There are nine chapters in this book in the Science Fact or Science Fiction? series. They cover the topic of UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects very well for this age group.The topics include: crop circles, Roswell, Area 51, abductions, Project Blue Book, the Condon Report, conspiracy theories, popular television shows and movies, and numerous sightings. The sightings are especially of interest because one is from Washington State and another is from Oregon.

The book states facts, such as, Kenneth “Arnold thought the objects might have been new military aircraft. But the US War Department thought Arnold had imagined the aircraft.” (5) The book mentions a few famous people ( Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, and NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin ) who have reported seeing UFOs and that artwork and literature from ancient people have referenced seeing flying celestial objects.

“The United States, Canada, and other countries have kept records of UFO sightings over many years.” (9) 90% of them can be explained as human-made objects or common atmospheric events.

The reader is asked to decide : to believe or not to believe.

The book includes an index and free online nonfiction resources.

It’s got all the pleasing characteristics of other Llama Llama books, including rhythm and rhyme and fun illustrations, as well as a worthwhile message it’s trying to convey to to young children — in this case the importance of everyone lending a hand with the tidying up chores. When mama ask little Llama to stop playing and to make his bed, he starts off shaking his head, because all he wants to do is play, until he takes some time to image what life would be like of mama also refused to clean and just wanted to play. The problem lies with the lack of any sign of dad in this scenario, and the implication that if Llama doesn’t help all the cleaning responsibilities would fall upon his apron-clad mama: it just smacks of 1950s stereotypes.

If you have a lot of fans of the Froggy books, it might be worth purchasing this one to expand your collection, especially if you’ve also got classes who do pumpkin patch field trips, which is what this one is about. It tells about Froggy and his friends searching for pumpkins as part of a pumpkin picking contest, with prizes for assorted traits (biggest, smallest, prettiest, etc.) And even after dropping his pumpkin at the end of the search, smashing it to bits, Froggy still gets a prize — for ugliest. I’m just a bit tired of the whole everybody-gets-a-prize thing.

It’s more or less your basic, traditional, retelling of he There Little Pigs, with all the usual huffing and puffing and chinny chin chins. What lends this one its unique character is that the three little pigs declare themselves to be obsessed with the desire to be superheroes, to the point of dressing like superheroes. When they set off from home and first arrive in Fairyland, they hear how the local wolf has been tormenting all the local residents. So when they catch the wolf after he climbs down the chimney of the brick house, they turn out to be superheroes to all their neighbors.

The obligatory selfie – do you send it or not? Olivia meets Elm online and their connection is all about movies. They discover they are both fanatics and regularly watch movies together at the same time while in different locations just to be able to critique them together. When Elm finally sends a selfie, Olivia panics, using her friend Carrie’s image instead of her own. How would Elm ever find out…except when they accidentally meet up. Leah Konen’s misrepresented identity story is daftly creative. Clearly a lover of cinema herself, Konen adds little twists and turns, including cheeky chapter titles, to peak interest. Fans of Susan Colasanti and Joan Bauer will like this innocent romance as it weaves through happy, messy and scary to love.

Author Mac Barnett states in the preface this book is true. He states he was a kid spy before becoming an author. You be the judge of this as you read his book.

After almost breaking a video game record, all for the lack of one more quarter, Mac goes outside, were he answers a pay phone. It is the Queen of England phoning him. “That is how it happens.

One minute you are waiting for your mom to pick you up from a mini-golf course in California. The next minute you are flying to England on a secret mission to protect the Crown Jewels.

I know. It does not make much sense.” (25)

The Queen retells the history of 1671, when a Colonel Blood attempted to steal the Crown Jewels, but failed. Now, it is the 318th anniversary of the event and she has received a message, ” TOMORROW NIGHT I WILL GET WHAT MY GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT- GREAT GRANDFATHER DID NOT. I WILL NOT BE STOPPED. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING 318 YEARS!” (39) The Queen is asking Mac to prevent this crime. The Queen has Mac and Beefeater Holcombe locked in the Tower of London with the jewels to keep watch and to sleep in shifts. Mac takes to the first watch. He does his best to stay awake, but falls asleep. Shortly thereafter, Holcombe wakes Mac. The Jewels are gone and the two of them are still locked in the Tower.

Mac and the Queen retell various jokes and riddles with similar plots, but cannot figure out how the real crime happened. Then, the Queen has Mac and Holcombe flown off to a castle next to Colonel Blood’s descendants castle in Ireland. Surely that is where the Jewels will resurface.

Jokes abound between the Queen and Mac over the differences in meanings between the British and American understanding of the word pants ( underwear and trousers). The Queen also enjoys people who act with panache, “Style and verve.” (51) Even when they are a thief. And Mac will state facts followed by, “That’s true. You can look it up.”

Eventually, Mac figures out the whodunit and howdunit. The Queen has the criminal arrest himself simply by using her regal commanding voice and he does it.

So, was author Mac Barnett telling the truth about being a kid spy?

Illustrated by Mike Lowery.

My only real beef with this book is the way it short-changes Gertie in the title. The book is all about Manny and Gertie, who spend every Saturday battling imaginary monsters together all around town. Until, in the midst of some of their imaginings in the park, they notice the way litter is impacting the whole park (and especially the turtles in the pond). So they set their efforts into battling the real monsters: litter bugs. As others in the park notice their efforts, they pitch end to lend a hand and everyone benefits. A little cheesy perhaps, but a good message. I just don’t know why Gertie gets no credit?

This story is really series of children introducing themselves as they work together in a garden. Each student has a different challenge s/he describes (diabetes, autism, wheelchairs, blind, deaf, turrets…), as well as things that help them cope with those challenges. Each introduction ends with a question that leads into the next child, creating a sense of connectedness despite their differences, as well as inviting children to connect themselves to the children in the story. The author ends by drawing an analogy between the children and the garden in which they’ve been working, pointing out that it is the differences which enrich both the garden and our world.

It’s a picture book that starts to introduce young children to literature’s use of tangible symbols to represent intangible ideas. It tells us about a hippo who has a big, black, heavy block that she’s been carrying around for quite some time. Each day she drags it with her to the park where she sits on it. Then along comes a happy, dancing alligator surrounded by a cloud of butterflies, who sits with her day after day. When invited to the ocean, our pig friend is concerned that her block is too heavy to carry that far, but her new alligator friend says he and his butterflies can help. Along the way, and during their time beside the sea, hippo tells about an old friend she misses, who has gone away, and finds that her block is shrinking. She says she’ll always have it, but alligator says he’ll help carry it when necessary.

I appreciate the idea of a picture-book biography of someone students might not know about, and one that encourages exercise and healthy eating, but I’ve got several problems with this book. Right off the bat, it begins by telling us that he was a bit of a sickly child, skinny and feeble and frail, and then we turn the page and the next sentence says, “But Friedrich survived.” That seemed like a big jump, as nothing in being described as skinny and frail had seemed life-threatening. My main objection is hidden in the author’s note at the very back of the book, rarely read by children, when the author admits that the subject of his book was known for self-promotion, and there is much doubt over the authenticity of events he presented in the main body of the text as fact.