The book begins with Mother Goose sailing into view.  The introductory poem explains that the intent is to “remix old songs anew to turn them into something true fro modern singer, wingers, readings.”  The authors take 14 selected nursery rhymes from around the world and reinvent them in two unique poems with different voices, playing with points of view.  The dog complaining about the snoring when its pouring (It’s Raining, It’s Pouring), a pie tuckered out from all the thumbs (Little Jack Horner) a happy fiddle (Old King Cole) are just a few of the fun twists on the originals.  This book is similar to the author’s first book Grumbles from the Forest: Fairy-Tale Voices with a Twist.

A great choice for teaching point of view or for writers workshop.

The end of the book includes the original nursery rhymes as well as background on each original.  The book wraps up with a farewell poem from Mother Goose.

Maxi is a brand new taxi, flashy and bright.  He heads out for his first day of work with an enthusiastic smile.  In all his zipping and zooming he found lots of puddles, sticky fingers, and even a friendly pigeon left her mark. Now Maxi no longer sparkled – he looked more like Mr. Gooey-Goo.  No one wanted to ride is a dirty taxi! When he saw a boy and his mother wave, he zoomed over and stopped.  They weren’t excited about such a dirty taxi, but they had a solution – a car wash across the way.  Max was afraid to enter, but got sucked in anyway.  With a rumm, pish, flip-flop and blip blop the brushes tickled his muffler, bumper, and hubs. Out he zoomed, shining again.  The day ends with Maxi returning home without a bump or scratch.  His friend Mr. Buddy gives him an extra polish before tucking him in.

Fun rhyming language make this a good read aloud for young children.

George heard music all the time, but no one even knew music was important to him until his mother got a second-hand piano.  While his brother, Ira wasn’t interested, George raced over and amazed his mother by pounding out a popular ragtime tune. After that, George studied with famous piano teachers and began composing. At 17 he sold his first tune. By 1920, everyone knew of George Gershwin and his music.  He combined classical, ragtime, jazz and blues in wild, unpredictable ways to create his rhapsody, a “musical kaleidoscope of America’s melting pot,” Rhapsody in Blue.  The world premiere took place on February 12, 1924 in Aeolian Hall, New York.

Wonderfully descriptive language helps the reader hear the music of the story.  Text is accentuated in places with colorful swirling words and phrases.  Much of the illustrations are done in tones of blue as befitting a book about Rhapsody in Blue.

Includes Author’s and Illustrator’s Notes, Timeline, and Selected Bibliography

A young girl falls asleep listening to a winter storm and dreams of her tree castle where she’s the queen sitting on a throne of branches. She’s awoken by the creak, crack, crash and thud of her favorite branch falling in an ice storm.  She’s devastated.  It isn’t just a branch to her and she’s unwilling to give it up.  Her mother agrees to let her keep it for a little while. During the cleanup of the neighborhood, the girl notices the elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Frank with his chainsaw.  Mr Frank notices the girls long face.  Mr. Frank helps the girl recognize the potential in the fallen branch.  With tools, time, and elbow grease, the two work together on weekends and sometimes after school in Mr. Frank’s workshop.  They draw plans, measure, saw, dry the wood, plane, make holes, sand, and varnish. Finally their creation is pictured – a swing. Now her branch can again be her castle, her spy base, her ship.

A story of the importance of imagination, creativity, and relationships.

It had been such a long time that Old Turtle was just a legend, a story told late at night. But the people were haunted by questions they had no answers for.  When the questions are brought to the Old Woman, she knows the stories of Old Turtle are real and he hold the answers. Those who follow the whisperings of their hearts will find him.  The trusted few were tasked to speak for the people and ask their important questions.  The journey was long, but their hearts finally led them to Old Turtle.  The questions of their hearts; What is our purpose in life? How do we find happiness? Can you tell us about play? Speak to us of evil. And what about death? culminate with, Who are you and how will you live this day?  The answers to these deep meaningful questions tie us to each other and to creation itself.

While as powerful a message as the 2 previous Old Turtle books, the magnitude of the questions asked and the answers given are a bit overwhelming, making this aless effective book .  Each of the “important” questions is worthy of its own book.

Beautiful watercolor illustrations enhance the emotions of the book.

The Oodlethunks are a cave man family. They will remind the reader of the Flintstones in many visual ways, but without the dinosaurs. That is except for the one dinosaur Oona has hatched from a lone egg in Book #1. [ Book #1 is not given a recap, but it does not seem to matter, as this story can stand alone on its own merit.]

Oona’s baby stegosaurus , Stacy Steg Oodlethunk, is eating too much and growing too big to stay in the Oodlethunk’s cave home. Oona’s parents want to set Stacy free, but of course, Oona won’t hear of it.  After school, Oona, her friend Erma, and her younger brother Bonk go to see witch Brouhaha for a magic potion to fix Stacy’s growing problem. Brouhaha says the potion has not been tested yet. It might not work, do not take it. Oona tricks Brouhaha, takes the potion, and gives it to Stacy. The next morning, Stacy is bigger.

At school, the students go on a field trip to Rock Park and the Cave of Echoes. After school, Stacy is even bigger and hungrier.

By the next morning, Stacy has grown so much she is stuck inside the family cave and can’t get out. After school, the students come to see Stacy. Oona has the students collecting food for Stacy along the way to their home in trade for allowing them to see Stacy. Stacy eats it all!  Dad sends everybody home, saying they can come back tomorrow with the entire village to help them get Stacy out of the cave. Meanwhile, the family sleeps outside. The next morning, Stacy is sick and Oona is sick with worry so stays home from school. Once again Oona goes to Brouhaha for help.

