Seventh grader Lily James IS the star of her soccer team, but when she disobeys her coach’s direction in a game to pass the ball and takes the shot herself, she is suspended for two games.  This means Lily will miss the championship game.  Frustrated with the coach, and missing the opportunity to make a select team, Lily doesn’t understand why the consequence needs to be so severe.  Benched, and sitting next to her coach for the final two games, however, Lily can see for herself the value of teamwork.  She realizes what a selfish player she had been and says, “Believe it or not, I’ve learned more about being a team player by getting kicked off.”

The true test of this lesson comes at the end of the book when the coach puts Lily back in for the OT (technically, the overtime is time “beyond” the two game suspension) in the championship game.  Given an opportunity to score the winning goal, Lily unselfishly passes to a teammate, who scores to win the game.

Most of us don’t care for ‘drizzle’, however, at the Peabody Farm drizzle is it’s life blood.  The Peabody Farm is almost like a ‘Magic Kingdom’ where the rhubarb tastes like chocolate, you can set your watch to the exact time the rain begins each week, and you can take a giant umbrella ride in the drizzle.  People flock to the farm to enjoy all it’s eccentricities.  Eleven-year-old Polly Peabody loves her farm; she can’t think of ever living anywhere else.  Her best friends are the rhubarb plants and insects.  However, bad mojo seems to have come to the farm and the drizzle and rain stop, the plants start to die.  This coincides with the traumatic illness which befalls Polly’s older brother.  Her parents talk of selling the farm and Polly knows that this is her time to step up and take control of her’s and her family’s future.  Throughout her family’s history, there has always been one person who has the magic ability to create the rain and therefore keep the farm alive.  Her great-grandma had it, her beloved grandma had it, her Aunt Edith had it, and she has it.  She just has to learn how it all works before it’s too late.  This book is an enjoyable read and you’ll want to wish you lived on the Peabody Farm, as well.  Polly and Aunt Edith are well defined characters, with the remaining characters in a minimal supporting role, which borders a little on the skimpy side.  Nonetheless, you’ll find yourself rooting for Polly to figure it out.

This charming and delightful story is told from the perspective of the family dog when his people decide to bring home a cat (without asking him first).  All his efforts to make friends seem to awry, despite his best intentions (because of course neither the cat nor the people understand dogspeak), and Stanley keeps ending up in trouble.  Comical illustrations compliment the story nicely.

A charming biography told from an unusual perspective, it highlights many of the struggles Abraham Lincoln faced, and always returns to how he was able to harness the power of humor and words to help.  Perhaps the subtitle would be more fitting if it claimed “served” in place of “saved,” but that’s my only real criticism:  This book takes one of our most famous presidents and makes him seem more human, less iconic, someone the readers would like to have known.  I definitely think it has a place in every elementary school library, and maybe middle school as well.

This is a simple book paying homage to mothers with classic De Paola illustrations.  Starting from the perspective of an infant, and moving on through toddler to child, each page includes one sentence with accompanying illustration, stating one way the author’s mom demonstrates her brilliance — from knowing when to change his diaper to knowing how to make popsicles to knowing how to dress like a movie star when she’s going out. It’s charming and full of experiences many children will relate to, a good read around Mother’s Day.

“Squirrels are rodents. They live in grasslands, forests, and deserts.” is written in large font opposite a page showing a red squirrel eating amidst green vegetation. Across the bottom of the page are 3 insets : a grassland, a forest, and a desert.

Eight more double page sets with full color photos on the right and 1 or 2 sentences on the left make up this informative book for young emergent readers.

Throughout the text the glossary words are typed in bold print: rodents, balance, claws, gnaw, insects, predators, and burrows.

It’s got an attractive and sturdy-looking binding and attractive illustrations:  Each two-page spread consists of a large color illustration of a single dinosaur on the right, accompanied by 2-3 simple sentences in large font telling a couple facts about that dinosaur and its “big” features.  An inset on each page tells the size of that dinosaur.  “Chapters” are Big, Bigger, and Biggest.  Though an attractive volume for beginning readers who are dinosaur enthusiasts, it’s limited in the amount of information in provides.

Though not likely to be a high-interest book selected for recreational reading, this may fit a curriculum niche.  It describes how levers work and compares different types, always connecting them to real-life tools with which kids will be familiar, such as a shovel, scissors, teeter-totter, nut-cracker, and baseball bat.  The text is simply stated, to make concepts understandable to beginning readers, and well-supported by photos and labeled diagrams.  Besides being useful in science instruction, it also includes typical non-fiction text features such as glossary (with words bolded in the body of the text), index, and table of contents.  Sturdy binding.

This book begins by describing how scientists classify animals according to how they are alike and different, and goes on to list some of the defining characteristics that make fish fish.  It then takes a closer look at each characteristic with clear, labeled illustrations.  There were some unfamiliar fish mentioned in the text (clingfish, hagfish) that were not included in the illustrations, and though the book says it has a reinforced library binding, the finish on the cover doesn’t feel like it will stand up to much wear.  Includes scientific classification chart.

This book discusses the history of money, from the days of bartering, and different things that have been used as mediums of exchange through time and in different places.  It includes information about the earliest metal coins and paper money and describes the details of US coins and Euros.  Be wary that the information about Euros could become outdated as countries who use the Euro continue to change.  The first and last chapters sandwich the information of the middle chapters amidst a story of a boy bringing his coin collection in for show-and-tell, which seems to fuzz the lines between fiction and non-fiction.