A picture book in rhyme by the author of the bestselling Pendragon series, the book is a direct homage to Dr. Seuss, Shrek!, and every book with the message of accepting yourself as you are.  Lala is an underground-dwelling, krinkle-nut-digging, gnome-like creature known as a rugabee.  She spends her days longing to live above ground, and one day decides to make her dreams come true and wander upwards.  When three mean princesses play a prank on her, Lala retreats back to the world she knows.  However, when the princesses find themselves in danger, it is only Lala who can come to the rescue.  The book is worth checking out for Boiger’s richly detailed watercolor illustrations, but in many places the story seems clichéd, and the Seuss-like rhymes are forced and not quite natural.  This is a sweet story about inner beauty and acceptance, but it borrows heavily from other, better books.

A wide-eyed elephant named Ben-Bobby and his goofy-looking sheep friend Doug-Dennis go to the circus, and it doesn’t take long for Doug-Dennis to steal his friend’s popcorn and lie about.  When his fib grows into a huge lie of epic proportions, Doug-Dennis soon realizes that the only way to return to earth is to tell the truth.  With busy, brightly-colored, cartoon-like illustrations, and a combination of traditional text and word-bubbles, Farrell brings his silly characters to life while at the same time espousing his message: lying is not a solution for anything.  The book effectively walks the line between moralistic and hilarious, and the vacant expressions of the characters and ridiculousness of the lies (“My nose is filled with green jelly beans”) mean that it’s a great tool for teaching children the value of telling the truth while also making them laugh.

Set in Sudan, A Long Walk to Water is based on the true story of Salva Dut who, in 1985 at the age of 11, was separated from his family and endured horrific trauma trying to escape war torn Sudan.  After escaping first to Ethiopia and then Kenya, Salva finally immigrated to the U.S. as one of the ‘Lost Boys’ and was adopted and raised by an American family.

As an adult, Salva returns to Sudan and is reunited with the family he thought he had lost. He begins humanitarian work with ‘Water for Sudan’, an organization that drills well in areas where people never before have had access to water without walking many hours a day to carry water back to their villages.

It is Salva’s well drilling that connects his story to that of Nya, a young girl when the reader is introduced to her in 2008. Nya struggles daily to walk many miles in the blazing sun to haul water for her family. Her daily struggle for survival intersects with Salva who, a generation earlir, also was a struggling child in the deserts of Sudan.

This true story is engaging and gripping. The ending is poignant and unexpected.

Written in the style of a parable, Jeffers’ beautiful book explores the love between child and grandparent, as well as the sadness of losing a beloved family member.  When a little girl loses her grandfather, she locks up her heart and loses her sense of awe of the world.  As the little girl grows up, she attempts to regain her heart and wonder, but finds herself unable until she meets another child whose eyes are still open to the beauty of the world.  With incredible mixed-media illustrations that mix photography, watercolor, parts of old books, and more, Jeffers creates a serene world of imagination and magic.  The characters are expressive, and the simple, touching story is a valuable tool to help a child, or even an adult, who may be going through a period of grief or experiencing loss for the first time.  The message will probably go over the heads of very small children, but the creativity and complexity of the illustrations alone are enough to incite conversation.  Be sure to remove the dust cover for even more amazing art!

Dillweed is a lonely child, and as a result he has become quite a dark, vengeful child.  When his parents abandon him to go off into the world and have their own adventures, leaving him in the care of the selfish Umblud and Perfidia, Dillweed takes matters into his own hands.  In the macabre tradition of Edward Gorey and Lemony Snicket, Heide’s book is hilariously disturbing.  Ellis (who has illustrated such books as The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket) has created washed out gouache illustrations that perfectly compliment Heide’s sparse, wicked prose, and her depictions of the unpleasant adults are delightfully grotesque.  While written at a low reading level, the morbid content of the book is more appropriate for older children and adults with an appreciation for dark humor– the fate of Dillweed’s parents and guardians is unpleasant, to say the least.

This is a simplified, easy to read overview of America’s involvement in World War II. The pluses of the book include an index, timeline, glossary of terms (by chapter), short chapters, many photographs, and a visually interesting lay out.  The minuses are that it is too simplistic to be a serious reference source. In the chapter ‘America at War’, there is no mention of the war’s affects at home: there is no mention of rationing, women working on the bomber assembly lines, and no mention of the Japanese internment camps.  In ‘Weapons of War’ there is no mention of the bombing of Dresden and other devastation caused by these new weapons. In ‘War in the Pacific’ the Bataan Death March is not mentioned by name, and there is no reference to the large number of U.S. casualties at Iwo Jima. The ‘D-Day’ chapter also fails to mention the U.S. casualties suffered in that invasion. ‘Victory’ shows a sanitized photo of post-atomic bomb Hiroshima.

Overall, this book is too simplified and short on key elements of the affect of America’s involvement in World War II for it to be of much help to students doing anything but the most cursory review of WW II.

Seventh grader Lily James IS the star of her soccer team, but when she disobeys her coach’s direction in a game to pass the ball and takes the shot herself, she is suspended for two games.  This means Lily will miss the championship game.  Frustrated with the coach, and missing the opportunity to make a select team, Lily doesn’t understand why the consequence needs to be so severe.  Benched, and sitting next to her coach for the final two games, however, Lily can see for herself the value of teamwork.  She realizes what a selfish player she had been and says, “Believe it or not, I’ve learned more about being a team player by getting kicked off.”

The true test of this lesson comes at the end of the book when the coach puts Lily back in for the OT (technically, the overtime is time “beyond” the two game suspension) in the championship game.  Given an opportunity to score the winning goal, Lily unselfishly passes to a teammate, who scores to win the game.

Most of us don’t care for ‘drizzle’, however, at the Peabody Farm drizzle is it’s life blood.  The Peabody Farm is almost like a ‘Magic Kingdom’ where the rhubarb tastes like chocolate, you can set your watch to the exact time the rain begins each week, and you can take a giant umbrella ride in the drizzle.  People flock to the farm to enjoy all it’s eccentricities.  Eleven-year-old Polly Peabody loves her farm; she can’t think of ever living anywhere else.  Her best friends are the rhubarb plants and insects.  However, bad mojo seems to have come to the farm and the drizzle and rain stop, the plants start to die.  This coincides with the traumatic illness which befalls Polly’s older brother.  Her parents talk of selling the farm and Polly knows that this is her time to step up and take control of her’s and her family’s future.  Throughout her family’s history, there has always been one person who has the magic ability to create the rain and therefore keep the farm alive.  Her great-grandma had it, her beloved grandma had it, her Aunt Edith had it, and she has it.  She just has to learn how it all works before it’s too late.  This book is an enjoyable read and you’ll want to wish you lived on the Peabody Farm, as well.  Polly and Aunt Edith are well defined characters, with the remaining characters in a minimal supporting role, which borders a little on the skimpy side.  Nonetheless, you’ll find yourself rooting for Polly to figure it out.

This charming and delightful story is told from the perspective of the family dog when his people decide to bring home a cat (without asking him first).  All his efforts to make friends seem to awry, despite his best intentions (because of course neither the cat nor the people understand dogspeak), and Stanley keeps ending up in trouble.  Comical illustrations compliment the story nicely.

A charming biography told from an unusual perspective, it highlights many of the struggles Abraham Lincoln faced, and always returns to how he was able to harness the power of humor and words to help.  Perhaps the subtitle would be more fitting if it claimed “served” in place of “saved,” but that’s my only real criticism:  This book takes one of our most famous presidents and makes him seem more human, less iconic, someone the readers would like to have known.  I definitely think it has a place in every elementary school library, and maybe middle school as well.