Marsico is delving into what the future will bring us as far as cars are concerned, namely, self-driving cars. Systems in cars already exist that is a step into self-driving, such as, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, parallel parking, and gps, to name a few. Self-driving cars are anticipated to save lives as well as fuel, but that remains to be seen. Google has already developed a car on the road that drives itself in residential areas. Many factors are left to be decided and developed before we will see these cars on the road, and the infrastructure they require will be a budget buster, but technology is developing at a rapid pace. The main questions in my mind are, one, will people be able to afford it, and two, what do we do with all the other human-driven cars?

Tally and her best friend and neighbor Yulia have been sharing their ups and downs since they were little. Now they are in  middle school with its own set of up and downs. Yulia loves being in the school band. Tally loves snowboarding and is quite an important member on the snowboarding team. No problems so far. Enter Tally’s immigrant Vietnamese grandparents with whom she lives. Grammy and Pop want Tally to broaden her interests and try new things. Tally doesn’t think she has the time for anything more in her life right now. Grammy phones the school and has Tally signed up to begin band next week. WHAT?! It is the end of first semester, she doesn’t even have an instrument. No problem Grammy says. The band teacher, Mr. Byrd, will let her play the school’s French horn. How can this be? Tally has been calling the band members Band O’ Geeks for years. Yulia knows it, but doesn’t mind because she loves band. But how will Tally’s snowboarding friends react to her being in the band? (I guess band is not ‘cool’ in some parts of the country. I personally have not experienced this.) Yulia and Tally hatch a plan.  Tally will wear a disguise to band, it’s right after lunch, there will be time to change into it. So then Tally’s snowboarding friends at school won’t know of this terrible thing her grandparents have done to her. It works at first. Tally is able to unhappily take band during school . Then go to snowboarding practice after school. When Mr. Byrd asks if she has been practicing, Tally admits she has not. This is a big disappointment to the other French horn player. He tells her if one French horn sounds bad, the whole section sounds bad. It isn’t fair for her not to practice. Then, Mr. Byrd announces the big snowboarding competition to the band members during class. He tells the class it would be wonderful if Tally’s fellow band members would go to cheer her on. Yikes! on Saturday as Tally is getting ready to compete the Band O’ Geeks are there cheering for her. Tally does her best to ignore them. Her first run is great, but not great enough for first place. Here comes her second run. Just at a critical point, Tally looses her concentration and crashes. Tally is out with a sprained ankle for the rest of the season. Both her band friends and her snowboarding friends visit her at home. Eventually her snowboarding friend insult her band friends while both are visiting Tally.  Though ashamed, Tally doesn’t stand up for them. Back at school, the band members, even Yulia, give Tally the cold shoulder. Tally comes to a conclusion, ” Having to choose between my snowboarding friends and my band friends, if I could call them that, I mean, the snowboarders were my friends. But I’d been friends with Yulia for a long time. And some of the other band geeks were pretty cool, too. Who said I had to choose, anyway?” ( 89) Mr. Byrd explains how he lived through a similar experience. On a home visit, Jasper, a band member, discovers Tally can play guitar. This will later resolve the problem of snowboarders verses band geeks for Tally. The school band is scheduled to play at the school dance in a few weeks. Jasper, Yulia, and Mr. Byrd work together to give Tally a guitar song with Jasper on drums, and Yulia singing their original song entitled “Finding My Wings”  at the dance. Thus bringing both sides together for a happy ending.

Each chapter includes one black and white illustration by Anna Cattish. The girls are always ‘wide-eyed’ in a modern Japanese fashion. The cover art seems a little too young to grab middle school readers interest.

The kids in Class 507 were so poorly behaved that their frustrated teacher quit her job right in the middle of the school day. However, the office never received the message. Class 507 had no teacher! The students quickly formulated a plan to keep this fact a secret, strategizing their actions to give the illusion that everything was normal in their room, except everything was not! Students tended to do what ever they wanted, wrestling, throwing objects, drawing, until parents started wondering why their kids had no homework. Things really got complicated when they realized their field trip was coming, and Class 507 was responsible for writing a play production they had to perform for the whole school. Maggie, the smartest kid in the class, gets all the kids on track by assigning lessons in class and assigning double homework, as well as having students write and prepare for the play. The students soon realize that keeping a classroom running is way more work than they thought!

Middle school aged horse loving girls will enjoy this story of a young girl as she begins working with her first horse. The story, also, contains the conflict between the wealthy girl from a broken family and the girl who is willing to work hard to get the horse she wants.

