With the Seattle Kraken NHL team getting ready to hit the ice, Hockey in the Wild by Nicholas Oldland, is perfect for the young readers of the Pacific Northwest.
Waiting is always hard. Anticipation and eagerness to get started with ice hockey is all represented in this hilarious tale of waiting for the ice on the lake to freeze thick enough to hold bear’s, moose’s, and beaver’s weight.
Sparky & Spike: CHARLES SCHULZ and the Wildest, Smartest Dog Ever is just the right amount of biography for young beginning readers, not too much, just enough.
From his early school days, Charles, AKA Sparky, wanted to be a cartoonist. His teachers and fellow students all enjoyed his drawings. Every Saturday at 9 PM it never failed, Spike would remind Sparky’s father to go down to the store and pick up the Sunday comics. Then they would read them together.
Sparky would eventually send a drawing of Spike to the comic- Ripley’s Believe It or Not, with the caption, “A HUNTING DOG THAT EATS PINS, TACKS, SCREWS, AND RAZOR BLADES IS OWNED BY C. F. SCHULZ, ST. Paul, Minn.” After waiting for two long grueling months, Sparky saw his drawing printed in the Sunday paper.
And the rest is history, Charles Schulz would eventually become the multiple award winning cartoonist of the comic – Peanuts.
What is, also, rewarding to see is a photo of the letter Charles M. Schulz sent to Daniel Andreasen on July 7, 1975, giving advice to a young want to be illustrator. That young boy, in fact, grew up to be an illustrator, the illustrator of this very book.
Highland ponies are the short (13-14.5 hands tall), strong, sturdy, smart, docile horses native to Scotland. They are well adapted to the Highlands of Scotland’s harsh climate and rugged terrain. Highland ponies are shown in various activities such as pleasure riding, jumping, and show horses in the ten full page photos throughout the book, on the right page.
The large font text, in two or three sentences per page, is opposite the photo page, on the left side. The glossary words are highlighted in gray throughout the book, as they are used. The little horseshoes in the top left corner of each page of text is a nice touch.
The Abdo Kids Code comes in both a QR code and on a website (abdokids.com code HHK5649). All of the links worked on the website revealing the book’s text, a craft, a video, a word search, and many, many photos of show horses.
Fast, diving, predators of the sky dominate this factual account of Falcons for upper primary readers. There are thirty-five kinds of falcons. This means falcons can be found almost worldwide. They “prefer open spaces and high perches near water.” (8) Falcons are a midsize bird, aerodynamic with long pointed wings and tail. They are one of the fastest animals alive, some reaching speeds of 200 mph.
This book in the EPIC series is filled with eighteen action photos of varies falcons, along with two or three sentences per page. The glossary words are highlighted in yellow throughout the book as they are used.
When I went to the www.factsurfer.com section on the web, only one of the three choices was available for immediate access due to a security password being wanted.
From the Science Adventurers series comes Animal Conservationists, a look at six different facets in protecting different animal species of life. Chapter 1 begins with a hook — the work around saving something that creeps many people out– bats! After a end chapter covering the history of animal conservation, the author begins to drill down into the realities of the task. First, is the reclaiming/protection of habit, because if the habitat is not hospitable, the animals will die. Second is the issues around breeding and how humans help in this realm. A special chapter is reserved for breeding in water as well. Then time is given for the process of bringing a creature back to or introducing it to its native habitat, called “reintroduction”. The technology employed by conservationists as well as the human actions to help fight off predators help round out the text until a final chapter of “the future” is warranted. Abdo does such a nice job with its series topic choices, layout of text and sidebars, as well physical print/binding quality. The sidebars of this text in particular were very intriguing, leading this reader to wander there often before focusing on the main content as pages were turned. This will be a worthwhile addition to the 500’s in any school library.
This is a text that could easily be incorporated into middle school or high school classroom curriculum. This is a text that could be adapted for a school theater program. This is a text that will stick with you for awhile. Kent State, by Deborah Wiles, is the telling of the four days of protesting from May 1st – 4th on the campus of the university. Various voices share their chronological recollection building up to the deadly shootings by Ohio National Guard troops. But it is the positioning of the text on the page that makes this worthy of its multiple starred reviews. The voices come to the reader in snippets of text, much like a discussion, and are arranged based on likely political affiliation. Student protester voices more left justified, to National Guard troops right justified on the page. There are other voices of citizens caught in the middle that are situated on the page somewhere between the two based on their content. The anger, the frustration, the anxiety, the outrage, the disbelief –it can all be captured by the use of these various voices. The book jacket says, this text show the “human truth” in this tragedy. This text should be in every middle and high school library for its lessons in history, in the craft of writing, and in the depiction of humans reacting crisis.
I first enjoyed reading Quick as a Cricket 25 years ago to my now grown, little boys. Between Audrey Wood’s twenty-two similes of eleven opposite adjectives and Don Wood’s whimsical illustrations this book is still a winner! My first copy is worn out, I need to buy another copy. Here is a book that should not go ‘out-of-print‘ for generations to come!
“I’m as small as an ant, I’m as large as a whale.” with Don Wood’s illustrating the boy measuring himself as small as an ant and then on the next page having the boy swimming next to a grey whale his same size is brilliant.
Rambuctious Rollo the bulldog is off to the park with his boy. They play catch the ball. Bouncing ball, slobbering Rollo, and ball hiding in the tall grass. Finally, Rollo returns to the boy with the slobbery ball and ready for a nap.
People, who love their drooling dogs, will feel in tune with Rollo and his drooling antics.
Rollo is a ‘rambuctious bulldog’ whose little boy is searching for him so Rollo can be given a treat. What the boy does not know is, illustrator Keith Frawley has Rollo hiding in all twelve places the boy is looking while Rollo is dragging a box of dog biscuit along with him. Finally, the boy finds Rollo on his own dog bed taking a nap. “Were you here the whole time…? You must be very hungry. Would you like a treat, Rollo?”
Keith Frawley’s facial expressions on the boy and Rollo are spot on!
The Hero Two Doors Down: Based on the True Story of Friendship between a Boy and a Baseball Legend is the outstanding story of friendship and mentorship. I am sorry to say I put off reading this 2016 copyrighted book for so long because of the cover illustration. I am not a sports person. The cover illustration shows a baseball player, sitting on a park bench next to a young boy. This book is not so much about baseball, but as the subtitle in tiny print states, about friendship. READ this book because it is baseball season or Black History Month or because you need a fill-good story, just READ this book!
This is a perfect book to share with intermediate readers, especially in this day of civil unrest-BLACK LIVES MATTER. Here is the story of a young Jewish boy, whose Russian grandparents escaped Russian oppression, and a ‘Negro’ (43) baseball player, Jackie Robinson, who was changing the face of American baseball forever.
Little Steve wanted to meet Jackie in the worst way. “The closer I came to actually meeting Jackie Robinson, the more worried that I’d be disappointed. I really wanted to like him and to have Jackie like me. But what if he was too busy to notice me? Or what if he saw me and didn’t care to get to know me better? Was it even possible for a boy to have a famous man as a friend? I was driving myself nuts trying to figure out who Jackie was… ” (62-3) Jackie Robinson was just the guy next door. Fame did not change his friendliness towards others.
The world needs more lasting interracial friendships like this one, whether or not one of the people is famous.