Nice, large illustrations, good binding, make for a quality, informative book about making good food choices.  The first chapter discusses the “picky eater” and has he father taking his son to the locally grown organic section of the grocery story to shop for foods that are right in nutrients.  Chapter two brings to live the five food groups and even discusses sugar and how little and why you would want in your body.  Later in the book, food choices for lunches, desserts,  and snacks are examined as healthy choices.  There is a formulaic procedure listed in the back on how to create an energy lunch, complete with glossary and further resources.  Recommended, mostly because it’s challenging to find quality books with new nutrition information.

This book has many great features which include photos, captions glossary, index, a timeline and more.  The one piece that caught my attention and earned my praise was the feature called: Today’s persepctive.  It included that often overlooked piece of how we view history differently through the lense of time.  Fox example, the section which told about Pearl Harbor included that American’s felt that it was a “sneak attack” by the Japanese.  However, now historians are saying that is was more a critical intelligence failure on the part of the US.  They felt Japan wasn’t capable of pulling off an attack.  It was a disastrous error to underestimate Japan.  I like how the book is open to new ways of viewing history, and for this reason am recommending it.

A catchy title, nice graphics for lower readers which need high interest, very enticing topics, but probably not the content to support the average  student led science project.   This book could be used to motivate students who aren’t interested in science or completion of an experiment and need encouragement which allows them to use topics or language that isn’t necessarily appropriate or allowed in a school setting.  Topics such as poop, snot, smelly sneakers are used as subjects in the 11 experiments provided.  Although this isn’t the book most teachers or parents will grab, there will probably be some lower readers and challenging students who will enjoy looking through the book.

A hilariously funny everybody book which helps us to explain the origin of the Yankee Doodle tune and make sense of it all.  The story begins with the bored Yankee taking the suggestion from his pony that they go into town.  The horse suggests that he could go shopping for a feather and place in in his hat and call it macaroni.  The Yankee questions the logic in this plan.   The horse then enlightens us that the term “macaroni” was often used as a synonym for “fancy”.  They pony nearly makes a case for going into town when the Yankee hurts his feelings in a last ditch effort to win the argument. To make amends, he ends up going into town with his pony…in a sporty car.  Everyone’s happy by the end. Tom Angelberger has another winning book, besides his success with Origami Yoda books.

The story of a young kangaroo being put to bed provides the setting for sharing a series of original songs to the tunes of popular lullabies.  At the top of the page for each song it tells the reader what tune to use (e.g. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or Rock-a-Bye Baby), but the words are new, with illustrations set to match.  It would be fun to share with students and see if they could identify the tune, and maybe even inspire them to write their own original re-writes.

The true story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral, well-told, given sentiment by focusing on the simplicity of the cart that carried his body.  It will be a nice addition to a robust collection that wishes to round out its coverage of MLK.  For smaller collections, or for young readers first learning about King, they’ll need to start with a book that gives more concrete information about his accomplishments, or they won’t care about his funeral, but for those who already have a grounding on who the man was, this book provides an additional chapter to the story that has not been told before.

It’s okay.  The illustrations are humorous, as is the premise of the story:  a young boy has spent the day with his aunt, and can’t understand why she seems so distressed when he’s been trying to be so helpful.  The text basically consists of a list of one attempt to help, which turned to disaster, after another, described in rhyme.  I kind of wish the fluency of the text rolled a little easier off the tongue — a bit stilted at times.

It’s okay, I guess.  It’s a book about moving and saying good-bye.  To try to cheer themselves up, some friends who are facing one of them moving away decide to throw a good-pie party instead, for the whole neighborhood, and after the party they gaze at the moon, referring to it as a pie they will always be able to share.  There doesn’t seem to be any real climax that it builds to, or any surprise or humor or compelling reason to make the reader care.  A little on the bland side.

The illustrations are soft and brown-toned, lending a sentimentality to the book.  The facial expressions of the characters capture a sense of wonder.  The story is a simple one: it begins as a Max shares a good-bye moment with his grandfather, who assures him the moon will always shine for him.  Throughout the long car ride home, Max keeps his eyes on the moon waiting for it to disappear from sight like his grandfather did, but instead it follows him home, disappearing from view only briefly, once as they travel through a tunnel, and once when a cloud temporarily covers it.  Although kids who live around here may experience more often that the clouds could cover the moon for days (or weeks) at a time, they’ll still enjoy the reassuring concept of the ever-returning moon.

Two bear cubs, upon finding their campground deserted, decide to go exploring.  They come across a school and wander in to investigate.  Though it is completely beyond believability to think two bears are going to be able to wander from room to room throughout the school before anyone notices, these two manage to visit the music room, art room, gym, science room and cafeteria before being discovered, creating all sorts of mischief along the way.  Upon discovery the fire alarm is pulled, emergency folks arrive and calmly cart the bears home in the back of a squad car, so all ends well.  The illustrations are cute and idealized, and kids will enjoy imagining what it would be like if bears visited school.  Plus the book would make a good read-aloud for September Kindergartners as a spark to start discussion about different parts of the school.