear him out…), but nothing seems to work, until in the end it turns out he just needs a lullaby reminding him that he is surrounded by loved ones. It’s a sweet, comforting story for young readers, with a problem they can all relate to at some time or another.

I was disappointed.  The illustrations are cute, and the characters are familiar, and the story fine (as the babysitter takes out the five little monkeys to go trick-or-treating, she’s keeping track of them by their costumes, but they keep trading costumes with other critters), but there was no rhyme or rhythm or repetition or counting which characterize the other Five Little Monkey books I’ve read.

The text is clear and simple for young readers, with just a few sentences per page, well-translated, with all text presented in both English and Spanish.  It is illustrated with full-page color photos that support the text.  It begins with a description of the different food groups, and an encouragement to try to eat snacks that draw from at least two of those groups, and then it goes on to basically a list suggestions of healthy snacks.