Professor Von Skalpel lives in Monster Manor with some unique and interesting creatures. Professor Von Skalpel tries out his new monster glue and creates a new monster that ends up losing its body parts all over the place because the glue is not affective. Add in a grumpy and selfish wolf man and the manor creatures start to complain! However, Professor Von Skalpel invents a new glue and creates a nice, new monster named Momo who straightens out the wolf man. Although the plot is simplistic, it is a fun read with the doctor’s Transylvanian accent, a skeleton with a lisp, and quick, silly humor. This series is a great option for reluctant readers.

When four 12 year old kids accept the challenge to individually join the candy making contest to create the best candy of all time, they are in for a big surprise as they become friends and learn how their lives have intertwined in the past. They also learn of secrets that each one has been holding on to. Logan, the candy maker’s son has severe scars covering his face and arms. Miles, who has unique “allergies” to row boats and the color pink, has been dealing with a death of a young girl. Daisy has been a child spy her entire life and has been hired to steal the candy maker’s secret ingredient. Phillip, the snobby, rude kid (who is ultimately responsible for Logan’s scars)must deal with his business-oriented father who is preparing a hostile take-over of the entire candy factory. If only it were that simple…  Although the story has a fun plot, I believe it could have been condensed, leaving out many insignificant details.

Is Amelia a secret agent, like she says she is, or does she just fall into all of these situations involving ‘evil geniuses and criminal masterminds‘? Whichever the case, she saves the day, A LOT! Did I forget to mention she is still in grade school?  In Book #2, she solves three cases: The Case of the Zombie Cows, The Case of the Perilous Pipe, and The Case of the Creepy Cakes. The ‘zombie cows’ are part of a plot to take over the horse racing world. The ‘perilous pipe’ is a plot to use THE PIPED PIPER’S pipe to hold the school children for ransom. And the ‘creepy cakes’ is a plot to make the general public all over-weight so two twin sister, former super models, will be able to get back into modeling.

English author and illustrator- Michael Broad successfully pulls off Amelia’s secret agent ploy with illustrations on every page.

True Scooby-Doo fans will enjoy this predictable story line.

Scooby and Shaggy get tricked into going to the Himalayas “Professor Jeffries, an archaeologist searching for the lost city of Shangri-La…” is really up to no good. A yeti shows up who, of course, is a person in disguise. “Row reature?” … “Rikes!”   And Velma, Daphne, and Fred arrive in time to help save the day.

The title is  a bit misleading, as all but one of the places in this book are on the the North American continent.

“Read on to learn about some of the world’s spookiest places-then decide for yourself if hauntings are fact or fiction.” (p. 5)

In 7 mini chapters, usually no more than 4 pages long including photos, Matt Chandler describes six different characteristics of haunting: Chapter 2-Ghostly Figures, Chapter 3- Unexplained Noises, Chapter 4- Extreme Temperatures, Chapter 5- Moving Objects, Chapter 6- Mysterious Music, and Chapter 7- Repeating the Past. First, he writes a brief description of the phenomenon followed by a noted example of the phenomenon. The book will induce a creepy feeling even for skeptics.

Includes a glossary, index, and FactHound safe Internet web site.

As Simon celebrates his fourteenth-and-a-half birthday by getting his first pair of eye glasses strange things begin to happen to him. “There are a lot of stories about the power of a full moon, but I haven’t heard anything about the effects of a new moon.” (p. 6) Over the next few nights, Simon’s body transforms one item per night, then returns to normal by the morning: first night equals a tail, second night -paws, third night -ears, and so on. Simon  foils a burglary on a night after his full transformation and shares the events with a mythology loving friend Ricardo.  “I barely believe it myself , “Simon admitted. “I used to only read about mythology. Now… I am mythology.” (p. 51)

Nine chapters of high interest with easy reading for reluctant older students. Includes ‘Discussion Questions’ and ‘Writing Prompts’.

Oops – typo on page 32  “saiad” should be said.

Transitional readers will enjoy the large font statement in this factual book followed by the smaller font detail bubbles.

“It can make a loud trumpeting sound.

Trumpeting is not the only sound elephants make. They can also bark, growl, and snort.”

Readers will, also, enjoy the photos of elephants, shot in the wild, with their mud encrusted skin, whiskers under their mouth, close-ups of their feet, the end of their nose, and playing in the river.

Hubie’s school is going to have a carnival. “If we raise enough [money], we can have a real, live author come to our school. If we don’t, maybe we could afford a not-so-alive author.” So begins Mike Thaler’s  10 chapters of the antics at the Black Lagoon . The humor is fast paced with word play much like in THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH. Thanks to Jared Lee the pages are full of visual comic book  humor stretching even further the laughs per page. Hubie’s class booth turns out to be a dunk tank with aqua-phobic Hubie on the ‘hot seat’. The class makes tons of money because the crowd is throwing ping-pong balls at the mouse trap trigger of the target. Guess who /what eventually trips the lever? A mouse, of course. The school can afford an author, who just turns out to be none other than Mike Thaler.

If you were born in the sea, and lived your whole life by the sea, surrounded only by those quirky characters who are somewhat broken and can only exist by the sea, then it seems that your whole belief system, what you know to be true,  is based on the fractured lives of those around you.  So it is for a 10-year-old girl, born in the sea by a laughing, footloose and fancy free young woman, named Meggie Marie.  Meggie Marie is irresponsible and irrepressible, and when her daughter is three, she swims off, literally, yelling to her housemate, “Keep her!”  Signe, the housemate, is a mere 18 years old and suddenly becomes mother to the girl, now known as ‘Keeper.’  Signe came to live with Meggie Marie as a 15-year-old runaway, who needed freedom from her family.  She was there at Keeper’s birth.  Trying her best to do right by Keeper, Signe perpetuates the myth that Keeper is a ‘merchild,’ born in the sea, and her mother, a mermaid.  Keeper listens and learns all about sea lore from neighbors and friends, and believes she herself has a special connection to the sea.  On a day when everything in the world seems to go wrong, Keeper sets out, with her dog, in a small boat to go to the sandbar where she believes her mermaid mother waits for her.  Things continue to go wrong; the tide, the waves, the darkness, the time, until Keeper experiences memories and fears when she realizes her mother wasn’t a mermaid, she has no special connection with the sea, and that her mother abandoned her.  She realizes it is really Signe who is her real family.  Exhausted and unable to stay awake any longer, Keeper succumbs to sleep.  While dozing, a merman (with a connection to one of those quirky neighbors) pushes her small boat to safety and rescues her dog.  Appelt does a good job with character development, and although the story moved at a decent pace, it took pages and pages for it to do so.  It is 399 pages, however, half of those are pretty much white space.  A poignant story of how we should not fabricate stories of lost loved ones.  The truth, no matter how painful, is necessary in order to survive.

This 1989 picture book story tells of mother, father, and young daughter traveling to a small farm in autumn to pick a bushel basket of apples from the orchard and a pumpkin from the vine for Halloween. As the story ends, mother is giving the apples* away to trick-or-treaters, while on the following page the daughter is given a candy bar for her trick-or-treating fun.

Simple illustrations with just enough detail to please the eye of young and old alike.

* I enjoy fresh apples, but does anyone give them out for Halloween anymore?