At our school we call it The Giving Tree and needy families tie a slip of paper with their wants and needs they’d like for Christmas.  Our staff and other families pretty much fulfill every want and need on that tree.  It makes for a happy Christmas for both those who receive and who give.  The Angel Tree is the same concept, only it’s for the whole town.  Before Christmas a fully decorated tree would appear in the town square, no one knowing who it was that was responsible.  Townspeople wrote their Christmas wishes and tied them to the tree, and by Christmas each wish was granted, regardless of difficulty or cost.  Of course, there’s a mystery in and of itself as to who started all this benevolence.  And as with our giving tree, The Angel Tree is no different–you don’t see the struggles simply by looking at people.  The Christmas spirit isn’t just stuff, it’s family, and The Angel Tree shows us just how important family is to us.  Having wishes granted and having a good mystery to solve makes for good reading.

Well-known jewel thief, Alfie McQuin, has lots of secrets.  The biggest one is that he has twin 12-year-olds, a boy and a girl, who don’t know about each other.  Alfie falls to his death before he can reunite his family.  His son, March, who was his accomplice, must work together with newfound friends and sister, to sort through the cryptic messages and momentos left by Alfie, in order to move on.  There is a lot of action going on in this book.  Watson does a great job in giving bullets of information and moving the story in short chapters.  There isn’t a lot of text describing everyone and everything, just what the reader needs to know to follow the story.  The result is a ‘can’t wait to turn the page’ type of thriller.

A companion to Jokes for Boys, Jokes for Girls has jokes and humor that isn’t too dated or too British.  The humor is more geared for girls and, I believe, funnier because it isn’t so obvious.  The table of contents helps to guide the reader as to subject matter.  The book itself is stereotypical because it is purple (the boy’s book is blue) and the image of the girl on the cover as well as a small amount of illustrations is circa 1950’s.  It seems to be that this image on the cover would limit checkouts only to girls.  Maybe no image would be best as well as a generic cover color.

Jokes for Boys is a British product with humor more oriented towards sports but with all subjects included, including gross humor.  The book measures 5 1/2 inches by 8 inches and is well bound, a great size for kids to carry around.  Some jokes are for older readers (those with a long memory for events) and many jokes use British vocabulary which will leave young American readers not getting the punchline.

I like the illustrations.  They’re kind of soft pastel colors, and there’s something rather friendly about them.  The story is okay, too: Leo is a postal carrier (who looks like he might be a weasel or something)who longs to receive a letter himself; when he finds a baby bird who seems to have lost his flock, Leo takes him in for the winter, and after the little bird grows big enough to fly off in the spring, he sends Leo a letter.  It’s not bad.  I just couldn’t quite say I got excited about it enough to give it an actual recommendation.

I do like this book. And I do think it’s a good book to have in any library.  I think it does a good job of handling some sensitive material with compassion.  But I would recommend some degree of caution in choosing the audience you share it with.  It begins with Sophie and Maddi playing together in the park, when hunger sends Sophie running to Maddi’s apartment for a snack, despite Maddi’s protests.  Upon opening Maddi’s fridge to see what she’s got, Sophie finds only some milk, which Maddi says needs to be saved for her baby brother.  After being sworn to secrecy, Sophie goes home to her own full fridge and her mother fixing a healthy fish dinner, which her little brother complains about.  Sophie decides to save some to take to her friend the next day, only to realize that though fish may be good for kids, it’s not good for backpacks.  The next day she discovers eggs don’t keep well in backpacks either. She eventually finds some food she is able to share with her friend without spoilage, but decides she can’t really help her friend alone, so decides to tell her mom, despite her promise.  Throughout the story, as Sophie is looking for ways to help Maddi with food, Maddi is also helping Sophie with her climbing, which helps to keep a sense of balance, with both friends having something to offer the other.  Still, knowing that 93% of my students qualify for free lunch, I hesitate to think how they might feel if they identify too strongly with Maddi.  On the other hand, in my old school with a solidly middle-class population, this would be a great tool for helping students to recognize that not all families have as much as theirs’ might.

Targeting the very youngest readers, the text is a simple list, written in first person, of “things I like about me,”  specifically things I can do, finishing with, “the think I like best about me is that I can be with you.”  There is a repetitive pattern to the text which offers a sentence frame for young writers to imitate, and the illustrations support the text for young readers.  Besides, it’s just plain really sweet, without being cotton candy.

The illustrations are gorgeous!  The setting is a small African village.  The problem is universal:  the smallest girl in the village getting picked on and teased by her peers.  The solution is found in the magic of imagination:  every night Imani’s mother tells her stories, and upon hearing the tale of the goddess of the moon, Imani dreams of touching the moon herself; she continues to endure the teasing of the other children as she persists with assorted failed attempt including climbing or flying to the moon.  After watching a celebration involving warriors in a traditional jumping dance, Imani jumps to the moon, meets the goddess, and receives a gift of a small glowing moon rock, and has her own story to tell.  The logical part of my brain that finds scientific fault with the way the story ends is charmed anyway by the beauty of the story.

A nearly-wordless book, this is an ABC book of noises (I won’t pretend I know how to spell oneomonopeia).  A=Ahoogah, B=Beep Boop, etc.  The illustrations show some fun, colorful, cute robots manipulating large metallic letters on a grassy field until the final page shows the whole gang gathered around the fully assemble alphabet.

It’s bright and colorful, and provides a good example of traditional aboriginal artwork as well as an introduction to 26 critters indigenous to Australia.  It’s an ABC book in which Anteater is anxious to share something amazing with Bilby or Chuditch or Dingo, etc. But every critter it approaches is too busy doing something else, until after Zebra Finch is too busy snoring, and the illustrations show us that Anteater is enjoying a book; upon noticing what a good time Anteater is having, all the other animals decide they’re not too busy after all.  The illustrations are fun, and it could be used as an introduction if a class was about to start researching Australian animals, but really the text is a bit repetitive and less than stellar.