Annie has worked for 13 months at the Top Tier Stables, mucking stalls and caring for horses, to earn enough money to purchase her own horse. The day has finally come! Top Tier’s stable manager, Jack Manley, and Annie are at the horse sale in Colorado after the wild horse round-up by the United States government. Annie is now the proud owner of a 4 year old Buckskin Mustang. Back at Top Tier, Peggy- a young wealthy girl about Annie’s age, is riding her Olympic dressage champion Thoroughbred (Jinx) and talks down to Annie ordering her around. Annie is just happy to have her own horse which she has named Poco. “I brush the coat of a horse that has never before been brushed, Imagine that.” (23) Jack and Annie begin to slowly show Poco a saddle blanket and saddle so she does not get spooked. Jack makes it look so easy, but when Annie tries, everything goes wrong. They will need to start over again tomorrow rebuilding the trust between Poco and Annie. In the meantime, Jinx and Poco are stabled next to each other’s stalls. Jinx has never left any other horse in that stall alone before now. A few days later, Jinx goes missing. Peggy blames Poco for corrupting her horse by her wildness. As it turns out, the lock on Jinx’s stall was broken by someone. The girls won’t go home until Jinx is found. An unspoken truce is formed between the girls.  Annie is awakened by Poco’s neighing, in the middle of the night, when Jinx returns wounded and cornered by a wolf outside. Jack hits the wolf with a baseball bat getting it to leave.  Jinx needs 46 stitches, but the wound is not from the wolf. Badly needing sleep, Jack and Annie will watch the newly installed security camera footage tomorrow. The next day when Annie returns with her step-father to view the security tapes, they ‘smell smoke’. The barn is on fire! Annie runs into the barn freeing the horses closest to the fire first. Jack is having to come up with a new method for undoing the new lock on Jinx’s stall in a hurry. Jeff is taking the horses from Annie and putting them into outdoor paddocks. As the firefighters arrive and start putting water on the fire, there is no sign of Jack or Jinx. Then, the barn’s roof collapses! Were Jack and Jinx still inside? It turns out, Jack and Jinx made it out of the barn and into the paddock on the far side of Jack’s house. When Jack, Jeff, and Annie finally watch the surveillance tapes, they discover Peggy’s and her father’s body guard / chauffeur injured Jinx and let Jinx run off. As they watch even more of the tapes it shows the same man setting the barn on fire. With some detective work on Jeff’s part, the injured Jinx and later the fire was set to solve Peggy’s father’s ‘bad business decisions’ leading him towards bankruptcy. He was after the insurance money on the horse.  The book ends with a silver lining when an old friend of Jack’s comes to the burnt out Top Tier Stables with her large horse trailer offering to put up the twenty-five horses until the barn can be rebuilt.

There are two proof-reading errors. The first one is on the first page, line 3, the third word should be capitalized, since it is the first word of a sentence. The second error is grammatical on page 32, on the seventh line. The subject and predicate do not agree. It should read, ” She doesn’t resist when I…” not “She doesn’t resists when I…”

Daniel looks nothing like his family. He feels quite distant from them, especially when he learns that his mom saved a newspaper clipping about a meteor that landed nearby on his birthday. He figures he must be an alien, and decides he must find a way to get back to his home planet, planet Keplar 22B. He and his two oddball friends formulate plan after crazy plan to get Daniel reunited with his alien community. However, when a plan backfires causing his mom and dad to be kidnapped, Daniel, his friends and his sister need to work as a team to take action to save what he realizes is the most important thing in his life: family. Crazy, silly humor is riddled through out this story.

I have seen Skylander toys at the checkout stands in stores, but I never knew the background story behind them until now. In my case, it might have been advantageous if I had read the four mini-bios on the last four pages of this book before reading the graphic novel itself. That way, I could have gotten a feel for the characters I was about to come across. More than likely, young readers won’t have this same problem, as the characters are licensed from Activision.

As the story begins, a new Skylander Academy is opening with its first class of students about to arrive. The celebration is waiting for Flynn to arrive with the students on a dreadyacht. The dreadyacht crash lands, but Flynn is not on board! The students report that Flynn went overboard. Now Tessa and Cali  go searching for him, while the new students go to their first Skylander Academy orientation. Tessa and Calli find a weeruptor (one of the students from the dreadyacht) stuck up in a tree as they search for Flynn, not realizing the weeruptor who exited the dreadyacht was an evil impostor who threw this one overboard so he could take his place at the academy. As the three of them fly after Flynn, Tessa and Calli give give the weeruptor a history lesson on the Portal Masters. Just as the lesson ends, they encounter Troll Bombers who have Flynn. The weeruptor helps Tessa and Calli get Flynn back from the Troll Bombers when who should show up, but -Wildfire to help in the fight. Slowly, the Kaos amnesia spell is wearing off Flynn and Flynn tells his story. Now, they must all go back to the Skylander Academy to track down evil Kaos who is disguised as the weeruptor before he can do any damage.

