NASA photos (along with other photos from Photo Researchers, Inc.)  give added visual understanding to the 2 or 3 sentences per page on size, shape, location, surface, and chemical composition of asteroids.

Includes: glossary and index.

Lexile: 590 L

Every now and then a book comes along whose message transcends beyond the text and illustrations.   A book that is more than the sum of its parts.  Liz Garton Scanlon’s rhyming couplets and Marla Frazee’s pencil and water color tackles the impossible job of capturing the sense of wonder and mystery about hour human existence on the planet. Through these pictures and vignettes, we follow a multicultural family from a summer morning, to the end of the day and a quiet night at home.  What a heartwarming celebration of our interconnectedness  in a world that provides us everything.  After reading this simple, exquisite book, I was compelled, once again, to live each day in gratitude.

The ‘who, what where, and when’  information of centuries past Ninja is revealed through large action packed illustrations and photos in combination with 3  to 4 sentences per page.

WHO: special families / both male and female

WHAT: spies and assasins

WHERE: Japan

WHEN: 1400s – 1600s

Ninja trained from a young age in secret villages the arts of invisiblity through disguise, moving silently, and blending into their surroundings, fighting and killing

Lexile:  NC 700 L

Beginning with several pages addressing general concepts (reminding readers to be creative and be willing to make mistakes and try again), it goes on to describe a bit about the history of collage as an art form, define tools, elements of composition, and techniques, using both pictures and words.  After this general introduction, it provides step-by-step directions for six specific projects with lots of photo support for the directions.  It also provides tips for preserving finished projects.

Just a few rhyming words on each page, with bright illustrations capture a small child’s experience of the pageantry and excitement of watching a parade.  It’s a fine little book for very small children, but nothing exceptional.

Told from the perspective of the older brother of a boy with autism, this story does a good job of describing some of the experiences, frustrations, and successes that autism brings to a family.  I think it would be a useful tool to include in any library collection, to help others understand and cope with their own experiences of special needs children.

A book intended for very young children, it’s designed to introduce the days of the week and the idea of journaling.  Each 2-page spread holds 1 sentence telling what that day is for, accompanied by mixed-media illustrations.  A page in the back offers parents/teachers conversation-starting questions for pre-schoolers.  It’s a fine book for what it does, but there are others that do the same, and it has very limited audience appeal.

It’s a rhyming tale describing how the Belly Button Fairy bestows 1 belly button on every newborn baby.  It has words to a song in the back to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”  There will be some readers who will always be drawn to anything with “Fairy” in the title, but it doesn’t really have much else to recommend it.

I didn’t like it.  It seems rather lame and disjointed:  a group of forest friends build a dinosaur to save their patch of woods from a plastic trees factory, but instead save the woods because it turns out the friends are all extinct or endangered.  It’s got cut-paper illustrations.

Adapted from a folk song that dates from the 1500s, this picture book tells the story of a farmer who brags about his work being so much harder than his wife’s, until she swaps places with him and forces him to recognize how much more difficult her work is.  Though the illustrations depict the couple in modern dress, it still holds a certain timelessness.