Noah and his mother are at a pumpkin patch. Of course, Noah wants a BIG pumpkin. How will they be able to get the pumpkin to the parking lot? “The pumpkin is heavy! What can help him carry it?” (5) Mom sees a shovel, which she uses as a lever with a fulcrum. She lifts the pumpkin, but it doesn’t get the pumpkin any closer to the parking lot. Noah sees a wagon with wheels and axles. Once this simple machine is analyzed, mom gets the pumpkin into the wagon. Noah is off to the parking lot. Noah’s smile could not possibly get any bigger!

This 7″ X 6″ book has large font text with one or two sentences on the bottom 2 inches of each page. There is a glossary and an index.

What child has never had a cut or a scrape? It is a part of childhood. Author- Joanne Mattern reinforces how to care for them and assures young children not to worry  in this Rookie Read-About Health series book.  Children will readily identify with the photos of cuts, scrapes, and band-aids that abound in this 7″ X 6″ book,  just the right size for little hands to hold.

Page 10 tells the reader, “A scrape is different from a cut. Scrapes happen when something rubs away part of your skin.” Then pages 12-15 show an enlarged cross-section diagram of skin tissue and what the body is doing to stop the bleeding.

The book ends with a quiz ( answers are in tiny print at the bottom of the page), Strange but True, 2 jokes, a glossary, and an index.

Who doesn’t love fast machines?! And who doesn’t love snow?! Put the two together and you get snowmobiles. Author- Matt Scheff begins this book in the Speed Machines series with a high action description of the Winter X Games snocross race naming Tucker Hibbert a 6 time winner.  From there, Scheff tells about the first snowmobile. It was a Model T Ford, in 1913, in which someone had replaced the front wheels with skis and put tracks around the rear wheels. In 1922, Canadian Joseph-Armand Bombardier built his own snowmobile. He later started Ski-Doo. The first modern snowmobile came out in 1956, up until then they were modified cars.

Safety equipment is important.  This equipment includes: helmets, body armor, and a kill switch for stopping the machine in the event a driver falls off the snowmobile.

Snowmobiles are used for fun, work, and rescues in snow country.

Fast Facts- bits of trivia, are sprinkled eight times throughout the book. The book is more photos than text, but the photos grab action seekers attention.

Authors write best about that which they are most familiar and Walter Dean Myers was no exception. He had a difficult childhood “in a tough neighborhood in New York City.” (4) “Walter Dean Myers was not afraid to write about subjects that make people uneasy. His more than 100 books for children and young adults address topics including gangs, drugs, and crime. They feature strong young people who thrive in poor urban neighborhoods.” (4)

He grew up in foster care in New York City. He loved to read. He was in fights at school, often angry because of his speech impediment. During high school, his foster mother, Florence, was “drinking too much alcohol” (10) and an uncle was murdered. As a result, his grades went down and he began skipping school. One of his teachers encouraged him to write every day.Walter joined the drug and gang scene after dropping out of high school, before joining the army. After three years in the army, Walter got out. He had various jobs including working for the post office. Eventually, he took a writing class, entered a book competition and won. He attended City University for awhile and a writer’s workshop at Columbia University. From there, he became an acquisitions editor, though he continued writing on his own. In 1972, he published a picture book-The Dragon Takes a Wife, and in 1973 he published a young adult book – Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff. He left his job as an acquisitions editor, in 1977, to become a full-time writer.”Myers had loved to read as a child. Yet he rarely found books about people who were like him or his friends and family. Now he had time to change that.” (18) Myers’ life had come full circle and now he was also teaching classes and workshops on writing. “In January 2012, the US Librarian of Congress named Myers the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. As ambassador, Myers served a two-year term to raise awareness about the importance of reading for youth. His chosen theme in that role was ‘Reading Is Not Optional.’ ” (20)

Walter Dean Myers has won various medals including: Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King, and the Michael L. Printz Award.

