This is a cute book about a little girl who wants to be different.  She wears her hair in a bouffant rather than braids and ponytails.  After all the other girls want bouffant hair.  She is bored with that and decides to wear a gown that she made to school.  Cut story about self expression.

The pictures were great but very Christmasy looking.

This was a great book.  I enjoyed the historic part of immigrants coming and using their skills and talents to help this couontry be a great place.

it is good for children to know about history and the part immigrants play.

When Lynn Vincent dresses everyone stares at her.  Her fashions are ahead of their time. and it makes her weird.  Then she has a chance of a life time, to make it on the IT panel for GILTer GIRL-but disaster strikes and she is crushed.  Until her shoe is discovered.

This is a great story of a girl who is picked on because of her Ideas. But in the end she becomes popular because of her ideas and everyone wants her advice on what to wear.

I highly recommend this excellent chapter book to any student grades 2-8 in terms of content.  It is a rare story that is appropriate for and can appeal to such a wide age range, but this is definitely one of them.  The AR reading level, however, is 6.5.  This book was a pleasure to read with exciting adventure, suspenseful near escapes, tragedy, well-developed characters you care about or love to hate, and humor sprinkled in for good measure.  There were themes of friendship, justice, loyalty, love, perseverance, generosity, determination and duty.  The cover illustration is beautiful with iridescent wings on the pictured dragonflies and there were several black and white sketches by Mr. Hawkes which added additional interest and enjoyment of the story.  The story is set in Europe in the time period just before, during and just after World War II.  References are made throughout the book to war events which are woven into this fictional story.  This book would be a wonderful addition to every elementary school library.

This picture book tells the story of a young boy, Savino, who must quit school to go work with his father in the mines in the early 1900’s. The description of Savino’s first day in the mine, through the eyes of a frightened young boy, are both touching and sad. He relies on his pit pony to help him find his way around the mine and complete his work. When his headlamp goes out, his pony calmly leads him back to his father. Finally, the workers are finished for the day and get their first week ever of holiday. The ponies get a break too and frisk and run when they joyfully reach fresh air at the surface. The illustrations are dark and impressionistic and set the tone well for the dank setting of the mine. A historical note at the end of the book explains that this book is based upon the true stories of an old miner named Savino Calibrese who worked in the Canadian mines around the time this story is set. This book is meaningful as an introduction to our students who are unfamiliar with the lives of miners past and present. It would be a good discussion piece for older students regarding child labor, animal rights and safe labor practices.

I loved this story about two children, Lily and Liam, who visit their grandparents on their farm in the country at Christmastime. As they pull up to the house, they see White Cow in the field and wonder where her donkey companion has gone. Donkey has moved away and Liam thinks that White Cow looks lonely. Liam is concerned and sets out to research cows. He learns that cows are in fact social animals who live in family units and seem to have feelings. Lily is frustrated and just wants to enjoy Christmas traditions with her family. Liam is very determined to buy a cow friend for White Cow and uses his ingenuity to pull it off on Christmas Eve. The climax really comes early the next morning with a lovely surprise. This book is a lovely mix of tender emotions, generosity, kindness, empathy, suspense and true Christmas spirit. There are detailed black and white sketch illustrations of the characters and scenes scattered throughout the book and the cover illustrations are lovely as well. I’m thrilled to add this to our elementary school library and plan to recommend this book to many students who ask for a great story at any time of the year. I used it as a Christmas read-aloud with my 2nd graders during library time and they LOVED it!

I enjoy the Cowgirl Kate books and they make wonderful early readers. The stories are fun and easy to read and understand and the illustrations are darling and colorful. In this story, the horse wants to explore and live in Kate’s house. Kate doesn’t think this is a good idea and when the horse starts messing up the house, she convinces him the barn is the best place for him to live. This will be a nice addition to our AR collection.

Kids love to read superhero adventure books and this one is about a class of superhero kids in training at superhero school. At first they don’t understand why their teacher is spending time on division, fractions and multiplication when what they really want to learn are exciting superhero skills! When all the teachers are suddenly kidnapped by the evil Ice Zombies, the kids must spring into action to save the day. They find those math skills come in handy when they must use them to foil the enemy and rescue the teachers. Turns out the whole adventure is a math quiz and they all earned an A+. After that, superhero school is much more fun and the students finally got to also learn all those exciting skills they had been waiting for. I enjoyed peering at the pictures for crazy monsters in the background and funny details in the illustrations. This would be a great read-aloud to spice up math class as it gives some math problems they class could do together as the story was read.

One of the things I like most about this picture book are the illustrations which are quirky, colorful and fun, depicted from sometimes interesting perspectives. I also appreciated the introduction to opera, with which many young children are unfamiliar or even unaware. In this story, an lovely opera singer, Madame SoSo, has a talented Siamese cat, Alma, who can also sing opera. Madame can no longer hide her kitty’s talent and decides to include her in her next performance. She makes the cat a gown and takes her on the train to Switzerland to join her in the show. Despite some challenges on the way and cold kitty feet at the last minute, Alma braves the stage and steals the show. The audience is enchanted and Alma’s performance changes everything as pets now flock to attend the opera to watch her and Madame SoSo sing. This is a fun read which I think the students will enjoy checking out from our library.

This nonfiction book is all about the rain forest animal, the lemur. Starting with a table of contents of all the chapters, the lemur is identified, explained and photographed. Each set of facing pages are a chapter with facts and great photos. While the book has quite a bit of information, it is presented in a simple way that young readers will understand and enjoy. I enjoyed reading about this mysterious animal. I learned some interesting facts, such as they only live in Madagascar. I really liked the simple layout as well with the white pages and large pictures. At the end, there is also a lemur body map, glossary with accompanying pictures, find out more section and index.