This book is entertaining, full of funny elementary student antics and characters. With friendship and sibling themes set in a school environment, many students will be able to relate to the plot and characters. The book had a satisfying ending as a rather alienated student begins to make some friends and relate to others in her class. The cover of the book represents the content well and attracts readers. We have several books from this series in our library and they are popular with our 2nd and 3rd grade readers. Accelerated Reader test level is 3.3 worth 2 points. I recommend this series to school librarians.

This was a light little mystery about some neighborhood boys just out on summer vacation.  Set in a poor urban neighborhood these boys find themselves low on activities when the local basketball hoop is vandalized.  Determined to help the authorities discover the vandals, these boys band together, form a club, build a clubhouse and search for clues.  I found the writing to be a bit forced and choppy, with characters pigeonholed into stereotypes.  I give it an additional purchase rating and do not plan to purchase any more in this series.  The cover illustration was well done and engaging.

This book is an excellent resource for the reader who is interested in dance and choreography.  The coverage of topics is shallow but broad, giving a good overview of the field.  The history of dance, popular dances in a variety of cultures and famous choreographers are briefly described.  The choreography process as well as experiential and educational requirements for a Choreographer are outlined.  Resources to learn more as well as an index and glossary are in the back.  The layout of the text and the illustrations engage the reader and compliment the content.

Tom Brady is on his way to the Football Hall of Fame, no doubt about it.  In this sports books, Brady’s career is highlighted and all of his accomplishments are summarized.  Brady has done an excellent job in his chosen profession.  Again, however, the name of this series is “A Football Star Who Cares,” and out of 48 pages, only the last two and a half pages of text refer to his humanitarian efforts.  Brady does indeed help the needy in many ways.  My gripe is just that if the title refers to caring, why isn’t that the focus of the book?

This book has 11 different recipes from 11 different countries around the world.  Llanas has included an ingredient list and tool list for each recipe, plus a colorful picture of each food.  Llanas has included a map for the location of each country as well as some interesting information.  The recipes look and sound delightful.  My only comment would be that I am interested in the nutritional information.  Plus I know that 5th grade has nutrition in their science curriculum, and nutrition information would be valuable for them.

This is a lovely illustrated book whose pictures look aged and have a crackle finish.  It is a book meant to be read one-on-one, with an adult and a child, or a child alone.  It is a very old-fashioned book and relies on prior knowledge of Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes.  Although I am fairly knowledgeable of these rhymes, there were still some that had me stumped.  The object is to introduce colors via nursery rhymes, but it seems that it is missing the boat.  Kids are supposed to identify what the rhymes are through the clues and the illustrations, but it appears to be all mixed up.  The nursery rhymes aren’t complete, the visual clues are incomplete, and the idea of teaching color through them is misleading.  The color words are in bold-face type but much of the picture doesn’t have much of the color mentioned in it.  There must be a better way:  either do a great hide-and-seek nursery rhyme book, a regular nursery rhyme book, or a color book, but don’t try all three together.  It just isn’t a very good recipe.  Kids won’t get it.

The golden head of King Tut’s death mask, overlaying a wallpaper of purple cobras, skeletons and stone make for a interesting selection for fans of Egyptian history.  When King Tut’s tomb was discovered and uncovered in 1922 by Howard Carter, rumors of a curse began to circulate.  After nearly 100 years, who knows how the rumors got started.  But it is clear that bad luck certainly did fall to those who were associated with this tomb.  Except for Carter, himself.  He escaped accident and death.  Actual photos help to tell this interesting tale.  Kids will certainly enjoy the thought of an actual curse.  However, I wish the book would go into a little more detail.  Such as where did the artifacts uncovered by Carter go?  I know for a fact that three statues from this tomb ended up at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.  I wonder who else purchased some of these cursed objects before Egypt put the stop to all the looting of their history.  And did the curse follow the objects…….hmmmm, sounds like another book to me.

Indiana Jones remains wildly popular, mainly with boys, in all formats.  In this graphic novel, we find Indy buried up to his neck in snow on a snow-capped mountain.  Of course, he gets himself free, gets down the mountain, and is looking for shelter.  He keeps seeing a ghostly image of an ancient Incan telling him what to do.  He is trying to rescue Francisca, a fellow professor, and meanwhile stumbles into an ancient tomb.  There he runs into Francisca and her crazy brother, who is besotted with ancient Mayan curses, and a small army of British mercenaries trying to steal the loot.  In the midst of the fighting, an earthquake strikes and Indy and Francisca are the only ones to escape from death by the falling rocks and caving in of the tomb.  He lives to fight another day.  I don’t have any of the preceding books, but this is enough like the movies to follow the storyline.  Fast action and a lot of drama.

Soccer World Spain includes history, culture, geography, language, science and art.  I actually thought it would be more about soccer, and it does briefly cover the major soccer teams from Spain, but this is more of a geography book about Spain and what you’d encounter if you visited.  I recognized Ethan Zohn’s name as he was a winner in CBS’ Survivor Africa and I visited this book’s website and attached links to find out more.  Zohn is a true philanthropist and works each day to bring about positive change.  However, this book, in particular, seems a bit much.  I thought it was a lot of different types of information in a very brief space.  Maybe it would be better suited to be a larger page book in order to give more description or examples.  It causes it to have a rushed feeling.  Also, photographs would be helpful, rather than illustrations.   This book will appeal more to travelers than to soccer fans.

This series is titled “Sports Stars Who Care,” but what does that mean?  Care about what?  I was really expecting to read about a Roberto Clemente type of person, someone who has the ability to help those less fortunate, isn’t that what caring implies?  David Wright is a NY Mets baseball player who is, most likely, on his way to the Hall of Fame.  He is a talented, exciting, competitive player to watch.  Maybe that’s what this series should be titled, “Exciting Players to Watch.”  But the book is mainly about his successes and how he grew up in a family where the dad was the coach and grandpa got him started with the love of the game.  Sounds like a movie.  But in the series about caring athletes, where is the evidence of caring?  In a total of 48 pages, page 48 is an index, page 47 is ‘Read More’ with internet sites, page 46 is a glossary, page 45 is career statistics, page 43 is a large photo, and finally on page 42 in one paragraph, 32 words, which states that he started he own charity focusing on research for multiple sclerosis.  32 words out of 48 pages–that’s the extent of his caring.  The rest is all about how great he is.  Oh, please!  Thank goodness there isn’t anything negative about his life that young, impressionable readers will pick up on–but couldn’t this have been titled, “David Wright A Baseball Star Who Loves the Game!”