Myers past away on July 1, 2014.

Sohpie’s parents sell books at their books store and give away dream catchers that customers can exchange for new ones at any time. However, underneath the store is a secret dream shop where dreams are extracted from used dream catchers, bottled and sold. Sophie has never dreamed, but when she was six, she drank a dream serum and brought a monster from her dream back to reality. When kids from school disappeared at the same time that Sophie’s parents were kidnapped, Sophie believes that Mr. Nightmare, a dream shop customer is to blame. She and a friend sneak into his house to witness a monster “cockfight” in the pit where Mr. Nightmare sells winning monsters to his audience. It is there that Sophie learns that Mr. Nightmare’s daughter also is a non dreamer who drinks dream serum and brings big monsters back to reality for her father’s pit fights. Through twists and turns, creepy darkness and danger, Sophie and her friend saves the day. This book contains mystery, darkness, humor and crazy twists!

When I picked up this book, I was hoping for a book of cross-section schematic drawings with photos of the One World Trade Center section by section  as it was put together. But that is not the meaning of the word “HOW” as it applies to the title of this book. The “HOW” in this title refers to ‘what were the designers thoughts and desires’ for this building after the Twin Towers demise.  Once that is established, the “HOW”s include: not being identical to the Twin Towers, not being in the same location as the Twin Towers, using bullet resistant glass, using 80% recycled waste materials, collecting rainwater on the 57th floor, using more natural lighting with fewer electric lights, with wider staircases, with a bomb-proof base, with a National September 11 Museum on the ground floor, with an observatory on the top floor, and being 1776 feet tall for the year this country was founded.

“One World Trade Center is made from concrete, steel, and glass. It is rectangular in shape with a triangular front that reaches to the top of the building.The skyscraper starts off wide and slowly becomes thinner until it looks like there is a needle at the very top. The blue-green glass makes the building glitter for miles around…Also, called the “Freedom Tower”… (5)

The book does include photos of the Twin Towers – before and after the attack on September 11, a timeline of the construction of One World Trade Center, a view of One World Trade Center in the New York City skyline, and a view from the observatory floor.

There is a period (.) missing at the end of the last sentence on page 22.

If you are looking for a book to use for comparing and contrasting, this might be the one for you. In this book extreme  temperatures from around the world are pictured and talked about.The title says it all! The book, also, goes into vocabulary dealing with temperature, for example: heat index, windchill, relative humidity, heatstroke, and hypothermia.

The hottest air temperature was measured in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on July 8, 2003. “That day, air temperature soared to 108 F (42 C) and relative humidity was greater than normal. These conditions made it feel like 176 F (80 C). ..that is only 36 F (2 C) cooler than the point at which water boils.” ( p. 14)             The coldest air temperature was “On August 10, 2010, the East Antarctic Plateau…wind chill made it feel like -136 F (-93 C).” (p.21) Being prepared to withstand such extreme temperatures is key to survival.

Water temperatures at hydrothermal vents deep  in the Atlantic Ocean can reach 867 F (464 C). The book then talks about going into glacier ice caves at Mount Hood, Oregon, but never mentions a temperature. It does predict that many of these caves will not last another ten years due to global climate change.

The last page contains a recap of the book’s ” True Statistics”.

Approximately one third of each page consists of a photo or diagram, while the other two-thirds of the page is text.

The front cover shows a photo of an erupting volcano with the caption ” Lava temperatures can reach up to about 2,200 F  (1,200 C).” though there are no volcanoes inside the book.

Marsico is delving into what the future will bring us as far as cars are concerned, namely, self-driving cars. Systems in cars already exist that is a step into self-driving, such as, anti-lock brakes, cruise control, parallel parking, and gps, to name a few. Self-driving cars are anticipated to save lives as well as fuel, but that remains to be seen. Google has already developed a car on the road that drives itself in residential areas. Many factors are left to be decided and developed before we will see these cars on the road, and the infrastructure they require will be a budget buster, but technology is developing at a rapid pace. The main questions in my mind are, one, will people be able to afford it, and two, what do we do with all the other human-driven cars?

