The cartoonish sketches and simple, yet direct story do a a good job of making a political statement about the silliness of war.  When this grumpy little king is pouting about not being big and powerful enough, his advisors suggest he start a war to gain fame and stature, so he readies his troops and sends them forth with the order to attack.  When his soldiers declare they are ready to follow their king into war, they look around and realize he’s not actually there, but back at the castle having tea. The soldiers from both sides collected their respective kings handed them weapons and stood them facing each other, but the two kings were too scared that they might get hurt, so everybody goes home and the war is over.  Wouldn’t it be nice if all wars were handled so directly?  I’m not actually sure what grade to recommend this for, as it might best suit as a discussion starter in a high-school world problems class.

I wish I could give this book a stronger recommendation.  The text is rather lyrical and poetical, speaking of dreams and hopes for peace, and the soft flowey illustrations suit the text.  If you wanted to support a unit of study on Afghanistan or interpreting creative writing, this could be a worthy choice.  I just wish it had some sort of forward to place it in context so that it would stand alone better with young readers.  Students will need to be given some background, in order to make meaning from this book.

Well, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to call these mysteries.  They’re word problems. They’re good word problems (real-world situations, all the necessary information provided, but leave the solver to figure out what to do with the information, well explained), but still, they’re word problems.  Twelve story problems are put forth, each on it’s own page, and on the reverse of that page the answer is preceded by an explanation of one way to solve the problem.  It does what it’s trying to do well, so if you’re looking to fill a niche like this, I could recommend this title, but I don’t imagine it’s likely to have a lot of circulation, as it is unlikely students will self-select it, and most teachers already have an arsenal of materials they draw from.  Also, I do wish they would have made more of a point of stating that the solutions offered represent one way to think about the situation, rather than just presenting it as THE solution.

Well, I’m not overly fond of the illustrations — they’re a bit on the drab side, but the story is even more drab: neither believable nor interesting.  When the princess refuses to sleep (at all, ever) no one in the kingdom can sleep, so they bring in all sorts of folks who try all sorts of things, from singing to stories to counting sheep, and nothing works.  Then the prince rolls into town, shouts “Silence,” the princess falls asleep and the prince falls in love.  The end.

What a beautiful bedtime story!  The illustrations are charming and delightful.  The story is something every child can relate to: a little girl who doesn’t want to go to bed.  As her parents tuck her into bed, she asks if everything sleeps, and they discuss several different animals and the way they sleep.  She insists she’s still not sleepy, but as she emulates each of the animals they discussed, she gently drifts off.

It’s a simple, sweet, charmingly illustrated story about a Mama duck who went for a walk with her little ducklings one day, but the little ones fell through the gaps in a storm drain.  Luckily the problem is noticed by some friendly humans who work together to rescue the ducklings and send them on their way. I’ve got two gripes with the story that keep it from getting a higher rating: 1) it feels like it’s trying to be the next Make Way for Ducklings, but it falls a little short, and 2) the cover declare it to be a “true rescue story,” but though it may be based on a true story, as soon as the author starts interpreting Mama Duck’s quacking to represent human speech, it stops being able to claim the “true story” label.

What a fabulous, fun book, about punctuation and about being yourself.  This charming story, told in simple sentences, on pages that resemble that rail-road track paper on which kids are first taught to print, tells of young Exclamation Mark’s struggles to fit in with a bunch of periods.  He tries all sorts of things to try to be like the others, until he meets Question Mark:  when Question Mark arrives on the scene, he is of course full of nothing but questions; he asked so many questions that Exclamation Mark is driven to shout out for the questions to stop.  So surprised by his own shout, he starts to experiment and finds all sorts of ways he can contribute to the vibrancy of language.

Oh, I’m so sorry to have to give this book a negative rating.  Usually I am a fan of Gary Schmidt’s books, and I was really looking forward to reading this one, but I had to slug my way through it, and I don’t imagine many of my students would stick with it much beyond the first chapter.  I think maybe Sci-Fi/Fantasy is not Gary’s strong suit.  The story is told in alternating chapters, with part of the story told on another planet in turmoil, and part in contemporary New England, with a family in a bit of turmoil themselves.  With the Valorim facing their impending doom, in a last ditch to preserve all the good and beauty of their world, a locket is fashioned that contains all their arts, and launched out into the universe; when it lands in Tommy Pepper’s lunch box, it begins to exude its influence over him, so that he finds himself suddenly able to do all sorts of things he never could before. Tommy’s story is actually pretty good, but the ending isn’t really satisfactory enough to make it worth slugging through all the other chapters to get there: the chapters set in Weoruld Ethelim are so heavily riddled with invented vocabulary unique to this planet, without enough supporting English text to give them meaning through context, that the reader is left puzzled and these chapters become a chore to read as one must struggle to make meaning of them. There is a glossary in the back, but few students are going to willingly look up so many unfamiliar words, and besides, doing so interrupts the flow of the story (not that there’s much flow in these chapters).  The five-finger rule tells kids if they run into five words on the first page that give them trouble, that book might be too hard for them.  I ran into five such words in the first two sentences.

This is the second book in a companion series, which serves as a prequel to the Charlie Bone books, giving readers the back story on who the Red King was and where he came from.  The characters are likable, the plot is engaging, and the book manages to avoid one of my pet peeves with series books: in a brief prologue and snippets explained as they pop up in the story, the author manages to explain enough of what happened in the first book in the series so that this story manages to stand alone: readers (like myself) who pick up this book without having read the first book in the series will still be able to enjoy the story independently — though they may find themselves intrigued enough to want to seek out the other book, they won’t be lost reading this one.

The patriotic color scheme, the illustrations (some photos and some drawings), and the way the text is formatted with lots of headings and captions, all serve to make the book visually appealing and non-intimidating.  The tone of the text is chatty and conversational, which helps to draw the reader in.  And the content of the book, focused as it is on the children and families who’ve lived in the White House, builds a connection between young readers and history.  Rather than being organized chronologically, it is organized around themes such as what it’s like to always live in the spotlight, what the house itself was like, and what were some of the perks and problems that came along with living in the white house.  Appendices in the back put the presidents and first ladies into chronological order and tell snippets of what happened to White House Kids after they left the White House.  It’s informative, approachable, and interesting.