This is a young child’s board book with lift the flaps and pop-ups.  It has bright, colorful illustrations that are well-balanced and visually pleasing.  The characters are introduced the very first page, with Mr Croc and five of his friends.  On each succeeding page, Mr Croc is invited to come and play and each time he replies he is too busy looking for one of his friends.  The reader must then lift up a variety of flaps and find the friend.  This activity provides good memory skills for the reader as well as naming skills.  Sturdy board pages, but inappropriate for a school library as the flaps always tear.

This book is based on true events in the life of Mark Twain, better known as Samuel Clemens, the writer of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, when he lived in New York City.  In an apartment in NYC, Clemens’ wife had died, his older daughter in a home because of severe depression and grief, and his other daughter and housekeeper lived with him.  He was having great difficulty coping with the loss of  his wife and best friend.  His constant companion was Bambino, a black cat belonging to his institutionalized daughter.  Then one day, Bambino escaped from the house to chase a squirrel and was gone.  Desolate, his grief seemed to worsen.  His daughter put up flyers and newspaper advertisements looking for the cat and offering a generous reward.  People were so worried about Mr. Clemens that many of them brought their own cats for him to have while the search was on for Bambino.  It was this outpouring of love and affection for him which awakened his spirit.  He realized he was wasting his life and got on with it.  He dressed in his traditional white suit and went out into the public for speaking engagements and such.  Life became meaningful again.  A lovely book but I’m not sure who the audience is; children will appreciate his fondness for his cat, but will not recognize his name and fame.  Most adults are familiar with depression but do you write a book like this about it?  Although familiar with Clemens/Twain, I thought it simply to be  a book about a man who was grieving and lost his cat and people showed they cared about him.  Illustrations were okay, but nothing remarkable.

As explained in the introduction by the author, John Yeoman, these folktales are not the common folktales frequently told, but are the older, oral folktales once told somewhere around the world by a storyteller long ago.  The folktales mostly contain magic and it’s either the underdog or the innocent who are the victors.  As the stories are read, one can imagine an old storyteller telling the tale.  The tempo, the language, the outrageousness of the stories, give the illusion of a seasoned storyteller.  This would make an excellent addition to any library and also to any home with children or grandchildren.  Well done!

Every time I read an Amelia Rules! graphic novel, I start it and think it’s a hot mess and the story is all over the place, and this time is no different.  But as I get into the story, there is always some redeeming quality of Amelia that wins me over and I end up enjoying the story.  After messing around in the morning, Amelia is late for school and ends up working with a girl on her enemy list, one whom she absolutely can’t stand.  They have to work on a project about Nancy Reagan only Amelia doesn’t do her part and research who Nancy Reagan even is.  This causes a lot of bickering and name-calling.  They eventually get their project done but it’s terrible and they earn a grade of F-.  Their teacher is so upset with them that they each earn an hour of detention time.  But lo and behold, they actually use the detention time to figure out that they shouldn’t be mortal enemies and it was all a big misunderstanding.  They even go so far as to figure out that the people they hang out with contributed to the misunderstanding.  What they realize is that they actually have a lot in common and become friends.  I just love these Amelia Rules! books because the kids learn about life in such a natural way and I hope that readers of these books can use the advice.

This book gives a synopsis or brief biography of the important people on both sides of the American Revolution, along with an image of what the person looked like.  As a teacher of the American Revolution to fifth graders, I appreciate the format in which the people are laid out as either Patriot, British, or women.  Usually books have everyone lumped together and unless you’re familiar with the names, it’s hard to know which side they were on.  This book makes it very clear who the team players were.

Apples A to Z is an alphabet book demonstrating how each and every letter in the alphabet can relate to apples.  I particularly enjoy the G is for grafting, V is for varieties, and Y is for yield, one I don’t usually see but make sense.  (X and Z are pretty lame, but it always is hard to come up with something for those two letters.)  Also included at the back are ‘apple’ jokes, sayings, and interesting facts.  The illustrations revolve around woodland and farm animals and are enjoyable and pleasing, without being too busy, as seems to be the trend these days.  The book is familiar and calming, as well as giving good information.  This book will be a sure winner with primary grade teachers come every fall and the start of school.

As part of the series, Asian Animals,Tigers gives a brief synopsis of how the continent was formed, the many languages contained therein, countries, culture, and people.  There is a map of where the tigers actually live in Asia and how their habitat is shrinking due to change.  The author mentions that there used to be nine different types of tigers, but that only six remain.  I wish she would have listed and compared the nine types or at least the remaining six types, accompanied with a photo of each type.  Why mention it at all if you don’t plan on showing them more?  The photographs of tigers are beautiful and clear.  The rest of the information is pretty common.