After school, the villagers help dismantle the Oodlethunk’s cave freeing Stacy just as the snow begins to fall. Without a cave to stay in the Oodlethunks and villagers go to Rock Park and the Cave of Echoes to wait out the snow storm.  Then, the villagers hears an avalanche has buried their village.  After the snow storm ends everybody goes to help rebuild the village. The Cave of Echoes is big enough for Stacy to stay in all winter.

Ladies, do you ever get upset when people do not take you seriously or do not think you will understand the importance of something? This book is the telling of how the real Kate Warne used that kind of thinking to her and our country’s advantage. It is nice to have another piece of “herstory” out in front of young boys and girls.

The year is 1856, Kate Warne is a young widow who wants to work for the United States’ first detective agency, the Pinkertons. Kate explains to Mr. Pinkerton, ” Men liked to brag about their adventures and women encouraged them to talk by pretending to be impressed. Women she said, could also worm out secrets in places where male detectives couldn’t go.” (3) Kate was hired.

Kate often wore disguises. She would attend society parties. There Kate would talk with wives who would talk about their husbands’  careers. Kate would gain their confidence by saying her husband was in jail or she might be in the disguise of a fortune teller. Either way, Kate was able to gain valuable information.

After Lincoln’s election in 1860, “a plot to attack Lincoln as he passed through the city” of Baltimore on his way to Washington D. C., by train, was discovered.  Lincoln was disguised, put on an earlier train, then into a sleeper car, saved for him by Kate. Lincoln arrived safely in Washington D. C., but Kate stayed behind in Baltimore to listen for other plot rumors.

Kate continued on with Pinkerton agency through the Civil War and afterward.

Illustrator Valentina Belloni gave the characters simple yet expressive faces. Belloni has given the clothing the rich elegant designs of brocade fabrics against the much simpler time period backgrounds.

One small error between text and illustration exists.  The tombstone in the near final illustration has Kate’s year of birth incorrect, if she was thirty-eight when she died, as stated in the author’s Note.

This wonderful story will simply tug at your heart. Set at the beginning of summer, in the late 1960s, in North Carolina between two twelve year old girls and their grandmothers, one is white and the other is of color.

Sarah tells the story of how she is reading her library book outside when she should be watching her younger sister Robin. Then the unthinkable happens! Robin is hit by a car. (AND this is only the first page.) Sarah wrestles with herself throughout the book blaming Robin’s accident on herself for not watching Robin more closely. Sarah will be the best sister possible this summer to make up for this accident which has left active, fun loving Robin in a full body cast.  Sarah’s parents deem it necessary to give up living  in town with a mortgage if they are going to be able to pay for all of the medical bills Robin’s accident will incur. So Sarah’s family move out into the country by her grandparents’ house to live rent free in her Great Uncle John’s old house.  Out in the country away from town folks eyes Ruby Lee and Sarah are the best of friends. They have been ever since they were little. Out in the country, Sarah finally is faced with her own ‘white privilege’ when the upcoming school year draws closer. Sarah and Ruby Lee will both be going to the first integrated school in their area. Both of their grand mothers telling them they will not be able to be friends at school where others can see.  “Miss Irene sat down across from Granny, ‘Praise Jesus,’ she said.  ‘ Maybelle, I need you to help set these girls straight…’

”  ‘Sarah, are you ready to be called bad names? How you gonna feel when Betsy Carter doesn’t invite you to her birthday party? Or when you’re not welcome at the lunch table?’ “…

“Miss Irene held up her hand …’Now it’s my turn. Ruby Lee, you better mind your place. The colored children will call you uppity, and the white children will treat you like something bad they stepped in.’ (83)

Later, other words are spoken, some in anger between Ruby Lee and Sarah. Now, once best friends do not speak to each other for the rest of the summer.

Miss Irene and Granny work together to help keep the Ice Cream Social (before the first day of integrated school) peaceful. As the people begin to leave the ice cream social, feeling are heightened when it is revealed “Somebody had keyed the awful word across the side” of the ‘colored’ teacher’s car. (171) ” I hung my head, feeling more hopeless than I ever had before, but Mrs. Smyre’s voice rang out. She sang the words to ‘We Shall Overcome.’ …Then lots of people started singing. White or black, it made no difference, everybody’s voices blended.” (172)

A few days later, on a Sunday morning, Granny and Sarah find themselves alone in the kitchen making breakfast. Granny ruptures one of the bulging veins in her leg. The bleeding turns into an emergency. Sarah is forced to drive Granny in grandpa’s old farm truck to the hospital. There Sarah is eventually reunited with her parents because of Robin’s physical therapy at the hospital. Shortly, Ruby Lee shows up at the hospital because you can’t hide news like that in a small town. Tensions are eased while at the hospital between Sarah and her own guilt over Robin’s accident and between Ruby Lee and Sarah, as well.

I can hear someone say, “Ahhh, just look at those precious golden eyes,” pictured on the cover of this young readers’ book for cat lovers. The book comes in four parts, not really chapters for this early level of reading: What Are Ocicats?, History of Ocicats, Coat of Many Colors, and Lively and Loving. To answer the first question, Ocicats are large, spotted, short haired  domestic cats named after Ocelots. The breed began in Michigan in 1964 by crossing Abyssinian and Siamese cats and then crossing those kittens with Abyssinians. The diagram on page 17 sums it up nicely: large slanted eyes, spotted coat, athletic body, long tail with dark tip, weighing 6 to 15 pounds, with a life span of 15 to 18 years.

Being that this book is written for a young aged reader there are usually only two sentences per page with 75% of the page filled with a color photo of this cat species.