The story is one with a good message about not giving up on one’s dreams, as well as one a lot of little girls can probably relate to.  There’s this little bunny who loves to twist and jump and whoosh around her bedroom and really wants to be a ballet dancer, but when she makes the effort to pursue lessons she meets repeated folks who insist there are no bunnies in the ballet.  With persistence she sticks with it, and with the help of one instructor who believes in her she makes it to the the dance of the sugar plum fairy in the Nutcracker, and astounds them all.  Some of the illustrations are really fun and appealing, but they seem a bit inconsistent — some look sloppy and ill executed and off-putting.

It’s got a lot of good information (including current events as recent as 2012), and some great color photos and maps.  I just wish it was a little better organized.  It goes from talking about modern Egypt, to its history, and the back to modern life, and then back to history again.  And given that a lot of terminology may be unfamiliar to young readers from other parts of the world,  it could’ve made better use of photos/illustrations to support the text.  For example, on the page talking about the plants and animals of the region, it includes a full-page color photo of a crocodile (a fairly common animal most kids could picture themselves), and includes nothing to illustrate the ibexes, papyruses or lotuses mentioned in the text. And of course the timeline is not really a timeline, but a flowchart of history.

On the one hand, it’s about a little-known (at least I had never heard of her before) woman in science, from an era when few women were encouraged to pursue such things.  Our kids need to know more about such folks.  I could wish it was better done, though.  It is illustrated with photos from the time (yay, primary sources), but they don’t necessarily do much to support the text.  Because it is written for small children, the text itself is a bit dry, though clear and understandable.  Pet peeve:  it tries to construct a timeline of her life as it goes, but it pays no attention to the spacing along the line as representative of time (there’s more space between the markers separated by one year than there is between those separated by 24 years).

Seriously?  Who is going to want to read this book? Every library has a better way to spend $18.  At least the last two pages of the text finally explain, “That’s how I do my homework.  How would you do it?” Because the beginning seems to imply a lot of assumptions about what homework entails.  And it’s rather stereotypical to picture an Asian child as the example demonstrating good study habits.  But the biggest problem is that it’s just plain boring and pedantic.

A good, solid, age-appropriate science text for early learners: it uses simple text, and uses color photos well to support that text.  It manages to make some big vocabulary clearly understandable (opaque, translucent, transparent).  It uses examples that will be readily familiar to small children to make its  points. And it’s got a good sturdy binding, too.

It’s got a good sturdy binding, but it’s pretty useless for teaching kids the vocabulary it’s trying to teach.  The only page that tells what words mean is the two-age dictionary spread in the back, which kids aren’t going to look at.  The main body of the book has some lovely color photos of smiling people, labeled with French family terminology, but there are not clues in either the text or the photos to indicate who these people are, other than age and gender. Parents, aunt, uncle, and stepparents are pretty indistinguishable, as are cousins, siblings, and friends.  Demi-soeur is listed in the dictionary as stepsister, but given what I know about complicated families and word origins, it makes me wonder whether the French use the same word for both stepsister and half-sister??

We have often heard that truth is stranger than fiction,  Lauren Tarshis- author, is putting that saying to the test in this book. Tarshis has written fictional accounts of famous events in her acclaimed I Survived series, but this one is all non fiction! The five disasters she’s chosen for this book  include: ‘The Children’s Blizzard- 1888’, ‘The Titanic Disaster- 1912’, ‘The Great Boston Molasses Flood-1919’, ‘The Japanese Tsunami- 2011’, and ‘The Henryville Tornado- 2012’.

After the retelling of each event, black and white photos of people involved in the event, photos of the aftermath of the event, and  photos of memorabilia from the time draw the reader ever closer into the story, especially since the last two stories occurred during the reader’s own lifetime. The final story- The Henryville Tornado was written upon invitation from students who lived through the ordeal.

Stone Arch Books is bringing back  YOU CHOOSE stories. Meaning, after the reader has read the opening fives pages of the story, the reader is given two or three choices to make at each plot turn, leading up to 12 different possible endings. The plot begins with the Mystery Incorporated gang going to visit their friend, David Bush, at his quaint picturesque Bushytail Farm for a weekend. When they arrive at the farm, it is run down and David is nowhere to be seen. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo decide to search for David at the nearby fair. Daphne and Velma decide to search for David in the farm house and Fred will search the barn.

The reader is given four possible ending for each of the three search parties as they are chased and scared by zombies, while  searching for David.

Sometimes the zombies are trying to scare the Mystery Incorporated gang away so their boss can use the farm land to build a factory. Sometimes the farm land is wanted to find oil or hidden treasure or valuable lost paintings. Whatever the reason, the would-be crooks are foiled by Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, or Daphne and Velma, or Fred.

The book includes ten full-color illustrations by Scott Neely “a professional illustrator…for many years…official Scooby-Doo…licensed properties” (p. 106) sprinkled throughout the book.

Kyla knew that running from the government would not be easy but she hopes that by returning to the place of her birth – and kidnapping – she might succeed in hiding and maybe even discover some secrets about her life.  This is the third and final book in the Slated Trilogy.