Lester and Munsinger are a winning duo.  Subtitled Feeling Good About Yourself, Hurty Feelings is about a hippo who took everything anyone said to her the wrong way and hurt her feelings, causing her to weep and sob, earning her name Fragility.  Finally when confronted by an elephant, everything he says about her is true for him, too, and he breaks down crying.    They finally stop and become friends and she learns not to take things said so personally.  A very cute story appropriate for dealing with kindergartners and first graders fragile feelings and getting them to understand everything said isn’t to be taken literally.  My only complaint is that the binding appears weak.

Hide and Seek is a sequel to Messner’s Capture the Flag, but it is not necessary to have read the first book to understand this one; that’s a first for me.  Hide and Seek reunites four middle-school age kids whose parents are members of the Silver Jaguar Society, members whose ancestors are related to artists and have sworn to uphold and protect art.   The story takes place in Costa Rica where the parents have gone in order to locate and retrieve a missing golden jaguar cup worth a small fortune.  While the parents are pretty much out on a wild goose chase, an earthquake separates them from their kids for a few days.  Left at a nature reserve with friends, the four kids find the missing cup and the thief who stole it.  The suspense comes in the kids not knowing who to trust.  The setting description is very well done and there are photos at the end of the book depicting the locations and animals from the story.  This book is a mixture of adventure, mystery, and suspense.

This book goes into quite a bit of detail which includes the story of  jade throughout history, the mineral analysis of the gemstone, coloration, and much more.  I would say that this book is for the serious rockhound.  The photos are well done and clear, and the pages have a bottom border which livens it up.  Well written and with lots of good information, this book is not a first purchase for the average library.

The photos of bakery items in this book look delicious!  Includes easy step-by-step directions.  Although targeted for kids 4th grade and up, I believe it would need to be someone with some baking experience to be able to pull these off.

A  first-grade teacher recently asked me for some books on shapes, and other than the ancient book by Tana Hoban, I couldn’t find any.  This book fills our need perfectly as it shows 2D and 3D shapes in food.  The author did a great job in choosing foods that kids actually eat and like, and she does a great job in explaining the difference between 2D and 3D.  I am planning on getting the other books in this series.

People are becoming more and more conscious of the environment, kids included, and this book has great ideas on what to do with all those plastic gallon containers.  Ventura gives lots of ideas (kind of like Pinterest for kids) for games and actual useful items like bird feeders, bird houses, piggy banks, and so on.  The supplies necessary for each activity are mostly found around the house.  For kids who are crafty, this book is a winner.

In this retelling of the classic tale Chicken Little, Byrd does an excellent job in illustrating the various animals who believe the sky is falling.  His attention to the minutest detail is very pleasing to the eye.  This is the typical story with a slightly different ending.  Here, Foxy Loxy manages to get the group to his house and locks them up waiting to be cooked in a stew.  Chicken Little escapes and makes Foxy Loxy believe the sky really is falling by throwing apples on his head.  Foxy Loxy and his family run to tell the king thereby allowing the others to escape, who then run home.  This version does seem more believable than that of Steven Kellogg which was published in 1985.  This version makes a great replacement.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I am not a Captain Underpants fan, and this book reminds me why.  Basically, I have three main gripes: first, the comics portions of the book have such bad word choice, grammar and spelling.  Is this really what we want our impressionable kids to read?  Second, I find the illustrations of the teachers in their underwear or not and pulling down someone else’s pants pretty crude.  Really?  Do we want kids to laugh at teachers?  And, third, the telling of the story is all over the place.  Kids reading this aren’t tracking a story line–it’s just snippets of a story here and there, changing as fast as possible.  This series is extremely popular, mainly for boys in grades two and three, and those who are not so mature.  I am sure that this book will be too.

This fun, flip-book story is told from two perspectives.  Lucy, the cat, cannot wait for Luke to leave for school so she can begin her day’s adventures.  She chases squirrels, visits the supermarket for a snack, and stops by the pet store to play with toys.  As she plays in the sock display at the clothing store, she hears her boy.  She rushes home and is happily settled when Boy returns.  On the flip side Luke, the boy, leaves for school with a list of errands to do for his mom after school.  As he learns about lions, he thinks about his sleeping cat.  He stops by the supermarket, the pet store, and the clothing store just after his cat has caused a disturbance.  When he returns home, he curls up on the couch with his lazy cat.  Looking closely at the features in the colorful illustrations, one can find small details indicating the presence of both Luke and Lucy throughout the book.  Conversations and thoughts are written in a different font than the narration.  Fun to read with multiple classroom uses!