This story of finding a special gift full of inspiration, a gift from the heart, for her mother, Celeste rides on the wind of her dreams into the sky. She rides on the wind and finds such patience and kindness from the sun, moon, and the stars she simply sparkles with delight all through the night. At last it occurs to her the perfect gift was in her flower garden the whole time.

This book is not so much about octopuses* as it is about how the information about octopuses is gathered. At first, this is a little disappointing because the word “Octopus” is in fact larger on the front cover of the book than the word “Scientist”. Plus, there is a photograph of an octopus filling the front cover space. The big colorful photographs of the underwater creatures entice the reader to explore the small font text set around them in three columns. This is not a book many intermediate grade readers would choose to read, but definitely would choose to look through.

Information about octopuses is scattered throughout the book, as it is revealed by the scientists in their long time intensive search for the information. If nothing else, this book demonstrates the slowness of science research. The research team most be formed. The team in this case is well-rounded:  a psychologist, an environmentalist, a behavioral ecologist, and an underwater photographer, all with scuba skills. They want “to find how octopuses decide what to eat… while avoiding being eaten themselves.” (4) They spend much of their time looking for the right locations. Noting where there are octopuses, as well as where there aren’t octopuses. They want two sites for comparison, and a possible third site. Searching for the sites takes up much of their allotted time in this distant location. “For most of our first week, it’s been two steps forward and one-step back–promise and revelation, then disappointment. True, we’re making progress. But it’s been punctuated with frustration.” (38)

Their first study location contains 3 octopuses. The group goes through their protocol and procedures. They survey the habitat, administer the ‘personality test’, and identify the remains of the prey consumed. They will eventually be doing this at the other two sites, all while working underwater. Being underwater has its own problems. Salt water is corrosive to their gear, sound travels faster through water and your hearing is muffled, objects appear larger under water, you have no sense of smell, and you and your work are being jostled by the sea surge.

• *” The plural of octopus is not octopi… it is incorrect because it mixes up two languages. Octopus is a Greek word… Adding i to the end of a singular noun is a Latin practice.” (11)

If you have small children of your own, you may have experienced their feelings at new situations. Author, Ana Crespo, has taken these experiences one at a time and written about them from a small child’s point-of-view in her “My Emotions and Me”  series of  books. On the front cover of each book in the top right-hand corner, there is a ‘Mood-o-Meter’ with the emotion this particular story will be exploring. In J.P. and the Polka-Dotted Aliens,  the emotion is that of being mad.

Little J.P. is happily playing with his monkey mask, in the park on the spaceship big toy, until two little girls in polka-dotted dresses come along. Then, he is mad. J.P. does not like the little girls invading his space, who he sees as polka-dotted blobs, decorating his spaceship with flowers. “I almost screamed. I was so mad,” says J.P. as he stomps his feet. “Then I remembered I am a fun monkey.” Soon the monkey and the aliens are getting along. “We had a fancy outer-space tea party.”

This book could be used by an adult and a child to open up a discuss on being upset, to recall with a child when he was upset and how it was resolved, and because it is written at such a beginning reading level it could be read again and again by the child himself.

Pre-schoolers and young children can transition from being mad to happy again in a short amount of time. Ana Crespo includes her own take on this in “A Note to Parents and Teachers from the Author.” This is taken from her own life experiences and research she has done. She states she is not a behavior specialist of any kind.

If you have small children of your own, you have experienced their feelings at new situations. Author, Ana Crespo, has taken these experiences one at a time and written about them from a small child’s point-of-view in her “My Emotions and Me”  series of  books. On the front cover of each book in the top right-hand corner, there is a ‘Mood-o-Meter’ with the emotion this particular story will be exploring. In J.P. and the Giant Octopus, the emotion is that of being scared.

