Fernie What lives across the street from the mysterious Gloom estate. Gustav’s house is black and odd events take place there. Fernie and Gustav are best friends. In earlier books, Fernie’s mother is off filming adventure stories and her father and sister, Pearlie, were in Gustav’s home when they fell into a bottomless black pit leading to the Dark Country. Gustav’s dad is also missing. It is now up to Gustav and Fernie to find and rescue them from evil Lord Obsidian. They discover a magical carousel in the basement which transports them to amazing, yet curious places. They encounter strange beings that they must outwit in order to repair the carousel and continue on their quest. Illustrations are all in shade of gray, after all, it is Shadowland! This is the fourth adventure of Gustav and Fernie. A quirky, yet interesting story line and strangely captivating. Sure to attract fans of fantasy adventures.
Author Archives: SSBRC Former Member
Starring Jules: Third Grade Debut
Jules is a child star in a TV sitcom. She is starting 3rd grade, has a new teacher, and is trying to figure out just how she fits into things. School has lots of homework, friendships shift on her, and she is having difficulty with her TV character, Jules’s personality is buoyant even when events start to drag her down. The various obstacles she encounters with friends, family and school are realistic and her point of view is common to many third graders. Chapters are labeled as “takes” and the black and white illustrations are humorous. Jules includes many lists (similar to those in the Just Grace series) and the text is large and easy to read.
Friendship Over
Written in journal form, ten year old Celie discloses her worries and opinions about friends and family. She is confused about issues with her ex-best friend, her grandmother is exhibiting Alzheimer symptoms, and her older sister’s new friend is mean and snobbish. Celie’s illustrations, entries, and taped-in notes and e-mails give readers the feeling they are actually reading a real diary. Celie’s views and frustrations are realistic and will have wide appeal among grade school aged girls. This is book 1 in a series. Readers will be looking forward to more of Celie’s diaries.
Ricky Ricotta’s Mighty Robot vs. the Mecha-Monkeys from Mars
Fans of Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series will also enjoy his Ricky Ricotta books. Ricky is a mouse whose best friend is a huge, flying robot. In this adventure, a Martian named Major Monkey plans to conquer Earth with his own gigantic mechanical monkeys. Ricky and his robot are able to outwit Major Monkey and overcome the mecha-monkeys. Also included are the “Flip-O-Rama” actions found in the Captain Underpants books. Dan Santat illustrates this edition with large, colorful artwork. This book was originally published in 2002, illustrated in black and white by Dav Pilkey.
The Discovery
Robert Irwin, son of the late “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, is the co-creator of this series. In The Discovery, Robert finds a dinosaur fossil in the Australian outback. He places it in the back pocket of his shorts while updating his reports. As he stands, he feels a sharp jab and begins to feel dizzy. When he awakes, he is no longer in the lab but back in the cretaceous age of the dinosaurs. He gets an up-close and personal view of creatures that lived in prehistoric Australia. It is one thing to watch dinosaurs hunt or stampede, quite another to be the item on the menu! A mighty roar sends Robert back to the present day with a new knowledge of life millions of years ago. Additional notes about the Australovenator dinosaur, prehistoric Australia and the Australian Museum of Natural History are included in the back. This is a fun, fiction series for those interested in dinosaurs and Australia!
Schools of Hope
Julius Rosenwald was part owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company in the early 1900s. His motto was “Give while you live.” He started giving to mostly Jewish causes when he was young, but one man changed that. Rosenwald meet Booker T. Washington. A former slave, Booker T. Washington believed that the only way for African Americans to achieve equality was to first become self-reliant, productive members of society as laborers. Washington’s idea of self-reliance appealed to Rosenwald. On his fiftieth birthday, Rosenwald gave matching grants to many groups, including a small amount to Washington to help build elementary schools for blacks in the South. He soon discovered the inequities in education faced by blacks in the South. He began giving more more with one stipulation: “each community had to contribute to the building of the school.” The book details how communities raised money, the blueprints for some schools, the prominent African Americans who benefited from the schools and more. More than 600,000 African American children attended Rosenwald schools. An excellent account of a little known segment of history.
