Like other books by this pair, it’s got cute illustrations to draw the kids in and a good message delivered through a story appealing enough to make the message palatable.  The message in this one: the perils of being a slob.  Sentenced to his room until he’s willing to pick up after himself, young Angus quite contentedly continues making messes, until a mountain of mess begins to grow on his bed, requiring him to use his climbing gear to get to the top to sleep each night.  But as the mountain of mess continues to grow, Angus finds himself approaching the surface of the loch, bringing him into range of scary land-monsters, which finally gives him the motivation to tidy up.

Chronicling the last five minutes of playground time, the illustrations flash back and forth between what is going on in Zoe’s imagination (trekking through the jungle as a great explorer in search of the Addiebeast) and scenes of the playground, where she is chasing her best friend, Addie, as mom offers the minute-by-minute count-down before it’s time to leave. There’s a good parallel between imagination and playground: walking across a log in the jungle shows up as walking on a bench in the playground, etc.  It’s cute.

I like the story:  Amelia and her doll are best friends, and it lists all the many things they would do together, until the day of Princess Sparkle-Heart’s “accident;”  then it goes on to describe the process of putting the doll back together (adding stuffing, choosing new buttons for eyes, etc.) until in the end, she’s better than ever.  I like how the illustrations expand on the text to add dimension to the story:  through the illustrations we see the dog growling at all the things Amelia and her doll do together, we see the “accident” amounted to the dog chewing the doll to bits, and we see that when she’s put back together, she’s been transformed into something that scares the dog away.  But I still find the garishness of the illustrations a bit off-putting, which keeps it from getting a full recommendation.

A very sentimental selection with soft watercolor illustrations with a father waxing poetical about the red shoes he tied on his child, pondering all the things they may do together while wearing those shoes, and how long it’s been since the first steps taken in those shoes.  The real audience seems to be the parent, more than the child, but perhaps suitable for very young children sharing that loving read-aloud time with mom or dad.

It’s aiming for sentimental but it just comes off as dull.  The illustrations look sort of washed-out and the story is just as bland: a girl and her grandma making pancakes, but Grandma is disappointed by the jam that doesn’t live up to the jam she remembers from her youth.  Granddaughter asks if they can go together and get some from the old country, but it is too far, so she makes a label for their new jam that says it’s for grandma, “made with love and sunshine.” And somehow the new label makes everything better.

The simplicity of both illustrations and text make it best suited to very young readers.  The illustrations are both sweet and artsy in their simplicity.  The story tells of a girl who gets on a bus with a red balloon, but accidentally let it go.  The bus continues on, picking up a variety of animals, each of whom is asked if they’ve seen the balloon.  Just when they reach it, a bird pops it, but the group cheers up when they notice the bright red setting sun, which looks like another red balloon, which they will get to see again tomorrow.

I didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.  I think this author has got some real potential, and a little more careful editing could’ve made this a really good book.  The general flow of the writing was engaging, and it drew me in, so I started out enjoying it, but part of the problem is that the author wasn’t real clear on what age child she was writing for:  in many respects it felt like a book for upper elementary, but then there were elements of romance and pranks and alcohol that would’ve been better suited to a more middle-school audience.  And then at the end of the book it wrapped up too quickly without fully concluding all the subplot lines that had felt like they were leading somewhere, but apparently didn’t.

This is a good, solid little series.  The basic premise is a brother and sister who have a magic mirror in their basement that lets them slip through into the land of fairy tales.  While there, in an effort to make things better, they realize they’ve actually interfered in some way that will get in the way of reaching happily-ever-after, so they’ve to to work to put things back on track.  In this one they climb up Repunzel’s braid to visit, but Jonah forgets he’s wearing his soccer cleats, which shred her hair.  I like that the stories are accessible to young readers: enough background explanation is woven into the text so that readers can pick up any book in the series and not worry about reading them in order, and the basics of the original fairy tale are included in case they’re not familiar with it.

Tacky and his fellow penguins have transformed their home into a haunted igloo in preparation for Halloween, but the festivities turn truly scary after the hunters from Tacky’s original 1988 picture book show up, and they’re hungry. Luckily, Tacky shows up just in time, dressed as none other than one of the hunters. The ensuing shenanigans offer lots of laughs! As ever, Tacky proves that even the unruliest of penguins can save the day. Fun reading for all ages!

Equipped with a guide to trees, a girl with a crown of ginger hair walks through an arboretum, identifying and collecting a variety of leaves, including honey locust, sweet gum, linden, and maple. Wellington alternates between scenes of the girl on her walk and those of her at home, where she makes crayon rubbings of the leaves in her Leaf Book. Rubbings and photocopies of leaves appear throughout Wellington’s mixed-media images, while tiny sidebars offer details about the trees and leaves presented. The girl’s clipped narration (“Oak leaves are strong. They are good for my art projects. I make leaf prints in many colors”) is perhaps better suited to children learning to read on their own than to story-time sessions. Regardless, many readers are likely to be inspired to turn their own autumnal observations into creative projects.