Little J.P. has never ridden through a drive-thru car wash. Since there is a large octopus on the car wash’s sign and J.P. has been playing about being a shark, J.P. imagines the darkness inside the car wash is part of the ocean. He imagines the flexible scrubbing arms inside the car wash as those of a giant octopus. Fear and terror fill J.P. as his view of the world is covered up with the foaming soap, scrubbing arms, and the scritching scratching sounds. “I almost cried. I was so scared.”  With the loving support of his pet dog sitting next to him,  J.P. states, ” Then I remembered I am a brave shark. I showed my big shark teeth… I made some sharky sounds.” Soon the ride was over. “The giant octopus just wanted to play.”

This book could be used by an adult and a child to open up a discussion on fear, to recall with a child when he is fearful, and because it is written at such a beginning reading level it can be read again and again by the child himself.

Ana Crespo includes her own take on this in “A Note to Parents and Teachers from the Author.” This is taken from her own life experiences and research she has done. She states she is not a behavior specialist of any kind.

Leigh Walls cover illustration of a Cretaceous mosasaur swimming with its mouthful of pointed teeth grabs the viewers attention and screams, “Pick up this book!” I did. I had a hard time putting it down. Dinosaurs are to time travel as Jurassic Park is to Time Machine. What a combination. Hasn’t every dinosaur loving person always wanted to see a real living breathing dinosaur? Here is a book to live just that life vicariously!

It all begins with “Great-Grandpa Pierson, nicknamed ‘Mad Jack’, invents a Chronal Engine”… (time machine), but it can only be operated by remote control. Nate and Brady’s father has “spent most of his days and nights working on it and obsessing over it.” (3) The remote is called a Recall Device and Nate and Brady stumble across one in 1985 (their present time) and active it, traveling back to the Cretaceous Era.

Now the story goes back and forth being told first by Nate and then by Max. Max is Nate’s nephew from our present time. Uncle Nate is now a physicist.

Uncle Nate tells Max and his friend Petra,  “I need you to return to the Cretaceous, find me, and help me get back here. To 1985, actually…I can’t tell you a lot…I don’t think you’ll change the past by knowing what you’re going to do…The less you know, the better. (19)

Nate and Brady transported, in a bass boat, to the Cretaceous by the Recall Device. The Recall Device is dropped into the murky water. When Nate dives into the water to find it so they can return home to 1985, he is bitten by a mosasaur.

Meanwhile, Max and Petra have materialized at Mad Jack’s old island Cretaceous getaway. They begin looking for Uncle Nate, when an unknown someone secretly takes their Recall Device.  Then, while Max and Petra are down on the dock Mad Jack’s generator explodes catching the getaway on fire. Max and Petra quickly rescue as much of the stored supplies as they can before the fire consumes the buildings, taking the supplies down to a canoe at the water’s edge.

As Nate and Brady leave the mosasaur area heading for a narrow channel “on a fallen tree that bridged the channel, was a girl.” ( 43) Mildred, a time traveler they do not know, is looking for Max’s sister Emma. ” ‘My father used to work with Mad Jack Pierson but became afraid that he was becoming unstable and that leaving a time machine in his hands was dangerous. So my father sought out a person from the future who was important in the development of Mad Jack’s Chronal Machine.’ “(53) Mildred gets into the bass boat. Off in the distance they see the smoke from the burning getaway and head toward it.

Max and Petra are paddling their canoe when they encounter triceratops in the water. Their canoe cap-sizes, but they are able to rescue most of the canned food they’d brought from the getaway. Then, they see the bass boat and flag it down.  Brady and Max, two generations of Pierson, enjoy their banter back and forth about the dinosaurs they are encountering. The group decides to find a safe place off of the river to spend the night because it is getting dark. They build a fire in part to cook a fish that Nate has caught earlier in the day and to ward off dinosaurs in the night. They take turns standing watch. Talk around the fire is hard for Max because he is faced with the dilemma of whether or not to tell his Uncle Brady what he knows about Brady’s future. In Max’s future, Uncle Brady has already died. Will Max change the course of history if he tells Brady about his death and Brady then chooses a different path? For now, Max won’t tell Brady anything about the future.  In the morning, both groups, now one, take-off to find great great grandfather’s steamboat which should have a Recall Device on it. Otherwise, they are all trapped in the Cretaceous.

