The words of this book are a familiar hymn.  What makes this book special are the unique illustrations.  They are all made of cut paper.  The color’s shapes and detail are amazing.  This book helps the reader appreciate our wonderful world and all that is in it for our use and enjoyment.  A quick easy read with fascinating pictures.

This book has wonderful pictures and clearly leads you through the life cycle of a dog.  This would be an enjoyable and informative read for kids interested in dogs.  The book has a nice glossary and a page listing places interested readers can find more information.

The pictures in this book are wonderfully delicious and fun.  It is written in rhyme with lots of beginning reader words.  The rebus style will involve even pre-readers and get them familiar with many easy read words as they follow along.  A fun read for young children about something they love.

This book introduces us to the large variety of pizzas.  It is a quick read that young children will get involved in.  The rebus style is fun and will be great for beginning readers.  The vocabulary in the book is repetitious with early read words.

A fun, fast and delicious read.

This is a story young girls would enjoy.  It was fund and mysterious.  It was a great example of learning to appreciate others, at home and school.  It was a great example of kids learning to get along and learn to like each other.

This book is a combination biography/history book/craft book which may be best used in a homeschool situation.  With alternating font types and sizes, one to three paragraph blurbs about George Washington will appeal to the reader who has a hard time reading too much text in one sitting.  Black and white whimsical drawings and glossary boxes are included on each page. Interesting, little-known details about his life are included, such as the fact that his actual birthday is February 11th, but in in 1752, the British corrected their calendar and added 11 days to the year, making his new birthday February 22.  This book would be best-suited in an elementary library.

This biography of Hilary Duff gets high marks from me because, as a teacher-librarian looking for positive role models for our students, this author stresses Hilary’s commitment to community service and compassion for people down on their luck.  Hilary has been involved in the “Blessings in a Backpack” program, designed to send food home with students on the weekend, to ensure that they have enough to eat.  She’s also actively involved in USA Harvest, Food for a Friend, Kids With a Cause (KWAC) in which students help students, and relief to Huricane Katrina victims.

The author details Hilary Duff’s TV, movie, and music career successes, especially between the years 1998 and 2003, but is also honest about her flops and poor reviews in more recent years.  There are plenty of colorful photographs and a helpful timeline for anyone who chooses this book for biography book report.  This book is a bargain at $9.95 for a hardback as are the others in the “Celebrity with Heart” series.

This book is about four children who have moved into a large old house with their step-mother and father. When their new step-sister, Amanda, comes to live with them strange things happen.  Amanda has a love for witchcraft and the occult.  She starts to teach David, Jamie and the twins about these things and has them pass tests and initiations.  They hold a seance.   The house seems to be haunted. but David suspects Amanda.

The book was good.  I thought it was a little creepy but it didn’t go too far.  It held my interest and was well written.

This is book one of a new graphic novel series, all done in black and white.  There are two main characters, plus a dog.  Megan is new to Chicagoland having moved for her dad’s job.  She has to take summer school and has some doubts about it.  Raf is a guy who works at his mom’s pet supply store.  Megan loves haiku poetry and Raf is a computer nerd. Megan starts school and right off the bat she realizes that all the students and staff are robotic.  She doesn’t cooperate eating her lunch, which contains the daily hypnotic control supplement, so the principal abducts her to inject her so she too will become robotic and complacent.  She texts Raf an SOS and he comes and with the computer program he’s developed erases the principal’s evil program, which in turn, erases it from all the students’ and staffs’ memories.  Everyone goes back to normal.  In the process, they rescue the lab dog on which experiments had been conducted.  The dog is able to speak to humans and Raf takes him home.  The dog, named Bradley, comes up with the idea of them opening a detective agency.  Fast paced, kind of weird and creepy, but sure to be a winner.  Look forward to the next installment.

In the late 1800’s, the U.S. Life-Saving Service built stations along the eastern coastline, especially the coast of North Carolina.  The islands off the North Carolina coast, called the outer banks, was notorious for shipwrecks.  This service, the precursor to the U.S. Coast Guard was on the lookout for shipwrecks during periods of bad weather.  Their job was to save crew and passengers.  In 1896, there was an all African-American crew manning the station at Pea Island.  These surfmen, along with a civilian boy and his horse, rescued the crew and passengers of the U.S. Newman (approximately 10 people).  Novel is based on a true account.  In 1995, nearly 100 years later, an eighth-grade girl was researching the event and wrote a letter to then President Bill Clinton requesting that these men be awarded (post-humously) a gold medal for bravery in the rescue of the survivors of this ship.  Semi interesting, not much detail.