Another fabulous story from the author of Bats at the Library and Bats at the Beach, this one follows the bats as they wake from winter’s hibernation anxious to make a little noise.  Finding a window open at a deserted summer theater, the bats indulge in an evening of music-making.  Told in rhyming verse, with illustrations depicting some bats with actual miniature instruments while others play on improvised hand-made instruments, the story winds its way through the bats’ concert, describing an assortment of different types of instruments and different types of music along the way.  It celebrates music of all kinds.

An absolutely fabulous blend of poetry, science, and art, this book is both beautiful and informative.  Centered around a theme of nature’s adaptations for surviving the harsh conditions of winter, each two-page spread is dedicated to a different animal or plant, with a poem and a scientific blurb describing how that animal adapts.  The illustrations are beautiful and support the text while contributing to the mood of the poems.

Kepri, the sun dragon, has shiney white and yellow scales and can shine a rainbow from her mouth. But, suddenly Kapri turns up sick from dark magic. Griffith, the wizard, brews a medicine in hopes to make her well, but it offers no results. Everyone was very worried when suddenly Worm, Drake’s Dragon who has the gift of telekinesis, teleports everyone, including Kepri to Kepri’s homeland. It is then that the Dragon Masters kids remembered sun dragons have a twin that is called a moon dragon. When Kepri sees her twin, she starts feeling better and soon makes a full recovery. After a while, they know they must return home and Worm teleports them safely back again. The illustrations are sweet and demonstrates specific details of the story. This is book two in the beginning chapter book series, “Dragon Masters.”

Eight year old Drake was an onion farmer until he was swept away to King Roland’s Castle to be a Dragon Master. Griffin, the king’s wizard introduces Drake to three other Dragon Masters who all have dragons. Each of their dragons have amazing talents: one can shoot fire from its nose, one can spray water from its mouth and another can shine bright light from its mouth. Drake is introduced to his dragon which resembles a worm, thus its name. Unfortunately Worm can’t perform any of the amazing tricks the other dragons can do. After the dragons’ cave collapses and everyone is trapped, Worm’s true skill comes out when he moves all the rocks out of the way using telekinesis. Very cute illustrations demonstrate the story well. This is a great beginner chapter book.

A brief introduction to Sioux Indians, discussing their traditions, daily life and more.  Outstanding layout, beautiful color photographs, and captions that are easy to read make this a wonderful book for students doing research.  This book is part of the series  “Native Americans” printed by ABDO Publishing including 8 separate tribes.

This sweet story begins, ” I’m  giant turtle, and I’m as BIG as an island.” Turtle is lonely in the big ocean until cat, bear, owl, and frog get shipwrecked on him, and he becomes their island home. They work together and are quite happy until cat, bear, owl, and frog decide to leave because they miss their families and friends. Turtle is at a loss. Turtle is lonely again. Then bear, cat, owl, and frog return with their families and friends. “This is how Turtle Island started… and how we continue to grow.”

Yes, the story is sweet, but it lacks pazazz .

For purposes of this review I examined the Farsi-English, Arabic-English, Russian-English, Turkish-English, Italian-English, and Portuguese-English volumes.  Each is designed with clean white pages and labeled photographs organized by category chapters: animals, human body, house, clothing & personal objects, etc.   The same photos are used in each volume, and each volume includes tables of contents, page headings, and indices in both languages, as well as the labels next to each photo being listed in both languages.  The English biases are revealed in that the index is alphabetized according to the English vocabulary; it would have been nice if a second index had been included where the vocabulary was alphabetized according to the other language.  It also would have been nice if a pronunciation guide had been offered for both languages, as only the spelling is included next to the pictures (although there is also a CD included with each volume).  They’re fun for curiosity’s sake, and could be useful in schools with a lot of foreign-languages spoken, as a way of getting some basic vocabulary across, but I’m not sure they are the most useful tools available.

It’s okay as a very introductory text, but the information is limited to a sentence or two per page.  On the front and back covers, and on the title page, the Spanish precedes the English, but on the internal pages, the English comes first.  It seems like it would have made more sense to be consistent one way or the other.  The Spanish is a good translation of the English, and it would make a good tool for beginning language learners of either language, but is less useful for teaching much about weather.

The information is shallow, and the graphics detract, rather than add:  the color photos of the birds in question are surrounded by lots of bright neon colors and patterns, sometimes to the extent of having had the natural backdrop of the bird edited out — it’s rather jarring and distracting, and just plain doesn’t seem to fit.

This is one of those instances (biographies of current sports stars or other celebrities of the day), when I figure it’s not really necessary to invest funds in the solid sturdy library binding:  a cheap paperback will probably last as long as their stardom, and by the time it wears out, there will likely be some other latest celebrity of the day.  I do have to admit the Lionel has a pretty good story (involved in soccer since age three, overcoming health concerns, giving back to his community…).   My biggest gripe with the book is the failure of the photos to support the text.  The first half of the book is talking about his childhood, but all the photos are of his adult soccer career:  the text is talking about when he was three or six or eleven, but the accompanying photo on that page is most definitely not a child — it doesn’t fit.