This Disney Junior book based on The Disney The Lion Guard television show retells the story of Bunga giving poor advice, not well-thought out advice, to many of the African animals. It all begins with the stopping of a seasonal flood. At first this was a wonderful thing, but when the dam breaks later on, the solution proves short sighted. Bunga can live with the fact his future solutions need more thought.

The artwork is fun, but the story line needs more development like Bunga’s own solutions.

The physical dimensions of this book will give the reader the appearance of reading an average intermediate grade book. The story itself appears to be for a hi-lo reader, short and sweet, with more illustrations and less text than an average intermediate grade book. Four quick chapters that will satisfy the need for a World War II adventure story.

One or two key words per page have each been printed in different texts adding to the reader’s comprehension and enjoyment.

Young Samuel , his father, and uncle have been dropped off onto a damaged ship that needs repairing below the water line. All of the crew are gone.

Samuel falls into the flooded cargo compartment when he goes looking for a ship’s map. There Samuel discovers the ship has been torpedoed by the Germans.”The Germans planned to S I N K the Maiden before Samuel’s father could repair the ship and return it to service.” (35)

Samuel must go tell his father and uncle. The Germans are back aboard the ship. The Germans have captured his father and uncle.

The suspense mounts as Samuel swims to place the Germans’ own scuttling charge on their own submarine and save his father and uncle.

The physical dimensions of this book will give the reader the appearance of reading an average intermediate grade book. The story itself appears to be for a hi-lo reader, short and sweet, with more illustrations and less text than an average intermediate grade book. Four quick chapters that will satisfy the need for something a little bit creepy.

A young girl recounts, “I am painting in the garden when Great Aunt Raven finds me. ‘Put your things away, Ella,’ she says. ‘It is time for another odd job.’ ” (4) Great Aunt Raven leads Ella through the boarded-up town and leaves her outside a seamstress shop where someone is waiting for her. Madame Pintuck takes Ella down a hall and asks her to wash everything that is dirty. There are mounds and mounds of clothes. In a cedar armoire hangs a white lace dress. The lace dress is the only one that won’t come clean. Suddenly someone, perhaps a ghost, asks Ella, ” ‘Haven’t you heard of the widowed bride?’ ” (35) She recounted the tale of how long ago on the day of the wedding, the groom “died tragically of fever”. (43) Then she disappears. Shortly after, Madame Pintuck returns telling Ella the girl died of a broken heart.

The Civil War is waging in the south, in 1863, but this is New York City. Here is a story told from a person of color’s perspective. Here “some of the people, places, and events are based on real historical facts, some are inspired by real historical facts, and some are just totally made up.” (242) The biggest ‘made up‘ piece is the domesticated dinosaurs, used in place of horses, carrier pigeons, and airplanes. The Colored Orphan Asylum, Vigilance Committee, and “Richard Riker was a real-life magistrate in the New York City courts, and he did indeed run an organization called the Kidnapping Club that captured black New Yorkers and sent them into slavery…” (244) make this an eye opener for this reader.

New York men are now being drafted to fight in the Civil War. Richard Riker and his followers use this as a excuse to set an area in New York City were blacks live ablaze. Riots ensue. The Colored Orphan Asylum is burnt. Riker captures the orphans and plans to ship them down south into slavery. A few orphans were at the Zanzibar Theater watching an all-black Shakespearean company when the theater caught fire. These orphans escape with the help of the two black actors. They escape the fire and the riots. The stage is now set for the thrilling story of the fiery orphan Magdalys’ rise to a leadership role in recovering the captured orphans from Riker.

Slowly Magdalys realizes she can communicate with dinosaurs and get them to follow her instructions. Magdalys’ knew ability helps when the orphans need to ride a sauropod ferry across the river to Brooklyn. It helps when she flies on the back of a dactyl to Manhattan (dactyls are not dinosaurs- a character informs) and when triceratopses are needed in the final battle charge to release the orphans.

The dinosaurs do not detract from the historical events and issues of this period in time. This is a fun ride, so get ready to fly into the action.

Book #2 in the Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls series takes off a year after the first book. Abby is now in her second year at The Smith School for Children, a private boarding school. It is also a “training facility for the Center, a government organization that uses kids to ferret out information no one else has any hope of acquiring. The theory is that kids are invisible…and therefore make really good spies.”(8) A few things have changed. The first and foremost for Abby being the interim Headmaster is her own mother. A new Headmaster means changes will be made. One change is the rule dealing with no playing of the video game Monster Mayhem. (Monster Mayhem is very much like Pokemon Go.) So, of course, Abby is playing it on the sly.

At this day’s Morning Meeting, the guest speaker in Toby’s father -Drexel Cain, the inventor of Monster Mayhem. At the end of the meeting, a smokey explosion has the entire school evacuating the auditorium. A short time later, Toby is sent a ransom note, via text message, for his father. Toby must play and win the latest version of Monster Mayhem, which has not been made available to the public yet, to get his father back. As always, Toby is not to tell anyone about the kidnapping. And as always, people, especially Abby, find out and try to help.

