A book intended for very young children, it’s designed to introduce the days of the week and the idea of journaling.  Each 2-page spread holds 1 sentence telling what that day is for, accompanied by mixed-media illustrations.  A page in the back offers parents/teachers conversation-starting questions for pre-schoolers.  It’s a fine book for what it does, but there are others that do the same, and it has very limited audience appeal.

It’s a rhyming tale describing how the Belly Button Fairy bestows 1 belly button on every newborn baby.  It has words to a song in the back to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”  There will be some readers who will always be drawn to anything with “Fairy” in the title, but it doesn’t really have much else to recommend it.

I didn’t like it.  It seems rather lame and disjointed:  a group of forest friends build a dinosaur to save their patch of woods from a plastic trees factory, but instead save the woods because it turns out the friends are all extinct or endangered.  It’s got cut-paper illustrations.

Adapted from a folk song that dates from the 1500s, this picture book tells the story of a farmer who brags about his work being so much harder than his wife’s, until she swaps places with him and forces him to recognize how much more difficult her work is.  Though the illustrations depict the couple in modern dress, it still holds a certain timelessness.

Ben’s favorite stuffed giraffe disappears one day, but sends a series of postcards telling about his travels, before returning just in time for Ben’s birthday.  I wish it mentioned specific places Raf traveled to, so as to provide readers with geographical context.  The only real humor comes when Ben is described as having to sleep all alone, without Raf, while the illustration shows a whole pile of other stuffed animals.  It’s fine, I suppose, but there’s not really much to make it wonderful.

The page layouts are clean and crisp, with one project per 2-page spread.  Projects use simple materials easily available.  The instructions are written in text suitable for children to be able to follow them independently, well-supported with step-by-step photos.  Vocabulary blurbs are added within the context of the project that illustrate them.  The final project combines techniques introduced in all the others.  My one criticism of the book (common among many craft books) is that the projects in the illustrations look like they were completed by grown-ups pretending to be kids — I worry that children will be disappointed if their own efforts do not produce such perfect results.

A basic weather book explaining thunderstorms, this book will be useful to teachers, but does not offer much to bring it to the attention or interest of recreational readers.  It is adequate if you are in need of some materials to support your science curriculum, but I’m not sure you couldn’t find better.

Eh.  It’s got a strong binding and all the necessary non-fiction features to serve as teaching tool, but it is boring and preachy, and is not likely to have much of an audience for general recreational reading. There are other tools that teach non-fiction reading and friendship better.

This wordless book tells of a girl getting on on a subway train with her parents.  While all the other adults are occupied (reading, sleeping, etc.) the girl watches out the window, noticing when they come out of  a tunnel into a sunlit hillside with lots of little people flagging down the train.  She follows, serving to rescue one of the little people and his plane which had been caught in a tree.  They follow her home and offer in thanks a small plant which grows into a large tree in her urban neighborhood.  The book’s bright, graphic illustrations invite the reader into studying the plot they portray.  It can be a useful tool for oral language development with young readers and a writing prompt for older students.

Fabulous full-page color photos support a couple of simple sentences of text (in both English & Spanish) on the opposite page.  This is a popular topic that holds automatic appeal for young readers, and the information included is both interesting and accessible to beginning readers and language learners.  As with all the books in this series, it’s got a strong and shiny binding that adds to its appeal.