What a beautiful book to celebrate one of humanity’s great scientific achievements.  The end pages at the beginning and end of the book provide just-the-facts context, with diagrams, sequences of events, data, and further information about America’s first trip to the moon.  In between, the story is told.  The text is poetic, and the illustrations help to convey the wonder and humanity of this shared experience to readers who are too young to have shared in it themselves.  A great book to inspire future scientists.

It’s a bit of an odd book.  It its way, it is a book of triumphing over loneliness, I guess.  It tells about a lonely turtle who knows only his own shadow, but decides one day to crawl out of his shell and make renovations to it.  What starts out as a new paint job leads to building a deck with a fireplace, and then planting a garden with a pond, and eventually moving on to building an entire town on the back of his shell.  This draws a whole community of other critters who decide to move in and Turtle isn’t lonely anymore.  The artwork is aiming for child-like, and is really quite successful at that, but the problem with children’s artwork is that it’s often difficult to see what they are actually trying to convey, and in that regard it failed to serve the telling of the story, I thought.

It’s fine, but not as good as I hoped it would be.  For one thing, since it tells me that the telescope came first, shouldn’t the subtitle be “from the telescope to the x-ray”?  The information is brief blurbs about assorted human inventions related to the ways we see, organized by topic, and roughly chronologically.  The accompanying illustrations are cartoonish.  There were a few confusing bits:  each two-page spread, dedicated to a particular topic, has some kind of connect-the-dots trail running through the illustrations, and it took me a few pages to figure that indicates the reading path if you want the information chronologically; if you read following the typical left-to-right, top-to-bottom order, it sometimes comes off a bit disjointed.  There are a few times the illustrations seem a bit disconnected too:  next to the blurb describing the first x-ray, in 1895, as one the inventor took of his wife’s hand, the illustration shows a chest x-ray being taken of a woman wearing shorts? In 1895? Really?

The social class system is very hierarchical in 1960’s Swaziland and especially at Keziah Christian Academy, a boarding school that Adele is sent to each year. Adele is a model student, studying extra Bible verses, following all of the rules, and making sure she knows how to maneuver in the game of remaining “on top” at her school. But things are changing and Adele has to deal. Her peer group is shunning her. Then she is assigned to room with Lottie, a girl far below her in status. But Lottie is rich in many other ways that Adele will slowly discover. A story of self-discovery and friendship, When the Ground is Hard was excellent. This is perfect for literature circles in schools as it will lead to discussions on social class, trust, family, peer pressure and growth. Hopefully, this story will be discovered by award committees.

Kasie West’s Maybe This Time is the teen Hallmark Channel version of a romance – squeaky clean with over the top “almost” moments–9 to be precise. Over the course of a year, Sophie Evans ends up at events in her small town only to be frazzled by big city-born Andrew Hart, son of the once-famous chef Jett Hart. Jett is working to help Sophie’s best friend’s family catering business gain more traction. Andrew doesn’t have a choice in working for his dad. Sophie attends these events as part of her job working for the local florist. Sparks fly at first like iron sharpening iron, but readers can see early on where this will go. While Sophie thinks she has interest in another boy, that is dropped within 6 months, but it will take the entire year for Andrew and Sophie outwardly admit their romance to each other. This is sap, sap, sappy! And some readers will love it! Totally appropriate for middle school too.

Fractured fairytale, story within a story, feminist critique, moral compass — all of these describe Jennifer Donnelly’s Stepsister. This frame story begins with Isabella, one of the evil step-sisters of Cinderella, known in this remake as just Ella, finding herself going to the ultimate extreme of cutting off her toes to fit her foot into the glass slipper. Blood everywhere, the Prince does realize that this is not his Princess. Jumping back to earlier times, readers see the pressure that would push Isabella to the extreme, mount as the stepmother is exacerbated about her daughters marrying well by being pretty enough. Isabella’s conscience is given a voice when Donnelly creates Fate and Chance, who game each other, putting bets on Isabella’s choices. This reader is not sure Fate and Chance needed to make an appearance, but aside from that, Donnelly has created a work of fiction that is thought-provoking about the importance society puts on “beauty” and hoping that Isabella will one day still get the Prince she deserves.

This narrative biography, Captured by Alvin Townley is an emotional book about our POWs from the Vietnam war.  Alvin Townley did a great job of giving us a descriptive narrative account of Naval aviator Jeremiah Denton from the aircraft carrier USS Independence, that was shot down and captured in North Vietnam in 1965. Denton was held in multiple North Vietnam prisons for seven and a half years as a POW.   While in prison Denton and other POWs were kept in solitary confinement for many years, and their only form of communication was through a complicated tapping system. They were tortured and starved daily while being held in the Northern Vietnam prisons for not giving any information to the Vietnam guards besides which were required by the Geneva Convention. Denton and his fellow comrades struggled with keeping their sanity during this time in such horrible conditions.  Denton kept the fellow POWs spirits up and continued his duties as best he could during this time. Denton led his men with honor through the longest and hardest deployment until 1973. Vivid and descriptive details along with actual photos of the POWs and the places talked about makes this readable and recommendable for anyone.

Jennifer Donaldson’s I Know You Remember is a well-crafted, plot-twisting mystery/thriller for a young adult audience. Zahra and Ruthie find each other in a time where they were desperate to be seen. Then Ruthie one moves away for three years, only to come back to her father’s Alaska home after her mother dies and find that her best friend Zahra is missing. Ruthie will focus her life on finding Zahra, and just when a reader thinks they have the correct theory, a plot twist will completely spin the story in a new direction. Lives will be ruined, points of view will switch. And while this reviewer didn’t particularly like the negative portrayal of religion, other issues are handled carefully, such as poverty, substance abuse, and racism. If you are a fan of One of Us is Lying, this is another choice that will be a stand-alone read.

Frank William Epperson knew he wanted to be an inventor from a very young age. This picture book chronicles his boyhood life through his successful invention of the popsicle. Along the way four step-by-step experiments are woven into the story including the materials needed, procedures, results, and additional information. Frank did invent many other things as well, but it was not his main form of employment.

The book is presented in tri-color overlays and sepia tones to help the reader get into the early 1900s.

The book ends with family photos from the 1920s and 1937, along with an advertisement poster for Popsicle.