Tally and her best friend and neighbor Yulia have been sharing their ups and downs since they were little. Now they are in  middle school with its own set of up and downs. Yulia loves being in the school band. Tally loves snowboarding and is quite an important member on the snowboarding team. No problems so far. Enter Tally’s immigrant Vietnamese grandparents with whom she lives. Grammy and Pop want Tally to broaden her interests and try new things. Tally doesn’t think she has the time for anything more in her life right now. Grammy phones the school and has Tally signed up to begin band next week. WHAT?! It is the end of first semester, she doesn’t even have an instrument. No problem Grammy says. The band teacher, Mr. Byrd, will let her play the school’s French horn. How can this be? Tally has been calling the band members Band O’ Geeks for years. Yulia knows it, but doesn’t mind because she loves band. But how will Tally’s snowboarding friends react to her being in the band? (I guess band is not ‘cool’ in some parts of the country. I personally have not experienced this.) Yulia and Tally hatch a plan.  Tally will wear a disguise to band, it’s right after lunch, there will be time to change into it. So then Tally’s snowboarding friends at school won’t know of this terrible thing her grandparents have done to her. It works at first. Tally is able to unhappily take band during school . Then go to snowboarding practice after school. When Mr. Byrd asks if she has been practicing, Tally admits she has not. This is a big disappointment to the other French horn player. He tells her if one French horn sounds bad, the whole section sounds bad. It isn’t fair for her not to practice. Then, Mr. Byrd announces the big snowboarding competition to the band members during class. He tells the class it would be wonderful if Tally’s fellow band members would go to cheer her on. Yikes! on Saturday as Tally is getting ready to compete the Band O’ Geeks are there cheering for her. Tally does her best to ignore them. Her first run is great, but not great enough for first place. Here comes her second run. Just at a critical point, Tally looses her concentration and crashes. Tally is out with a sprained ankle for the rest of the season. Both her band friends and her snowboarding friends visit her at home. Eventually her snowboarding friend insult her band friends while both are visiting Tally.  Though ashamed, Tally doesn’t stand up for them. Back at school, the band members, even Yulia, give Tally the cold shoulder. Tally comes to a conclusion, ” Having to choose between my snowboarding friends and my band friends, if I could call them that, I mean, the snowboarders were my friends. But I’d been friends with Yulia for a long time. And some of the other band geeks were pretty cool, too. Who said I had to choose, anyway?” ( 89) Mr. Byrd explains how he lived through a similar experience. On a home visit, Jasper, a band member, discovers Tally can play guitar. This will later resolve the problem of snowboarders verses band geeks for Tally. The school band is scheduled to play at the school dance in a few weeks. Jasper, Yulia, and Mr. Byrd work together to give Tally a guitar song with Jasper on drums, and Yulia singing their original song entitled “Finding My Wings”  at the dance. Thus bringing both sides together for a happy ending.

Each chapter includes one black and white illustration by Anna Cattish. The girls are always ‘wide-eyed’ in a modern Japanese fashion. The cover art seems a little too young to grab middle school readers interest.

The kids in Class 507 were so poorly behaved that their frustrated teacher quit her job right in the middle of the school day. However, the office never received the message. Class 507 had no teacher! The students quickly formulated a plan to keep this fact a secret, strategizing their actions to give the illusion that everything was normal in their room, except everything was not! Students tended to do what ever they wanted, wrestling, throwing objects, drawing, until parents started wondering why their kids had no homework. Things really got complicated when they realized their field trip was coming, and Class 507 was responsible for writing a play production they had to perform for the whole school. Maggie, the smartest kid in the class, gets all the kids on track by assigning lessons in class and assigning double homework, as well as having students write and prepare for the play. The students soon realize that keeping a classroom running is way more work than they thought!