It’s more or less your basic, traditional, retelling of he There Little Pigs, with all the usual huffing and puffing and chinny chin chins. What lends this one its unique character is that the three little pigs declare themselves to be obsessed with the desire to be superheroes, to the point of dressing like superheroes. When they set off from home and first arrive in Fairyland, they hear how the local wolf has been tormenting all the local residents. So when they catch the wolf after he climbs down the chimney of the brick house, they turn out to be superheroes to all their neighbors.

The obligatory selfie – do you send it or not? Olivia meets Elm online and their connection is all about movies. They discover they are both fanatics and regularly watch movies together at the same time while in different locations just to be able to critique them together. When Elm finally sends a selfie, Olivia panics, using her friend Carrie’s image instead of her own. How would Elm ever find out…except when they accidentally meet up. Leah Konen’s misrepresented identity story is daftly creative. Clearly a lover of cinema herself, Konen adds little twists and turns, including cheeky chapter titles, to peak interest. Fans of Susan Colasanti and Joan Bauer will like this innocent romance as it weaves through happy, messy and scary to love.

Author Mac Barnett states in the preface this book is true. He states he was a kid spy before becoming an author. You be the judge of this as you read his book.

After almost breaking a video game record, all for the lack of one more quarter, Mac goes outside, were he answers a pay phone. It is the Queen of England phoning him. “That is how it happens.

One minute you are waiting for your mom to pick you up from a mini-golf course in California. The next minute you are flying to England on a secret mission to protect the Crown Jewels.

I know. It does not make much sense.” (25)

The Queen retells the history of 1671, when a Colonel Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels, but failed. Now, it is the 318th anniversary of the event and she has received a message, ” TOMORROW NIGHT I WILL GET WHAT MY GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT GRANDFATHER DID NOT. I WILL NOT BE STOPPED. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING 318 YEARS!” (39) The Queen is asking Mac to prevent this crime. The Queen has Mac and Beefeater Holcombe locked in the Tower of London with the jewels to keep watch and to sleep in shifts. Mac takes to the first watch. He does his best to stay awake, but falls asleep. Shortly thereafter, Holcombe wakes Mac. The Jewels are gone and the two of them are still locked in the Tower.

Mac and the Queen retell various jokes and riddles with similar plots, but cannot figure out how the real crime happened. Then, the Queen has Mac and Holcombe flown off to a castle next to Colonel Blood’s descendants castle in Ireland. Surely that is where the Jewels will resurface.

Jokes abound between the Queen and Mac over the differences in meanings between the British and American understanding of the word pants ( underwear and trousers). The Queen also enjoys people who act with panache, “Style and verve.” (51) Even when they are a thief. And Mac will state facts followed by, “That’s true. You can look it up.”

Eventually, Mac figures out the whodunit and howdunit. The Queen has the criminal arrest himself simply by using her regal commanding voice and he does it.

So, was author Mac Barnett telling the truth about being a kid spy?

Illustrated by Mike Lowery.

My only real beef with this book is the way it short-changes Gertie in the title. The book is all about Manny and Gertie, who spend every Saturday battling imaginary monsters together all around town. Until, in the midst of some of their imaginings in the park, they notice the way litter is impacting the whole park (and especially the turtles in the pond). So they set their efforts into battling the real monsters: litter bugs. As others in the park notice their efforts, they pitch end to lend a hand and everyone benefits. A little cheesy perhaps, but a good message. I just don’t know why Gertie gets no credit?

This story is really series of children introducing themselves as they work together in a garden. Each student has a different challenge s/he describes (diabetes, autism, wheelchairs, blind, deaf, turrets…), as well as things that help them cope with those challenges. Each introduction ends with a question that leads into the next child, creating a sense of connectedness despite their differences, as well as inviting children to connect themselves to the children in the story. The author ends by drawing an analogy between the children and the garden in which they’ve been working, pointing out that it is the differences which enrich both the garden and our world.

It’s a picture book that starts to introduce young children to literature’s use of tangible symbols to represent intangible ideas. It tells us about a hippo who has a big, black, heavy block that she’s been carrying around for quite some time. Each day she drags it with her to the park where she sits on it. Then along comes a happy, dancing alligator surrounded by a cloud of butterflies, who sits with her day after day. When invited to the ocean, our pig friend is concerned that her block is too heavy to carry that far, but her new alligator friend says he and his butterflies can help. Along the way, and during their time beside the sea, hippo tells about an old friend she misses, who has gone away, and finds that her block is shrinking. She says she’ll always have it, but alligator says he’ll help carry it when necessary.

I appreciate the idea of a picture-book biography of someone students might not know about, and one that encourages exercise and healthy eating, but I’ve got several problems with this book. Right off the bat, it begins by telling us that he was a bit of a sickly child, skinny and feeble and frail, and then we turn the page and the next sentence says, “But Friedrich survived.” That seemed like a big jump, as nothing in being described as skinny and frail had seemed life-threatening. My main objection is hidden in the author’s note at the very back of the book, rarely read by children, when the author admits that the subject of his book was known for self-promotion, and there is much doubt over the authenticity of events he presented in the main body of the text as fact.

It’s got a good sturdy binding, and a solid amount of well-organized information packed into a book designed for early readers. Too often the effort to keep the text simple results in limited information. This book finds a good balance. The chapters make sense. The use of non-fiction text features, such as charts, glossary, table of contents, etc. is done well, rather than seeming like a forced add-on, as is also a frequent pitfall of early-reader non-fiction.

I kind of want to give it a Not Recommended rating, but I’m afraid my personal biases might be shading my opinion a bit, so I shall soften my opinion to an Alternate Purchase. I know it’s trying to honor the imagination of youth. It tells of a boy who wakes up one morning not wanting to be a boy, but to be a bear, wild and free. He proceeds to move through his day protesting any and all of the usual constraints on humans that are interfering with his desire to be wild and free, including the need to wear clothes and shoes. Mom manages to convince him of the benefits of clothes during cold weather, but sends him off to school with his shoes in his backpack instead of on his feet, where continues to protest the rules. The illustrations show him throwing things, including chairs, and hitting other students in line in his imagined bear state. As someone who deals with too much bear-like behavior from students on a regular basis, I don’t feel like I can recommend a book that encourages kids to just go with their feelings about such things.

It’s a celebration of the little, ordinary joys of everyday life: family, community, memories, traditions, etc. Told from the perspective of a young girl, she tells of her father-daughter ritual each evening when her Papi comes home from work and takes her for a ride around their neighborhood on his motorcycle. Throughout their ride, she narrates about the people and places they pass, and the significance each holds in her life. The soft, sunset-ish colors in the illustration, and the nostalgic tone of the text add a sense of the cherished to the ordinary.