The title – Mini But Might- describes the weeruptor in this episode of THE KAOS TRAP.

I have never lived in blizzard country or country that gets significant  snowfall. After reading this 8″ X 9″ book in the “This or That? Weather” series the biggest difference between a winter storm and a blizzard is whether or not there is strong wind involved.  I honestly am not sure why the publisher wanted to separate these six titles into individual books, instead of compiling them into one book on weather comparisons.

“A winter storm forms during cold weather. This usually happens in the winter. But a winter storm can also form in late fall or early spring. A blizzard is a severe winter storm. It happens in the winter. It has high winds. Blowing snow makes it hard to see.” (4-5) If there is wind greater than 35 mph, it is a blizzard.

The rest of the book is filled with photos of snow on the ground and / or blowing in the air. There is a satellite photo of the United States’ east coastline with clouds forming a blizzard. Another satellite photo over the Great Lakes region, labels the air movement of a ‘lake-effect storm’. A nor’easter is mentioned as a kind of winter storm that gets its’ name from the strong wind, but is not a blizzard. There is a quick “At a Glance” comparison page covering five elements of the two types of storms. And right before the glossary page is a craft project to make using a glass jar, glitter, water, and a small plastic animal to be swirled around creating a blizzard inside the jar.

The 1860’s in the United States was a time of huge change. The war between the North and South to determine the outcome of slave ownership resulted in a tremendous loss of life. This war dominated the news, however, there was another war going on, the one started by wealthy New Yorker Henry Bergh. This war involved humans and their animals. Bergh was horrified by all the abuse heaped upon helpless, innocent animals. His observations began right in the streets of Manhattan where horses were whipped mercilessly. Horses lived to maybe one year of age and their carcasses were tossed into the river. This opened Bergh’s mind to other instances of abuse: dog fights, rat fights, slaughter houses, circus acts, cock fights, fox hunting, pigeon shooting, dairy animals, and so on. His work created legislation that made anti-cruelty animal laws which carried jail time as well as monetary fines. Bergh’s work also led to animal licensing and the ASPCA being formed. Another interesting fact is that his work to prevent animal cruelty led to legislation for anti-cruelty laws for children and child labor laws. It was his life’s work to protect the innocent. Interestingly enough, Bergh and his wife had no children nor any pets of their own. I was amazed that this all transpired 150 years ago. The United States was a relatively new country and had no means of mass media. However, through the efforts of one single but determined man, millions of animals and children’s lives have been saved or made better. This is truly an inspiring story.

In this version of the classic fairy tale, Goldilocks is portrayed as a sweet, polite, and curious child, who loved to wander and explore. She comes upon an unlocked cottage and knocks, but the smell or porridge lures her inside. She calls out to see if anyone is home first, then she enters and sees the porridge already in bowls and wonders why breakfast would be set out and no one home to eat it. She doesn’t think anyone would mind if she ate it. Afterwards she decides to sit down and wait for the people and tries the chairs, finding the smallest one perfect for her. But it broke. Now she knows she must stay and say she’s sorry about the chair. She wanders upstairs and finds the beds and falls asleep in the smallest one. While asleep, the three bears, first time they’ve been mentioned, come home and discover the eaten porridge, broken chair, and Goldilocks asleep. She awakens, sees the bears, screams, and runs all the way home, never to go there again. Goldilocks is actually a nice little girl and so are the bears. Again, Little Hare has produced a quality version of a popular fairy tale making the characters likable and nothing scary about it.

This is another rewritten fairy tale published by Little Hare Publishing that is more kid friendly than previous versions. Little Red Riding Hood is given instructions by her mother to take a basket of goodies to her ill grandmother and not to dawdle along the way. That’s it. She meets the wolf who is actually very polite and pleasant, not at all scary. He even suggests that her grandmother might enjoy some of the wildflowers growing alongside the path. She picks and he runs to grandmother’s house and eats her whole. LRRH shows up and he eats her, too, then falls into a sleep, snoring loudly. A woodsman hears and comes in the cottage and cuts open the wolf and rescues grandmother and LRRH. They fill his stomach with rocks and when he awakens, he stumbles outside and falls into the well and drowns. Kids immediately recognize that LRRH is too friendly with the wolf, but they aren’t scared by the story. This version is great for beginning readers.