Boxers, long johns, trunks, and underpants!  The rhymes in this book describe the undergarment preferences of the occupants of a zoo obsessed with underthings.  The animals are illustrated in goofy bright colors, and depicted in semi-realistic zoo settings.  While some of the rhymes are clumsy and there are better examples of adjacent themes, the illustrations are engaging and silly and will pull in readers.  Librarians and teachers will likely choose other titles for group sharing, but this title will attract individuals who enjoy giggling at ridiculous pictures of animals in underwear.

My kids grew up with Franklin, and he was one of their best friends.  Franklin had fears just like all kids and learned how to deal with it, and in doing so, taught other kids how, also.  This book has beautiful, fresh illustrations.  Also included is a copy of Paulette’s first manuscript, a copy of Brenda’s storyboard, and some history of the series.  It’s a beautifully bound book perfect for the younger kiddos in the library.

I began taking my children to museums when they were young, because I believed it helped their creativity, imagination, and understanding of the world.  I wish I had this book during that time, because it explains so nicely how the museum works.  Did You Know factoids appear in colored bubbles on every other page.  In the back, the book mentions how to make a museum of your own, explaining who you are.  I guess that how I can explain the boxes of stuff I’ve kept for each of my children.

This book teaches language, but in a very round about way.  This non-fiction book, aka picture book, has monsters as the theme and different ways they can walk.  The purpose is to understand that words can have the same meaning, but words also convey attitude and intensity.  This book would be good to use in teaching writing and word choice.  The very last page explains this well.  The illustrations are engaging and highly detailed.

This is book number six of this series, so someone must like them, however, I find that hard to believe.  This story goes all over the place.  The first scene is the pet shop owner is no longer selling pets and instead is purchasing odd supplies for odd animals.  No wonder he’s going out of business.  Then, as he needs to sign for a delivery, he can’t find the pen that’s obviously behind his ear, and calls it a store robbery.  C’mon, kids aren’t that easily entertained or fooled.  This is a waste of ink and paper.

For little girls who love fairies and love to draw, this is the perfect book for them.  Curto shows a step-by-step process to create four different fairies in different poses and includes pages of specific hairstyles and clothing.  Also included are how-to-draw various foods, butterflies, birds, and accessories.  Curto’s process shows how to look at common objects and view them from different angles. The step-by-step drawing techniques  make drawing successful and  pleasurable.   This will be a popular drawing book in our school.

Alphabest is a language book/picture book meant to help children learn how to use comparative adjectives.  The picture book portion is how it is arranged, giving alphabetic examples in a picture book format.  The setting is at circus or carnival and gives illustrations of each adjective, comparative and superlative of one specific word.  In a few of the examples, you can’t really tell the difference between the comparative and the superlative.  However, kids will be drawn to the illustrations and enjoy them.

This is a great non-fiction book all about ‘wolf’ spiders–who would’ve known that there are around 2,400 species of just wolf spiders.  Wolf spiders differ from regular spiders in how they catch their food.  Regular spiders spin a silky web and wait for it’s prey to become trapped.  Wolf spiders hunt food and jump on them and inject them with venom; they use their silk to line their homes.  This amazing book gives detailed information, and within the text, there are words written in red that can be found in the glossary in the back of the book.  When you open to a page, you’ll find one page of text and the other page a full-page photograph, showing the most minute details of the wolf spider.  Also is included an interesting factoid or caption info.  I am anxious to check out the other 40 non-fiction books about animals in this series.  They would make an excellent addition to any school library.

Frank, the frog, noticed that his pond and the stream which feeds it, has got garbage and an oil slick floating on it.  He turns into ‘Superfrog’ and jets off to find the source of the pollution.  His presence is noticed by masses and masses of children, who follow him.  He goes to the head guy of the factory giving off the most black smoke and tells him to ‘stop spoiling our pond,’ and threatens him with some of his own pollution. The intent to stop pollution is a commendable one, but it falls short when Superfrog propels himself with his own natural gas and threatens the head guy with an expulsion of gas.  The meaningful lesson turns into a gag and detracts from the cause.

Science facts made fun through visual humor! The mummies in this book aren’t your parents’ quiet ones. These mummies are full of life and so- full of vibrations and sound!

Let’s begin with the book’s cover, “Walk Like an Egyptian” is most likely the song this mummy is strolling to as he listens to his walkman through his big headphones.

The book is divided into five easy chapters. Chapter One – ‘What is Sound ‘  includes a graphic of three mummies toasting marshmallows around a campfire with the boxed caption, ” Energy is the ability to do work. Without energy, plants couldn’t grow. Fires couldn’t burn, and mummies couldn’t do… whatever mummies do.” From there- vibration, molecules, and the speed of sound is introduced with memorably humorous illustrations of mummies discovering  facts of sound transmission. Chapter Two – “Picking Apart Sound” covers: volume, decibels, frequency, pitch, and hertz. Chapter Three – “Sound on the Move covers: absorb, reflect, refract, and vacuum. Chapter Four – “Making Sounds, Hearing Sound” covers the biology of hearing with organ, eardrum, and cochlea. And in Chapter Five- “Sound All Around” the uses for sound, such as, sonar are introduced.

Includes three questions in a section entitled, “Critical Thinking Using the Common Core” , but no immediate answers are given. Page numbers are given referring to the item in question, as well as, (Key Ideas and Details) and (Integration of Knowledge and Ideas).