Published in England, The Queen & Mr. Brown, refers to Queen Elizabeth and her Corgi, Mr. Brown.  On a bad weather day, the Queen decides to walk to the Museum of Natural History to spend the day.  Mr. Brown isn’t so happy to go out into the weather.  At the museum, there is a dinosaur display which they find interesting.  The illustrations in this book are reminiscent of the Madeline series.  Information about a few dinosaurs, such as bone length, are given, as well as the cause of their extinction.  The Queen falls asleep on a bench and has a funny dream, then awakens and walks home with Mr. Brown.  A gentle story that appeals to young listeners.

Willow discovers that there is more to a book than jut what is written on the page.  When she uses her imagination Willow is able to find ANOTHER story inside the one in her book.  Detailed and delicate color illustrations entice readers to use their imagination with this story as well as any others they may have read.

I highly recommend this picture book for all ages and levels.  It is both entertaining and enlightening.

Colorful pen and ink pictures are found in each 2 page spread adding depth and dimension to this version of the classic fairy tale about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Detailed historical information is included in the Afterword information at the end of the text.  It includes speculation that the Pied Piper story may have been created to disguise an attack of the plague.

This book would be a great addition to a picture book or fairy tale collection.

When their grandmother dies, 17 year old twins Violet and Luke continue to live in her crumbling house on a cliff above the Atlantic Ocean.  While the kids try to keep up with the overdue house repairs, utilities and food costs their artist parents leave them abandoned and without funds.  To get money for basic survival Violet ends up renting the guest house to the new stranger in town who also happens to be only 17 – River West.

With River’s arrival strange and unusual things start happening around town including sightings of the “devil” in the cemetery.   River seems to have the ability to make others see what he wants and not only does he confuse Violet but she thinks she may be falling in love with him.  Could he be the “devil” that towns people are seeing?

The story has violence mixed with witchcraft and some minor adult language.  Overall it was a very good read.  I would have preferred a different ending!

— review by student Taylor H.

For those familiar with DC Super Heroes, this may just be the Green Lantern book for you. “ Hal [Jordan, aka Green Lantern] had been assigned the task of overseeing the signing of a peace treaty between the planet Juray and the planet Talesca.” (page 5) The two delegates are squabbling and Hal is refereeing. Along comes a third party, the Yellow Lantern, who secretly traps both the Talescian’s and the Juran’s fleets  inside a “net made of yellow energy beams” inside an asteroid belt where they can’t be seen. (page 14). Both delegates are even more outraged with the other side than before. Enter the Orange Lantern. Now the Green Lantern and the Yellow Lantern work together because “There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring people together.” (p. 26) The Orange Lantern losses the fight, the Talescian and the Juran fleets are released and their delegates are now beginning to work together. Hal’s job is done, at least, for the time being.

Graphic novel and comic book readers will enjoy the quality of the 9 full page illustrations and the 15 – 1960s style Batman television show graphic onomatopoeia  words interspersed through out the book’s five chapters in this hybrid between graphic novel and traditional short chapter book.

Primary grade readers will see a variety of stem types in this introductory book on plants. What seems so obvious to us as adults is an eye opener to young children. This seems to become more true everyday as we become more urban, especially for children living in apartments without yards. In this 8′ X 7″ book, the top 5 inches of each page is a color photo of a plant  with the bottom 3 inches of the page containing one or two sentences typed  in a bold large font.

Page 10 states, “ Stems move water and food around a plant.”   Then on the last page of the book, below the Index, in the Notes for Parents and Teachers section in small font is the activity for demonstrating this by placing a freshly-cut white carnation into a vase of water with food coloring added to it. I hope children do not miss out on this activity, though I fear they will. This activity holds fond childhood memories for me.

At our school we call it The Giving Tree and needy families tie a slip of paper with their wants and needs they’d like for Christmas.  Our staff and other families pretty much fulfill every want and need on that tree.  It makes for a happy Christmas for both those who receive and who give.  The Angel Tree is the same concept, only it’s for the whole town.  Before Christmas a fully decorated tree would appear in the town square, no one knowing who it was that was responsible.  Townspeople wrote their Christmas wishes and tied them to the tree, and by Christmas each wish was granted, regardless of difficulty or cost.  Of course, there’s a mystery in and of itself as to who started all this benevolence.  And as with our giving tree, The Angel Tree is no different–you don’t see the struggles simply by looking at people.  The Christmas spirit isn’t just stuff, it’s family, and The Angel Tree shows us just how important family is to us.  Having wishes granted and having a good mystery to solve makes for good reading.

Well-known jewel thief, Alfie McQuin, has lots of secrets.  The biggest one is that he has twin 12-year-olds, a boy and a girl, who don’t know about each other.  Alfie falls to his death before he can reunite his family.  His son, March, who was his accomplice, must work together with newfound friends and sister, to sort through the cryptic messages and momentos left by Alfie, in order to move on.  There is a lot of action going on in this book.  Watson does a great job in giving bullets of information and moving the story in short chapters.  There isn’t a lot of text describing everyone and everything, just what the reader needs to know to follow the story.  The result is a ‘can’t wait to turn the page’ type of thriller.

A companion to Jokes for Boys, Jokes for Girls has jokes and humor that isn’t too dated or too British.  The humor is more geared for girls and, I believe, funnier because it isn’t so obvious.  The table of contents helps to guide the reader as to subject matter.  The book itself is stereotypical because it is purple (the boy’s book is blue) and the image of the girl on the cover as well as a small amount of illustrations is circa 1950’s.  It seems to be that this image on the cover would limit checkouts only to girls.  Maybe no image would be best as well as a generic cover color.

Jokes for Boys is a British product with humor more oriented towards sports but with all subjects included, including gross humor.  The book measures 5 1/2 inches by 8 inches and is well bound, a great size for kids to carry around.  Some jokes are for older readers (those with a long memory for events) and many jokes use British vocabulary which will leave young American readers not getting the punchline.