Kyle is riding the bus for the first time and has been instructed by his big brother on what to do to survive the bus ride.  There were 10 rules he must absolutely not break if he is to survive the school bus ride.   As Kyle rides the bus he ends up breaking most all of the rules and is waiting for someone to pound him or laugh at him.  As he rides he finds the school bus is not so bad.

When Kyle gets home at the end of the day he realizes that there is a rule eleven:  Never. absolutely never, pay attention to your big brother’s list of Ten rules You Absolutely Must not Break if You Want to survive the School bus!

The Illustrations are beautiful.  I love the perspective, the colors and the softness of each one.

Most children don’t understand when an elderly person is grumpy and the children don’t want to be around them.  In this book the little boy doesn’t like to go to grandpa’s house because Grandpa is grumpy and scary.  There is not much to do at Grumpy Grandpa’s house and you have to be quite and careful.

One day Granpa takes the little boy with him to the lake.  You have to be very quite when you fish, so it isn’t much fun.  Then the boy stands up in the boat to run away and they both land in the water.  Grumpy Grandpa starts to laugh.  The boy is surprised.  Grandpa realizes that may be he has forgotten how it is to be little.

This is a good book about two different families from different times in history and both traveling from Missouri, to Oregon City.  One family is from 1846 and the other from NOW.

This book takes you on an interesting trip with both families.  In 1846 it would take you five months to travel from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City.  Today it would only take 5 days to travel the same trip.

This is a fun way to learn about the history of our country.

Right away, the reader is drawn into this book by the wonderful cover illustration which is dramatic and amazingly detailed.  Quickly paging through, we find beautiful and expressive black and white sketches to enhance the text on almost every page.  This fictional story is framed in the factual setting of Edgar Allan Poe’s childhood.  Orphaned at age 3, Poe went to live with Frances and John Allan who raised him as their foster son.  As Eddie grew, he discovered his talent for imaginative writing, particularly poetry focused on the macabre.  With a rich fantasy life, his constant companion is a little imp who whispers fearful imaginings into her ear constantly through day and night and a trustworthy raven who provides sensible balance to the imp’s constant rants.  One night during an especially alarming nightmare, Eddie wakes to finds he has sleepwalked outside to the neighbor’s chicken yard and is suddenly accused of bagging and hanging up his cat and the neighbor’s prize rooster.  Faced with a whipping by his foster father the following day, he must prove himself innocent.  His detective adventures take him to the local theater where he eventually solves the mystery and makes a very special friend.  The writing of this book is rich with descriptive language and pulls the reader in to turn page after page.  I really enjoyed this book and will highly recommend it to my 4-8th grade readers.

Pandora Gets Lazy is the third book in this series following Pandora Gets Jealous and Pandora Gets Vain.  Featuring Greek Gods, myths and characters from Greek ancient history, this book continues the adventures of Pandora who is attempting to recapture all the evils which has she accidentally released from the box.  On  her way to find the evil Lazy, she falls from Apollo’s flying chariot and is rescued by Dionysus.  Her friends carry on in the chariot, fearing that Pandora is dead.  All the main characters are eventually captured by slavers who force march them to the mountains where Atlas is supposed to be holding up the heavens.  Only he’s not and is forcing thousands of human men to do the job for him.  Within 4 days, each man is crippled and spent and replaced with fresh slaves.  The action in this book is steady throughout and comes to a climax in the final scenes as Pandora is faced with rescuing her friends and saving the world.  I enjoyed reading this book and think it will especially appeal to girls 5th – 8th grade.  The characters speak like modern day teens, although all the book’s setting is ancient Greece, which I found a bit distracting as a reader.  Overall, I recommend this book and find that it is already popular in our K-8 school library.

This is a keeper!  This one needs to be nominated for the Washington Children’s Picture Book Award for 2012-2013 school year.  Janet Stevens does it again, knocks one out of the ballpark.  The main characters of this story are the tools that you would find on a teacher’s desk: scissors, stapler, pushpin, etc. and of course, the infamous “red pen” used for correcting papers.  One night pen works late into the night and asks for help from the other tools, who do not wish to participate in the correcting of papers.  Then the accident.  Pen accidently falls off in to the “the pit of no return” aka the trash can.  The other tools work together, in  a clever and cooperative manner, which also includes the classroom hamster, to rescue our hardworking pen.    Great personification of common, everyday objects, found on a teacher’s desk.  Kids and adults alike with delight in this story.  Wonderful, large, colorful illustrations by Susan Stevens Crummel.  (yes, the author and illustrator are related to each other).

In Biggest vs. Smallest, Susan K. Mitchell compares animals much like the birds- an ostrich  to a hummingbird. BUT Mitchell compares a Komodo dragon to a dwarf gecko, a Goliath frog to a Brazilian gold frog, and an anaconda to a Lesser Antillean threadsnake.  While I’ve known of Komodo dragons and anacondas for 30 or more years, this book is quite up-to-date since the dwarf gecko (which can fit on a dime) was only discovered in 2001 and the Lesser Antillean threadsnake (which is as thin as pencil lead and can fit on a quarter) was discovered in 2008.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple are each given a 2-page spread of their own, plus: brown, white, and black.

Each spread has an object photographed against a white background accompanied by the color word and the name of the object ( red bike, yellow duckling). Each object fills the page nicely giving the reader a sense of texture through its up-close detail.

7  1/2″ x 6  1/4″

An observant little girl enjoys seeing the many changes occurring during the coming of spring “in my backyard.”

There are ten 2-page spreads. Each one with the following pattern:  _____________________ in my backyard.

Example: Trees have buds in my backyard. Other subjects include: frogs, ants, birds, seeds, ladybugs, flowers, squirrels, spiders, and ducks.

Illustrator, Erin O’Leary Brown’s soft watercolors show the contemplation of the little girl as she moves through different parts of her backyard. Just as spring doesn’t arrive in day, neither do the girl’s observations because she is wearing a variety of different hair styles and apparel.

Parent & Child activities related to spring are included, such as, fingerplay, sorting & classifying, fill -in-the-blanks, and a maze.

This is a great book that tells how the dirt roads have turned into the interstate and highway system that we have today.   It goes from the construction of the National Road to the railroads and the better roads for the bikes and cars that were invented.  It shows how as new inventions come along we have to accommodate them.

The pictures are wonderful and help to illustrate the material that is talked about.