Sylvie the spider loves the people in her building and one day she notices that something seems wrong. Worried that not everyone appreciates a spider that calls attention to herself, she finds the courage to unite the people in the building. Finally she feels the appreciation and friendship that she has been longing for.

The author also wrote the book, Truman, and Truman the tortoise makes an appearance in this book as well. It was fun to see that tie in. The illustrations in the book are colorful and help tell the story, but the storyline is difficult to follow and requires inferencing.

I am I. M. Pei is a part of the Ordinary People Change the World Series by Brad Meltzer. It begins with I. M. Pei’s childhood and is told in the first person. The book is written in a conversational tone and the illustrator, Christopher Eliopoulos includes comic inserts on various pages. There is a lot of text on the pages, but it is broken up with illustrations. As a child, I. M. Pei is drawn as a miniature adult and in the pages where he is an adult, he is much shorter and more childlike than the other adults in the illustrations. This book is only a brief look at his life. The themes of persistence and grit come across throughout the biography. When talking about the renovation of the Louvre, there is a page with a pop-up Louvre. A timeline of his life and pictures of I. M. Pei are included at the end of the book.

It’s got a really good message about not making judgments without all the facts. It tells about a little gorilla who’s been sent by his grandfather to pick up some eggs that crane offered to leave for them. But unfortunately a mischievous monkey decides to follow along and watch him from afar, and all along the journey that monkey misinterprets what he sees. Worse yet, the monkey shares his accusations with other jungle dwellers who accept them at face value. By the time the little gorilla is about to arrive home with his precious cargo, the others are ready punish him for a list of crimes he didn’t commit. Luckily he is rescued when a giant hippo emerges from the river with his little bird who corrects the accusatory monkeys by announcing he’d been up close and personal to all the gorilla’s transactions, and scolds them for making accusations based on things they have not seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Though I like the message, I thought both the telling of it and the illustrations were a bit flat.

Okay, so I hate to be down on joy, and I’m not even really down on this sweet little book, I just don’t think it is meant to be a library book. It’s meant to be part of the decor in a nursery or children’s room, where it sits on display all year long and is occasionally pulled down to peruse for an idea. I almost even marked it as “reference,” but then that didn’t really seem to fit it, even though I imagine it being used kind of like a reference book for a bored kid. It’s got a page for every day of the year, with ideas for things to try, along with bits of information about that day’s topic and questions for kids to ponder. The illustrations are really sweet, but kind of keep the target audience young, even though older kids would be able to make more independent use of the information. My “additional purchase” recommendation is really kind of a compromise choice: I have a hard time recommending it for library use, but would absolutely recommend it as a gift for a baby shower.

The lyrical text describes animals that live in groups and using the collective nouns and then names an animal that lives alone. I like the use of collective nouns and the text is engaging. I was expecting to learn more information about the solitary animals, but I did learn which animals live in groups and what the group names are called. There is a page at the back that answers some questions about why some animals live alone. The artwork in the book is bright and vibrant and is eye-catching.

Frog is an artist but he needed some inspiration for his art because his swamp was dull. He went around to his friends in the forest and adds his artistic interpretations. His friends do not appreciate him beautifying everything. He realizes he got carried away and returns to his swamp to create his own art show. He invites his friends to his art show so he can apologize.

Frog is fun and his personality comes through in the illustrations. He learns that he needs to respect other’s spaces. I do wish it had shown Frog helping his friends clean up the messes that he made.

The book was originally published in London, so there is some spelling differences in the book that kids might notice (colour/color). The text changes between black and white, but sometimes the page is dark and the text is still black which makes it a challenge to read.

It’s a controlled-text early reader that plays a bit with sound-alike words and homonyms. It basically tells the story of a juggling toucan juggling cans. It has a certain element of the tongue twister about it that makes it kind of fun, but sometimes the use of the same words in different contexts makes building meaning from the story a bit confusing.