Zena wakes up to a gray, colorless room and embarks on a journey outside to find the colors.  Each page she comes to is one color whereby kids can name all the things that color.  The book introduces the primary colors first and then the secondary colors.  Each time a new color is introduced, Zena’s hat turns that color, and a polka dot on both her and her dog become that color.  At the end all colors join to become a rainbow.  There is a color wheel activity at the end, which is written for people with absolutely no experience doing art with little kids.  Preschoolers totally enjoyed this book.

Sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and that’s what we call grumpy.  Maya, a little girl, didn’t know why she was grumpy, she just was.  Everything she did was done grumpily.  But grandma had the fix and slowly, slowly, a little bit at a time, grandma got her to smile and be happy, all by going to the park to play on Maya’s favorite toys.

Three Cheers for Trees explains to young children through the use of text and clear photographs how important trees are to earth and to us, by providing clean air.  Although the message is a good one, I believe that the definition and examples of fossil fuels were weak.  There could have been better explanation as to how people or machines use these fuels before explaining how to decrease our carbon footprint.  A valuable, but weak message.

Clear, colorful photographs on each page distinctly show what each letter of the alphabet stands for, and there doesn’t have to be any imagination to figure it out.  Football covers it all.  Either kids know everything about football or they seem to know nothing.  This book does a good job of explaining some basics.  Considering I read this book just before the Super Bowl and the Seahawks were on their way, all kids were eager to learn more.  It makes a good addition to our school’s library.

Blue’s world has exploded — literally.  She is on the run but she’s not sure what from.  Slivers of flashbacks haunt Blue but she just can’t put together the whole picture.  Lisa Jahn-Clough unfolds the mysterious back story of Blue’s before life in alternating chapters with her present tense scared, homeless self in her novel Nothing But Blue.  Now on the road east, Blue learns to eat out of garbage cans and avoid staying in one place for long.  But people recognize her.  They say her face has been on the television.  But why?  “All dead. No one survived. All dead.”  This is the chant that keeps Blue in the shadows.  In the shadows is where she befriends one magical dog that guides her through challenges again and again. Aptly named Shadow, the team continues east in search of a to a time where she was comfortable, even if a little insecure.  Jahn-Clough weaves familiar teen issues of self-image, sex, independence, and parental angst in a story about a girl that needs to learn to trust herself and to move on despite the horror she witnessed.  Recommended for grade 9 and up.

With her first novel, This is How I Find Her, Sara Polsky develops a rare theme for young readers exploring the territory of a mentally ill parent, a child left to cope alone with that parent from too young an age and without explanation, attempted suicide, teen guilt and things left unsaid as the relationship of mother, daughter, and the family unfolds.

Sophie Canon has been mother figure to her bi-polar mother for 5 years, until the day she finds her mom near death from an overdose of pills. During the subsequent hospitalization and slow recovery of her painter mother, Amy, who feels her medication interferes with her inspiration, Sophie stays with the family that seemingly deserted her years before, whom she now feels she hardly knows. Frozen in silences, both Sophie, her cousin Leila, and her Aunt Cynthia finally learn to speak their uncertainties, to open the curtain of misunderstandings and fear that has hung too long between them. Sophie, too, realizes she cannot live for her mother anymore at the expense of her own life.

As she makes her way through her own pain and silence, she finds there are people around her who care, who want to know her thoughts, and who have reasons of their own for the distances that have kept Sophie and Amy so alone over the years. The plot is well crafted, the characters identifiable and well drawn, and each grows into better understanding of themselves, each other, and their needs by the happy conclusion of this book.

Highly Recommended

Charming story set in New York city during the early 21st century when libraries were not allowing children inside.  This story tells the life of Annie Moore, who was trained to be a librarian, and helped to revolutionize library access to children in New York city, setting an example for other cities and countries to follow.  Heartwarming story with bright and cheerful acrylic paints. Recommended.

French words are deftly intertwined within this story of a French mouse living near a beautiful cathedral who is hopeful to become the next tooth mouse, which is a “tooth fairy”.  Since she is so young and small, she is told that she doesn’t have much of a chance.  She enters the contest and the rules are stated: you must prove yourself brave honest and wise.  The wall of names of children about to lose a tooth was daunting and her greatest challenge was what to do with all of the teeth!  But, alas, this little mouse comes up with the wisest of ideas.

The illustrations beautifully assist in the story telling of the young Chinese American girl who is learning to use her chopsticks as adeptly as her older family members.  Her perseverance pays off as she succeeds by the end of the story with the encouragement and support of her family.

This is a cute book that has only one word “BALL.”   The illustrations are what make this book so fun and entertaining.  Most everyone can relate to a dog or cat that has a toy that they obsess over. This is a very fun book.