The story opens with a coat that feels disgruntled at being left as a scarecrow, feeling he’s meant for better things.  When a young man comes strolling along the road, he seems to agree that the coat is too nice to be left in the field, and he puts it on.  The coat takes over from there: the wind catches in its sleeves and carries the man off to a restaurant where he enjoys a fabulous meal, and performs for the patrons in payment, even though he’s never played before.  As the music plays, the brown tones of the opening illustrations begin to fill with color. It’s okay, but I’m not sure I agree that it’s worth of the “short-listed book” award that the Children’s Book Council of Australia gave it.

It’s basically a pep-talk/lecture with cute illustrations.  The basic theme is there’s no wrong way to paint: it starts by insisting any idea is fine, then goes on to describe different methods different painters use.  It assures the reader that it’s normal to feel cross if it doesn’t turn out as you hoped, and insists that the important thing is to have fun.  The bright colors in the illustrations will lead children to pick it up, but many will be disappointed when they read it: it’s a bit preachy. But it does have a good message.

It’s one of those books that’s meant to help parents talk to their children about where babies come from.  The story opens with a young boy getting the news from his parents that they’re going to get a new baby.  Wondering just where they’ll be getting this baby from, he spends his day asking everyone he knows where babies come from, including his baby sitter, his teacher, his grandfather, and the mailman, but he’s not satisfied with any of their answers (babysitter says you plant a seed and a baby tree grows; grandpa says the stork leaves ’em on the doorstep; teacher says hospital; mailman says eggs).  So at the end of the day he asks his folks, who give him a basic clinical answer.  When he thinks over their explanation, he decides all the other folks had a piece of the puzzle except grandpa. The back of the book offers parents some suggested answers for when kids start asking for more details.  All in all, it’s a good tool for opening conversations between kids and adults, but be prepared for some parents who are not happy with information being available that they maybe aren’t ready to share yet.

I liked it.  This is the first book in this series that I read, and one thing I liked right off is though it is book five in the series, it provided enough background about characters and previous events that I was able to pick up in the middle and understand just fine.  Elementary school kids often pick up series books in the middle, and it’s good if reading them in order isn’t too important.  This one recounts the adventures the Spence Mansion trio face when their heads get turned by Hollywood promises and sign dastardly contracts with a producer who wants to butcher their story as he makes his own film.  The characters are fun. The writing is witty.  The illustrations are mixed with letters in a format that makes the book not too intimidating for reluctant/young readers.

I didn’t like it as well as I liked the other books in this series that I’ve read.  I rather felt it was misnamed.  In the first chapter, setting the scene for the paths the reader will have to choose from, the book describes the Great Migration as the time when so many black families were moving north to escape the unfair treatment in the south, and I think “The Great Migration” would’ve been a more accurate title, as many of the story lines tracked the decisions and experiences folks encountered in getting to Harlem at this time, but many of them ended with their arrival, without really going into much about what happened when they got there.  Also, though I like the interactive nature of these books for drawing student interest, they walk a fine line between non-fiction and historical fiction, and I think this one really falls more into the second category than the first.

This is a beautiful book and Bang and Chisholm have taken a difficult, complex subject and made it understandable through text illustrations.  They have explained how fossil fuels have come to be and how humans use them, and go on to explain how so much usage has changed the earth.  There is no need for speculation if climate change exists, it has been scientifically proven that it does.  The authors do not use scare tactics but does compare the past to the  present to demonstrate how the earth is warming and poses the question to the reader, what can you do about it?

Strictly for the youngest readers, this spin-off from the Llama Llama books brings a familiar character her own book, full of the same brightly colored illustrative style, they rhyme and rhythm and repetition that are so good for emergent readers.  The story is a simple one of sharing a day one-on-one with a father-daughter project, building a play house from some large cardboard boxes.  Young kids will love it, and be begging their dads to help them build their own similar houses.

It’s cheesy.  The characters have kid bodies and giant baseballs for heads.  They’re each named after a different kind of ball (Sammy Softball, Connie Curveball, etc.), and each character’s personality traits/powers resemble the term they’re named after (e.g. the Foul Ball gang are the bullies).  The kids who are old enough to know enough about baseball to appreciate the sport references are going to think the illustrations are babyish and the story rather lame, and the kids young enough to enjoy the illustrations and the predictable plot are not going to get the baseball terms.

A short simple story, with only a sentence or so per page, it’s definitely intended for the youngest audiences.  While everyone else is busy with things to do around the yard, a young boy goes off to play pirate with his stuffed raccoon, including snitching his sister’s stuffed bunny, who ends up in the lake.  After returning the sopping bunny and facing the music, the bunny goes missing again, for which the boy gets blamed.  Over the course of the afternoon and evening the boy’s toys also go missing, and if the reader is watching the illustrations, they see that a real raccoon is the culpret, which the boy discovers in the morning, declaring the sneaky raccoon to be a real troublemaker.  Very young readers will enjoy knowing that they know things the characters don’t.

A gold emblem on the cover proclaims, “Celebrating 25 years of Katie!”  It’s published in Australia and set in London, so perhaps there are children in one or both of those countries who would know who Katie is, but unfortunately, there’s nothing in the book to give us any background on who Katie is or why we’re supposed to celebrate her.  The story opens with Katie and her grandmother visiting London’s National Gallery, and when Grandma needs to rest she sends Katie off to explore on her own. The plot consists of Katie ignoring the “Please do not touch” signs and jumping into one famous painting after another, snatching a piece of pie from one, sharing a cup of tea in another, playing with another child in another, playing with a tiger, and falling through an abstract before being rescued by the museum guard.  I’m sure it would make a great souvenir for children visiting this museum, and it might make a good introduction before a class were to take a field trip to a museum.  As a general interest read it’s okay, if perhaps a little flat.