Anyone who has ever been out in the wild knows that anything can happen and often will happen. So it goes as Max, Petra, Nate, Brady and Mildred travel down river in the bass boat.  A herd of hadrosaurs begin to cross the river only to fall prey to the alligator-like deinosuchus in a feeding frenzy. Soon the bass boat and its occupants are being knocked around, when Max and Mildred get thrown from the boat. They make it to shore, but loose sight of the bass boat, which now has a damaged propeller, as well. The two groups each try to establish a plan to rejoin, but which group is further up river? If that isn’t bad enough, a T. rex shows up in Max and Mildred’s path. Max and Mildred are able to back away from the T. rex when a Deinosuchus distracts the T. rex.

Back on the river, Nate, Brady, and Petra come across a VW Beetle left in the Cretaceous on Max and Petra’s last trip there.  Night is falling, each group makes a bonfire to use to cook with, frighten away dinosaurs, and as a signal for the other group. Nate, Brady, and Petra will be walking in the morning because they have discovered a leak in the bass boat. It is now sinking.

Mildred’s true colors emerge after she and Max find the steamboat. On board the steamboat is “a prototype large-scale Recall Device”. (130) Mildred hits Max over the head with a piece of driftwood, then uses the Recall Device without him. Max finds a USB flash drive in the backpack he’s been carrying. It triggers a memory of the VW Beetle, which has a USB drive, and Max sets off to find the VW. He comes across an ankylosaur waving its club-like tail,  he skirts around  it only to find 2 Nanotyrannus. Just as Max gets out of their range, he runs SMACK into Brady, Nate, and Petra.

Back together again, Petra leads the way back to the VW Beetle, Max uses the USB flash drive, and finds directions to a Recall Device. Knowing where the Recall Device is doesn’t mean it will be easy to return back to the present. There are still T. rex to deal with and Nate’s injured leg is giving out, plus he has a fever. Finally, they make it to the Recall Device. When they activate it, it disappears without them.  A T. rex once again has them in its sights. “At that moment, there was a flash of light and a booming sound. In the middle of the creek bed, axle deep in water, a Hummer appeared and turned, blocking the giant theropod’s path. Grandpa Pierson’s Hummer.” (165) Kyle gets them into the Hummer and back to the present.

The story doesn’t end there because Nate needs to get to a hospital,  the T. rex is transported to the present along with the Hummer, there is an old letter from Mildred yet to be read, and one from Uncle Brady, as well.

There may just be another story brewing from great great grandpa Pierson’s Chronal Engine. Readers will just have to wait and see.

This gentle novel thoughtfully explores grief in all its complexity, particularly the difficulty — and necessity — of finding a way to live with the aching hole left by loss and accept uncertainty. THE QUESTION OF MIRACLES is a quiet, character-driven story: It begins after the major dramatic moment in Iris’ life and follows her as she tries to figure out who she is without her best friend at her side.

The main character, Iris, is warm and smart, the kind of kid anyone would want as a best friend, but she’s uncertain of her footing without Sarah’s reassuring presence. She deliberately keeps the world at bay, unready yet to risk letting anything new into her heart. Without sermonizing or offering easy answers, writer Arnold offers comfort by showing how the crucible of grief, as with any major life change, can lead to renewal and growth. Thoroughly entertaining and thought provoking for middle graders, girls as well as boys.

