To be quite frank, I found this book a bit insulting to libraries, even though I know that was not the intent.  On the surface it’s a nice little story about a man who knows his town needs a library, and he wonders what he could do to help, and all it seems to take is for him to dig the hole, recruit a carpenter friend to build the walls, a plumber friend to add the pipes, an electrician friend to string the light, and to ask the townspeople to clean out their homes for the extra books they don’t need.  A quality library needs so much more: no mention of qualified staff, furnishings, computers, quality materials…talk about over-simplification.  In the end, I fear it undermines the true value of a quality library.

A shy frog is having a terrible time as her class prepares for their stage production.  Every time she tries to rehearse she is overcome by stage fright, and in the end she finds a way to contribute her own gifts toward the production by creating the scenery.  It’s got cute pictures, but I have mixed feelings about the message it sends: does it unintentionally encourage students to avoid things that take them outside their comfort zone?

The story of a shy little girl going to visit her neighbor who has recently moved into a retirement home.  On her first visit Lily hides behind her mother and refuses to say hello, but over the course of several visits she begins to make friends among the residents of the home, and by the end she’s celebrating her birthday with them. The illustrations are bright and cheerful and convey the distinctly Jewish features of the characters.  The book is not about being Jewish — its plot line is universal — it just happens to be set among a Jewish community, a group that has sometimes been left out of the wider trend toward multi-culturalism in children’s literature.

I’m not a fan of graphic novels. I picked this one up because I know I have a lot of students who are fans, but then I put off reading it because I didn’t want to have to.  Then it turned out I liked it.  A work of historical fiction set during the Napoleonic wars, it tells the story of a young boy on his first voyage with a British war ship.  The characters and the plot are well developed, and sidebars on each page provide definitions and context for historical references, and I’ve decided that graphic novels provide a particularly good format for introducing students to unfamiliar historical periods because the illustrations give them a visual of what it was like.

It’s not that there’s anything bad about the book.  It’s kind of clever in it’s own way: it’s basically a thinly disguised get-ready-for-the-changes-that-come-when-there’s-a-new-baby-in-the-house book.  The difference here is that the unasked for surprise that mom and dad brought home is a bear.  Some problems are the same (broken toys, busy parents); some changes are different (a bear can lift him up to see in the mirror and hold a broken tree branch).  The thing is there are so many of these books out there, and a library really only needs so many, and I think there are better ones.

This is a splendidly gorgeous re-telling of the traditional tale.  The paper is heavy, quality paper.  The illustrations are stunning.  The characters have personality.  It’s all together delightful.

So I only made it an additional purchase because it is yet another new-baby-arriving-in-the-family book, and I guess you really only need so many of those, but if you’re not overloaded already, and are looking for another title along these lines, this is a good one.  I almost gave it a full-fledged recommendation.  Most of the book is dedicated to a little brother telling about all the things his big brother can do.  Along the way he refers to a secret they share, and in the end it turns out that the little brother becomes a big brother.

The main character is already familiar to students.  The illustrations are vibrant and inviting.  The text is simple and straightforward.  The story manages to endorse reading and prepare young readers for a new baby in the family at the same time.  It’s a good combo.

Because just a few sentences of text on each page are accompanied by large color photos supporting the text, this book is a good tool for emergent readers.  Because all text is presented in both English and Spanish, it is good for language learners.  Often I find it a handicap when a non-fiction book is intended for emergent readers, because I find them light on information, but because this is a topic about which students often have little understanding, this volume is sufficient to give them a brief overview of how igloos are constructed, by whom, and why they are designed as they are. I learned several things myself.

A very basic volume for young readers that gives a general overview of how bodies work, presented in both English and Spanish.  Color full-page photos are accompanied by just a few sentences of text.  Useful for beginning readers and language learners, but not super informative.  For some kinds of information, diagrams of the inside of the body would have been more helpful in supporting the text than the photos provided.