Off the reader goes to see if the kidnapper will be caught by extremely smart, extremely rich, extremely well-connected middle-school students who are secretly training to be spies while figuring out clues to the video game Monster Mayhem which takes them around the world. Yes, they are scared at times, but Abby’s mother used to say,”that being afraid was good because fear let you know when you should be alert and aware. She said it was the body’s way of turning on all the lights and getting ready.” (249)

So get ready readers, the Power Play is is about to begin!

Typo on page 198, paragraph 9, “It” should be ‘If’.

While flipping through channels on the TV, do you ever stop and watch, at least for a little while, those reality shows about hunting ghosts or big foot? If yes, then you have a good idea for the basis of this book series- Monster Hunters. This series is not an adrenalin racing, keep you away with nightmares at night, creepy story. It is for those readers who are not sure if cryptids exist or not, but are curious about them all the same.

Cool added feature, there is a little grey goat man at the bottom of each page that appears to ‘walk’ when the reader flips the pages.

Ben and his young helpers film an Internet Show- Discover Cryptids. “In each episode, they focused on a specific creature from myth or legend that may exist.” (4) This time it is The Pope Lick Monster aka Goat Man, near Louisville, Kentucky. Ben is there to interview a man, Chester, who puts on a yearly Halloween attraction featuring Goat Man. At the end of the interview they ask Chester to see the Goat Man costume. As it turns out, the mask is missing for some unknown reason.

Ben’s group then goes to video tape footage around the train trestle where Goat Man is known to have been seen. There they bump into a local police officer who patrols the area to kept curious sightseers away. Later, at the diner in town, the officer tells of his own personal encounter with Goat Man.

When Ben and his team go back to the trestle after dark, a teenage girl comes running down the trail screaming that she’s just seen the monster. The team splits up. One goes back to their van with the girl and the others run in the direction of the monster. The only thing they find is the missing mask. Ben and the team take the girl home. Then, they return the mask to Chester. While there Chester’s mother confesses she took the mask to prove to Chester that she can be scary, so he’ll give her a bigger part in the annual Halloween attraction.

Later, back at the hotel, as the “Discover Cryptids” team goes over the film footage, one of them points out a shadowy something clinging to the trestle. Goat Man, maybe? ” ‘Whatever it is,” he said. It’s so cool.’ “

One mistake I found in proofreading, on page 24, the character Jake was mistakenly called Jack twice, then goes back to Jake.

Brian P. Cleary once again is explaining things to young people in a way they will understand and better yet, will enjoy! This time Brian’s topic in his CATegorical series is dealing with computer coding.

Brian lets his readers know coding deals with commands in a special language, loops are repeated coded instructions, and conditionals are sets of rules dealing with “If this … then that will happen”.

“Loops and conditionals lend a big hand to code-writing pros of all ages, like YOU to write software, create fun, new games, or make your own apps or web pages!” (20-21)

Martin Goneau’s illustrations of cats personified learning about computers and coding make this a every fun and kid friendly visual learning experience. Brian P. Cleary and Martin Goneau make a great pair!

As an adult, I like page 22, the afterward, almost as much as the entire rest of the book put together. I hope students will not skip this page.

This book is part of the Symbols of American Freedom series. It states the Washington Monument was built to honor George Washington. At the time it was built in 1884, it was the tallest building in the world, at 555 feet.. The text is more about George Washington than it is about the actual monument.

There are one or two sentences on each left hand page opposite the full page picture on the right page.

It ends with www.factsurfer.com for more information.

Each book in this series “Just Like Us!” begins with very basic similarities and then moves onto differences in detail.

In ” Just Like Us! Fish” the similarities include we both need oxygen to breathe and there is safety in numbers.

There is good information about exotic fish, even if the comparisons between the fish and people are very general.

I keep coming back to the books in this series for the artwork composing each page. David Clark does a marvelous job of characterizing the fish in humorous poses, then layering these on top of photos of the real fish in action. Who would not want to see a picture of a porcupine fish dressed in a suit of armor carrying a lance in its fin?

Each book in this series “Just Like Us!” begins with very basic similarities and then moves onto differences in detail.

In ” Just Like Us! Cats” the similarities include: being loving parents and great diplomats , taking the easiest path, defending their territories, napping by the young is considered boring, mom is the cubs first teacher, and “some types of cats are great swimmers”.

There is good information about wild cats, even if the comparisons are very general.

I keep coming back to the books in this series for the artwork composing each page. David Clark does a marvelous job of characterizing the cats in humorous poses, then layering these on top of photos of the real wild cats in action. Who would not want to see a cheetah running upright in track shoes?