This is book 2 in the Gadgets and Gears series by Kersten Hamilton. In bits and pieces the reader, who has not read book 1, finds out that Iron Claw is a pigeon with an eye that can mesmerize people into doing its bidding and is a member of an evil organization- the Mesmers. The story is being retold by Noodles, the dachshund, the pet of Walter Kennewickett, aka Wally. Wally’s parents- Oliver and Calypso are scientists and Wally is a scientist-in-training. Oliver and Calypso are working for President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) to help save the world. Wally’s parents run the Automated Inn for Oliver’s brother, the family paterfamilias. Noodles uses quite a few ‘BIG’ words like this one and always explains them for the reader, much like in the Lemony Snickett series. The Automated Inn uses what we today might call robots to run the inn. Some of the robots / automatons are extremely human in appearance and dress, while others are not. So begins this mix of historical fiction and science fiction.

The Automated Inn is holding their annual OPEN HOUSE. The local towns folk get to see the new inventions and have a wonderful meal. But this year the OPEN HOUSE is interrupted by an incognito appearance by Iron Claw and Madini of the Mesmers. It turns out they want Nikola Tesla who is working, at his friends Automated Inn, on how to make wireless electrical charging possible. This would be very bad for Thomas Edison’s and Westinghouse’s power companies because Tesla wants to make the power available to everyone for free. The Kennewicketts discover the Mesmer’s plot shortly after Wally’s Human Kite demonstration explodes.  This sets into motion a trip to Italy to save Oliver’s brother from the Mesmers.  The Kennewicketts are flying to Europe in their air vessel, the Daedalus. while avoiding getting Tesla captured by air pirates along the way. ”  ‘ We will save the world by doing what we do best,’ Wally guessed. ‘ Creating and employing technology.’  ” (85) Once in Europe, Oliver and Calypso are mesmerized along with Oliver’s brother, but Wally, Noodles, and the automatons successfully outsmart Iron Claw to save the day.

The Author’s Note states, after the Epilogue, “Nikola Tesla, the ‘Wizard of the West’ who helped the Kennewicketts in this story, was real, though his adventures and some of the inventions in this book are fictional. The ‘war of the currents’ was real too, and Tesla did discover the alternating current that we all use in our homes today… If you’d like to know more about the science and history in The Ire of Iron Claw, or want to exercise you imagination ramp up your research, and polish your problem-solving skills… www.hmhco.com/shop/books/The-Ire-of-Iron-Claw/9780544225022.”   (163-165)

What is it like to live in a warzone? And what if that war isn’t one you’re fighting?  The tiny island of Saipan was caught in the middle of World War II.  Its residents had to navigate tricky relationships with the Japanese and Americans, as the two countries fought their deadly war.  This is the story of two islanders during those events.  Recommended for collections serving young people, particularly because of its unique topic and setting.

It can be hard to make friends when you move to a new town. When Teddy moves to Richland, he finds himself playing with a series of kids who just… disappear.  And you know how strange noises can make it hard to sleep in a new space?  The tree outside of Teddy’s room seems to be getting more aggressive in its scratching against his window.  This relatively slim volume combines horror and historical fiction in a story that will delight and terrify its readers.  Teddy is an accessible everykid, and his plight is believable and eerie.  Recommended as a strong entry into middle grade collections everywhere.

Where does an author get his or her ideas? What is a day in the life of an author like? This picture book helps to answer those questions by way of a dog.

The author in this book works from home. Her dog is there with her from the waking of each day, to her getting dressed, to her writing at her desk and tossing away drafts, to staring out the window at the world outside, until finally it is time for the dog’s walk. Here the dog helps the author come across possible things to write about. Then, they go home for dinner. Sometimes the author gets an idea at night when everyone else is asleep. “So one light comes on. And the author sits up and writes.”  Then one day, “The dog knows something is different.” He gets left at home “because it’s Author Day at Fred C. Underhill School!” with autographs and book signings. The author leaves telling the boys and girls they are all authors, too. Then it is back home to her dog who is waiting for her.

The story is understandable , but the text is halting at times and does not flow well. Steven Henry’s illustrations carry the story along during those times.