A fun read-together for kids and dads to share, it points out all the ways kids are lucky if there dad is the kind who never grew up.  The silly illustrations accompany a long list of indicators of dads who have never grown up, from racing grocery carts to reading comics and making pancakes in shapes.

Well, when it comes down to it, this is the story of a not-too-bright man doing a strip-tease at the train station, in an effort to find the ticket that he’s got in his mouth. When he gets down to his underwear without finding the ticket, he yells out about losing it, and then finds it on the ground since it fell out of his mouth while yelling.  He puts it back in his mouth so that he has his hands free to dress again, and when he gets on the train he laughs at his own silliness, thereby swallowing the ticket.  Lucky for him, he has cash to buy a new one on board because folks standing by while he stripped had thrown money into his hat. The illustrations are cleverly drawn, but colored in such drab, dreary colors, they’re not as appealing as they might have been.

It’s rather pedantic and cheesy.  It tells of a selfish, whiney, demanding little bear who has created a long list of all the things he wants from Santa, insisting that if he can’t have them all it won’t be a happy Christmas.  When Christmas arrives, his cousins do too, and they get most of the things on Little Bear’s wish list, but all he gets is a folded piece of paper that he refuses to even open.  He sulks for a while, then decides to help each of his cousins with their toys, until his father reminds him that he forgot about his note, which directs him to look under the stairs, where he finds the last item of his wish list, a tricycle, which he decides to share with his cousins.

The illustrations for this book are bright and interesting and unusual and intriguing.  I just wish the story lived up to the artwork.  There’s not really a plot.  It basically tells about someone who loves magic so much they imagine all sorts of magic they can do, each of which is a function of nature (make the sun rise, the rain fall, flowers bloom, etc.).

Though a picture book, this title is really better for older students.  The bright, somewhat abstract paintings that illustrate it are beautiful, and draw one in to this biography of jazz musician John Coltrain.  It describes how his music was influenced by life experiences, which included poverty, race issues, family issues, drug use, and spirituality.  It’s a compelling story, well-told and inspiring, but a bit too dark for young readers.

The illustrations are absolutely charming!  Hugo is a small yellow bird, living in Paris, who doesn’t like to fly.  One day he meets a new friend who wants to take him to the Eiffel Tower, but Hugo keeps making excuses to put off the adventure.  Finally that evening he confesses to a local owl that he is afraid of flying.  The owl is both understanding and helpful.  After practicing all night, Hugo is finally ready to take the leap the next day when his friend returns, and thoroughly enjoys the adventure.

The illustrations are soft and charming.  The text is rhythmic and rhyming and repetitive.  The story tells the simple tale of a young owl who watches his older siblings fly away and leave the nest, but is afraid to attempt to fly herself.  When she finally does, she’s glad because she then sets up her own nest, and hatches her own chick.  My one criticism is that there’s no actual compelling reason that finally spurs the chick to try flying: after repeatedly refusing the attempt she just finally does.

This is the second picture-book biography of Alice Coachman I’ve read in the last year, and though very different, they’re both fabulous in their own way.  This one has the advantage of offering the reader more detailed information about this inspiring woman who beat all kinds of odds to become the first African-American woman to win Olympic gold in 1948, from the poverty in which she was raised, to the societal prejudices against both blacks and women, to the cancellation of the 1944 Olympics during WWII.  When she finally did get her chance, it was an amazingly close contest.

Eh.  It’s fine.  It’s a cutesy little story about a personified bear, whose mother has warned him to stay away from people, who starts worrying when he hears about the tooth fairy because he doesn’t know whether the tooth fairy is a bear or a person.  He consults many other personified animal friends, getting into discussions about the Easter Bunny, Santa, and Old Mother Hubbard along the way.  For this bear, Santa and the tooth fairy both turn out to be bears.  Will young human children find their own beliefs about these characters challenged?

Beautifully illustrated non-fiction, describing the startlingly long migration of the godwits from Alaska to New Zealand.  It chronicles a single godwit, from hatching in June, to fattening itself up and learning to fly, through taking off with her flock in mid-October, struggles with weather avoiding birds of prey, to her arrival in New Zealand eight days and 7,270 non-stop miles later.  The story really is a compelling one to add to a science unit on migration and/or birds, and the illustrations really are stunning.  My one criticism of the book is the way it continually referred the bird it was tracking as “the young female.”  I found it repetitive and a little annoying (the feminist in me kept asking what difference it made that the bird was female — do males not make this journey?).