It’s Saturday and Froggy woke up early wanting to go out and play.  His mom wants him to go back to bed.  He heads over to a friend’s house only to find him gone, so is another friend, and another, until finally, Froggy is sad because all of his friends have gone somewhere.  Froggy’s dad has planned a play date for Froggy with Frogilina, and they are all going to the movies.  Froggy decides that since he really wants to see the movie, he’ll go, but he isn’t happy about having Frogilina tagging along.  Frogilina happens to be a little imp; she throws popcorn at Froggy at the movies, she’s kisses him as if he’s the Frog Prince, and she takes a bite off the bottom of Froggy’s ice cream cone so it drips all over him.  It’s the worst play date ever!   The whole business of a little boy and a little girl being friends and playing together is still a bit disconcerting–even kindergarteners don’t know what to think.  The girls giggle and look at the boys.  Kind of an awkward book for kids.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Miss Maple (think the size of Thumbelina) collects and nurtures orphaned seeds of all kinds.  She travels all over during the summer and collects the seeds, keeps them throughout the year, and when spring comes she launches them where they will thrive.  The illustrations are water color with some black ink outlining.  The voice of the story is calming and soothing.  The scenes of Miss Maple in her tree house make you want to be there.    Could be a great resource if tied with plant/seed science units.

Miss Fox is a teacher whose students see her several times with a police officer, including going into the police station.  They assume that Miss Fox has done something to get herself in trouble.  The rumor mill begins.  When the students see a brochure for Hawaii, they think Miss Fox is going to run away.  It’s nice to see how loyal they are to their teacher.  However, at the end, Miss Fox and her fiance announce their engagement and plans for their wedding and honeymoon in Hawaii.  The kids are relieved to find that their teacher isn’t a criminal.  It’s a simple story about how gossip can hurt someone.  Although for this message, I prefer Madonna’s book, Mr. Peabody’s Apples.

This is a fascinating little book, explaining a lot of very complex ideas in clear, understandable text.  After a brief explanation of the history of exploration, it goes on to describe the many challenges that must be tackled to achieve interstellar exploration within the next 100 years.  The team that has gathered to study this possibility includes scientists, engineers, doctors, businesspeople, etc. The book manages to make clear just how difficult such a prospect, while still inspiring confidence and hope that it will be achieved someday.  My only gripe with the book is something I’ve been noticing in a lot of non-fiction lately: a “timeline” that really isn’t a proper timeline at all, but just a list of dates of significant events.

This is a good, solid little book, which sticks to it’s focus.  It describes the many different types of public office for which candidates must be elected, and explains all the things involved in running a campaign, from fundraising and getting petitions signed to political parties and rallies and commercials.  It did a very deliberate job of making sure to balance photos of Democrats and Republicans, famous candidates and candidates for smaller, municipal offices.  It did state that, “The first U.S. president elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland in 1892,” which leaves the reader wondering, how were they chosen before then?

As a general rule, I like this series of books.  This one did have a lot of good solid information, clearly explained, but I found it’s definition of minerals somewhat unclear/contradictory: in one place it defines minerals as inorganic substances found in the earth, which are not alive and “do not come from plants or animals.” Yet elsewhere in the book it states that many foods contain minerals, including fruits and vegetables, eggs and dairy products.  No where does it offer an explanation for this contradiction.  I’m afraid students will find it confusing.

I guess it’s adequate, but I was not overly impressed with anything other than the binding.  I didn’t like the textbook style assignments/questions given throughout, interrupting the text, and I thought the text could have been more clearly stated.

This series seems to be some misguided attempt to morph library books with text books.  It really is a clearly written book about a topic of high interest to many students.  I would recommend it if they hadn’t gone and stuck a bunch of textbook assignment questions at the end of every chapter.  These will be a turn-off to students, and are unlikely to be used by teachers — they don’t enhance the book, but instead detract from its appeal to recreational readers.  Another thing: I’m tired of books that list a sequence of dates along a line and call it a timeline — when I was taught to make timelines in elementary school, it was a requirement that the distance along the line be representative the of the time it was attempting to illustrate — when the same distance might represent one year or seventeen years along the same line, it’s missing the point of a timeline.

I’ve been a fan of this series for years: the cartoonish illustrations, and the short blurbs of information make history accessible, and non-threatening, and the way the series emphasizes all the miserable, unpleasant aspects of history, putting the reader into the position of first person, is a draw that hooks a lot of otherwise resistant readers.  As much as I like the series in general, there have been some titles over the years that I thought failed to live up to their titles.  This one did a great job of showing just how difficult life was for pioneers heading West.  Plus, I love the sturdy bindings on these books.

Every kid who has ever had the dinner-table show-down with their parents over some vegetable they refused to eat will enjoy this tale.  Even when Martha’s parents insist that green beans are good for her, Martha knows they’re really bad.  She’s proven right one day when a gang of personified green beans dressed as hoodlums from the wild west arrive in town, reeking havoc on anyone who ever said, “Eat your green beans.”  When they take Martha’s parents hostage, she’s delighted at first with her new freedom to stay up late and eat whatever she wants.  When she decides she really does miss them, and decides to rescue them, the only way to set them free is to eat all the marauding beans.