Children Growing Up with War
Photojournalist Jenny Matthews begins her book by discussing what it means to be a freelance photographer, how she got started and how she is able to go into conflict zones and do her job. She ends her introduction with the UN Convention Rights of the Child. She uses these rights as an organizational tool; each chapter is devoted to certain rights. Although it might seem disjointed to some, this method allows Matthews to cover a significant number of conflicts all over the world instead of just a few.
Matthews puts a personal face on conflicts. She discusses the expectation that journalists should be objective and neutral, but says she that tries to get as close as she can to her subjects. She tries to listen and observer; she wants to understand what they are going through. Trying to minimize the distance between herself and her subjects serves her well; her photographs are moving. While some of them depict the result of violence, they are not gratuitously violent. Some of them are hopeful.
There are charts with important data intermingled with the photos: how many people are displaced by war, the percentage of refugees who are children, or the percentage of children who are killed or maimed by land mines. At the end of the book, there is a map of countries referred to in the book, a short description of the major conflicts, a glossary and a list of websites for further information.
Minerva Louise
Since this book was originally published, Minerva Louise has appeared in a bouquet of friendly picture books. In this introduction to the character, our hen interprets the sights within a house through the lens of her normal view outdoors. A tricycle is a tractor. A bedspread is a field of flowers. Stoeke effortlessly depicts a friendly way to encounter newness. The illustrations are framed in rough rectangles on white pages, and the text is written in a large font at the bottom of each page. All of the objects are simply drawn, with easy lines and bright colors. A practiced provider of group storytimes will wish each picture filled more of the page (to be more easily seen across a room), but lap-sharing children will enjoy the subtlety, as they get to discover each new misunderstanding. Minerva Louise’s story is a classic in the most deserving sense.
The Last Dragonslayer
Jennifer Strange has found herself the caretaker for a bunch of magicians. Strange lives in an alternate world to our own: magic is mainstream – though fading – and the last dragon’s land is in danger of development. Fforde builds an unexpected version of a magical world. He integrates magic into a version of modern life, and considers the logistics of magic as known quantity. Readers will enjoy the use of language, clever turns of phrase, and winks to the sides of the narrative. Fforde invents some particularly endearing characters, such as the Quarkbeast (for who wouldn’t love a razor-sharp doggish creature?), and imparts wisdom about greed and corporate development, and finding one’s place in the world. This title has broad appeal, and will find a few passionately rabid fans as well.
Scooby-Doo: The Mystery of the Aztec Tomb
Stone Arch Books are bringing back titles where the reader is given about 13 options to choose the plot’s direction.
Scooby-Doo fans are taken on a trip to Mexico in the ‘Mystery Machine’ to help Velma’s uncle, a world famous archaeologist. As the gang enter a pyramid, Daphne touches a stone face releasing a trap door releasing a sloping shaft which splits into 3 tunnels. The reader is given his/her first choice as to which of the three tunnels to follow. “To follow Shaggy and Scooby into a spooky cave, turn to page 12.”
“To follow Daphne into an ancient tomb, turn to page 14.”
“To follow Fred and Velma to an underground city, turn to page 16.” (page 11)
Once the reader makes this first choice he reads a page or two of story before the reader is asked to make another choice. The book continues this way for about 4 or 5 more twists and turns in the story before “THE END” appears.
Author, Laurie S. Sutton, includes typical Scooby-Doo sayings. Some of the story scenarios are predictable if you’ve watched their cartoons and some endings are better than others. This is a quick fun read for intermediate grade readers, especially if they are familiar with the Scooby-Doo Show.
There are 10 full page color illustrations mixed in throughout the book. I was frustrated when I couldn’t make the correct plot choices to get to particular pictures, though.
There is a glossary.
There are, also, two pages of jokes where “YOU CHOOSE which punch line is funniest!”