Part sentimental look at a boy’s trip to the ball game with his father, part nod to “Goodnight Moon,” the rhyming text and sepia toned illustrations begin by describing all the things they see and do as spectators at the big game, and concludes by saying goodnight to everything and everyone as they leave, right up to, “Goodnight, Daddy. Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, baseball, safe in my room.”  The final illustrations shows just what a baseball fan this boy is, as we see his bedroom, fully decorated with baseball bed, baseball bedspread, baseball carpet, baseball lamp, baseball toys, and the full moon out the window perceived as a baseball as well.  Sure to be enjoyed by young baseball fans.

Intended for very young audiences, a repetitive format and simple text and illustrations  teach basic concepts, while also inviting young readers to delve more deeply into those concepts.  It begins by showing an apple opposite an armadillo, asking the simple (and seemly obvious) question, “Which is round?” When the reader turns the page, the same question repeats, accompanied with, “What do you think?”  Only this time the apple has been eaten down to the core, and the armadillo is curled up upon itself in a round ball.  Similar examples examine concepts of bigger, longer, faster, higher.  And the book concludes with asking whether an apple or a watermelon is red, whole green and red fruits on the first page are followed by fruits cut apart to show the white and red insides when the page is turned.  A great tool for developing observational skills and creating discussions around comparisons.

The child-like illustrations of characters are over-laid over more sophisticated backgrounds.  The story contains a simple message about reusing items rather than discarding them:  Mr. King (King of the jungle perhaps? A cat with a crown) begins as a consumer of the first order, who is quick to toss old items into his pond to be replaced with new ones, until he’s fishing one day and snares a “monster” made up of all his discards; the hubbub that arrises draws his neighbors who don’t see the monster, but are delighted with all the treasures lying on shore, and Mr. King comes to realize how his old things can be repurposed into new inventions that delight one and all.  A great story to bring out around Earth Day.

Though it may not be a popular title, it sure is a useful one.  I wish I’d had a copy handy when I was a first-year teacher, trying to teach prepositional phrases from a grammar text book that didn’t define what a preposition was — only gave a list of them.  This book begins by offering a clear definition of what a prepositions does (“It ties words together to show how they are related”), and then goes on to give several different examples, well-organized by the type of relationship they describe, and well-illustrated by large color photos.  Old-school grammarians may take objection to the blatant dismissal of the old rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, as this volume declares that a preposition “may be the first word, the last word, or somewhere in between.”

The full-page color photos that illustrate this book are bright and eye-catching.  The text is simple, with only two or three sentences on each two-page spread, as it is intended to for beginning readers.  As is often the risk with non-fiction books for early readers, the information is a bit weak.  Still, it does have the usual non-fiction text features (table of contents, index, glossary, etc.) for teaching purposes.

Beautiful, bright folk-art illustrations capture the reader right off the bat, setting the scene for this simple tale set in West Africa.  The story tells of a young girl who is trying to bring a bowl of milk to her father who is watching over his sheep in the grasslands.  The journey from her home to the grasslands takes her through over dunes, across a river, up a mountain, past camels, a parade, and a herd of giraffes.  All along the way she is concentrating hard not to spill any milk, and then just as she arrives, a mango falls and lands in the bowl, splashing the milk all over.  Disappointed that she has failed in her task, her father comforts her, by explaining that the bowl held not only milk, but all her love, and that didn’t spill.  They share the mango, leaving some for her to carry back to her mother, with all her father’s love.  Together, the text and illustrations evoke a far-away land, so different in so many ways for American school children, yet the efforts of a child to do something to show her love for her father are universal.

It’s an okay little story, with a nice lesson about coming together to help someone in need, but there seem to be a few holes in the thread tying the story together.  A giant, magical ball of yard shows up one night in the hedgehog’s quills, the spider teaches him how to knit, he knits an assortment of gifts for various forest animals, and every time the gift mysteriously turns into something else that animal likes best.  Finally a crab comes inland to find the hedgehog and ask him to knit something to help a beached whale, but he’s all out of yarn, so all the critters return their gifts, which the hedgehog is able to unravel and reknit into a single string which turns into a giant butterfly that is big enough to lift the whale and return him to the ocean.  We are never told where the yarn came from, why the transformed gifts are better than the hand-knit ones, how the hedgehog is able to unravel things that are no longer made of yarn, or why a giant butterfly was the best way to get a whale back into the ocean.

The design is really nice:  shiny cover, sturdy binding, color photos with color blocks setting off the captions, text broken into small enough chunks not to be overwhelming, and labeled diagrams providing visual support for the text.  The information is well-organized, clearly explaining the differences between different types of muscles, and substantive enough that I learned things I didn’t know.

The text is clear and concise, with chapters dedicated to describing different kinds of jobs police officers perform, what kind of training they need, the equipment they use, etc.  The color photos are well-chosen to support the text and are clearly captioned.  This is a high-interest topic for elementary students, and this volume provides plenty of substantive information, while breaking up the flow of information with enough photos, so as not to over-whelm young readers.  Solid, sturdy binding, too.

A lot of solid, scientific information, presented in very readable, comprehendible text, and illustrated with beautiful paintings.  It discusses the inter-connectedness of living things on planet earth, the fragility “The Real World Wide Web,” problems that come from introducing non-native species into new areas, or from over-harvesting, or from climate change.  It presents a variety of arguments for the importance of preserving biodiversity, describes efforts underway to keep the earth healthy, and offers suggestions for how individuals (even kids) can make a difference.