With text all in Spanish, this information-rich book was a bit beyond my Spanish skills to adequately review it, so I handed it to one of my native-spanish-speaking second-grade teachers, who teaches a unit on rocks, and asked her to tell me what she thought.  She says she would recommend it.  Features she approved up were that it is well-organized, has an attractive layout and color photographs, uses high-academic vocabulary and appropriate grammar, highlights important vocabulary, and incorporates additional and relevant elements related to the topic.  As a librarian, I approve of the sturdy binding, and the complete range of non-fiction text features, including headings, index, glossary, charts, etc.

Cotton-candy sweet, it’s probably best suited to a public library that serves the pre-school crowd.  It tells the story of a young polar bear, used to spending all his time with Mom, who is trying to make a new friend.  Things don’t work out with the seagull, the seal, the penguins, or the walrus, but when he takes a break from his search, another young polar bear comes along, and the two have fun together.  The pink and white cover, with the i in the title dotted with a heart, and the fuzzy bears will appeal to young girls.

Every children’s library needs something along these lines to offer as reassurance to kids who are going to have to visit the hospital, and this one is cute.  Kids who already enjoy the other Little Princess stories will especially appreciate it.  When the Princess is informed she’s going to need to visit the hospital, she insists she doesn’t want to go, despite all the positives those around her offer in reassurance.  When she is finally hogtied and dragged in, they treat her like a princess, so she wants to go back.

So this is not a folk song with which I am familiar, but it’s fun to read.  It’s filled with non-sense words, telling a rather non-sensical tale about a mouse who lives with a tailor who bakes the mouse into a pie because he thought it would die because it had a chill.  The bright, cheerful illustrations expand on the words, giving the characters personality and helping to make sense of the non-sense, and the rhythm and rhyme just make it fun.  The complete text of the song is set to music in the back, and the last page offers what is known about the origins of the song.

Your basic pet story with cat and dog learning to get along:  Toby makes it very clear that he doesn’t like cats, but the neighbor’s cat comes to stay anyway.  Nobody ever notices all the trouble the cat causes, or the things Toby wants them to notice about him, but they always seem to notice when he’s getting into trouble.  In the end, they make friends after Toby gets the family’s attention when Pandora (the cat) is stuck in a tree. Kinda cute, but the illustrations are a bit drab.  Not a stand out.

Each page, or two-page spread contains a short, 3- to 4-panel cartoon, mostly wordless, ending in some sort of humorous twist in the last panel.  Useful for observation skills and as a tool for developing oral or written language skills by having students describe what is happening.  But there are better wordless stories that serve similar purposes.

The simple, straightforward text is presented in both English and Spanish.  It gives some basic information about money (how much cents makes a dollar, the names of the coins, etc.) and considers different ways coins can be sorted.  My problem with the book is that the only two ways to sort coins that actually serve a real-world purpose are to sort by type of coin and by value, which is really the same thing, but this book dedicates two separate pages to these ways, and also sorts by size, color, and whether or not there are ridges on the edges.  I guess this is fine as a study of sorting, but serves little purpose to understanding money, other than guiding introductory observations.

Adequate information, but nothing to make it special, and the illustrations are a little odd.  There are so many books on Martin Luther King Jr. that are so much better, I can’t imagine spending money on something that’s just adequate.

A solid choice to support earth science curriculum.  The text is clear and straightforward, easily accessible, with an attractive layout, and color photos and diagrams to suppport the text. Organized into chapters that address what soil is, how it forms, layers of soil, what it looks like, and how to take care of it, it taught me a few things. I did wish that in the chapter about how to take care of soil there had been some mention of how composting can help return nutrients into the earth. The binding is shiny and sturdy-looking, too.

The story opens as young Hope is presented with the gift a a conch shell from her father as he says goodbye before running away to fight for the North to help bring an end to slavery during the American Civil War.  It goes on to tell how this shell becomes a symbol of hope for her as she misses her father and worries about him for over two years as they wait to gain their freedom. I had a hard time deciding how to rate this one: it’s a nice little story with nice illustrations, but I still don’t think I can really go so far as to recommend it, as it seems a rather sanitized story to tell about such an ugly, brutal time in American history.