Page 56
Review #101
Citation:
Base, Graeme. The Sign of the Seahorse. New York: Harry N.
Abrams, Inc., 1992. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A villainous Grouper fish concocts a greedy scheme to make a fortune buying and selling
ruined property, which he generates by flooding the coral reef with gasoline, killing everything. A
love-struck couple, two rival gangs, and an army of crustacean policemen bring down the evil Boss and
establish a new colony in clean waters.
Story Notes: Written somewhat as a play, divided into scenes and acts, with a cast list, but not written
so that the dialogue is read as lines; instead, whole narrative is written in verse. Not easy to read;
doesn’t look very long, but is a rather epic text. Vocabulary is as rich as the illustrations, which is
lovely but means it’s not for younger readers, even to listen to; too long and complex. Text has lots of
allusions to 1950s and earlier pop culture, also won’t come across to many readers.
Illustration Notes: Gorgeous detailed watercolors, showing all kinds of sea creatures and the coral reef
(which is beautiful and complex in real life). Pictures fill in lots of info about the types of fish
mentioned, for those of us who don’t have all them down by heart.
Applications: write epic poems, stage/ act out, use in combination with other stories of rival gangs like
The Outsiders, maybe use with Grease or some such for 1950s culture.
Age Range: older readers
Awards:
Tags: gang rivalry, coral reef, ocean, oil spill, sea creatures
Review #102
Citation:
Lester, Julius. Black Cowboy Wild Horses. New York: Dial
Books, 1998. Ill. by Jerry Pinkney.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A black cowboy tracks a herd of wild mustang, carefully becoming one of their group and
then taking over as their leader, as if he was a horse himself, so that they will follow him back to the
corral to be domesticated where all the other cowboys work. Based on a true story.
Story Notes: Bob was born a slave, so it must be set just after the Civil War. Pretty language, but no
obvious literary devices. Scary moment when the colt is bitten by the rattlesnake and dies.
Illustration Notes: Impressionistic watercolors paint scenes of the old American West. Beautiful
shadows and shading to show the effects of light, equally nice turn to dark values in the storm. Horses
are painted in the clouds, showing that Bob feels more horse than human, and both he and his stallion
dream of riding free with the mustang herds.
Applications: Use in a unit on black history, American west, cowboys
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: African-American history, American West, cowboys, wild horses, mustangs
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Page 57
Review #103
Citation:
Carle, Eric. The Very Quiet Cricket. New York: Philomel Books,
1990. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A new-born cricket is greeted by all the different creatures that live in its environment. He
keeps trying to respond by rubbing his wings together, but no sound comes out. Finally, he sees
another very quiet cricket--a female--and when he rubs his wings together, he makes the most beautiful
sound she has ever heard.
Story Notes: Repeated response motif that would work well with younger readers, maybe for group
participation. When you open the last page, the book chirps at you; it astonished me! This might wear
out quickly in a library setting but the book is not harmed if one must imagine the chirping sound.
Illustration Notes: Characteristic Eric Carle mixed-media multicolored illustrations.
Applications: Build simple musical instruments to “chirp” hello with. Raise crickets in a cage. Make
crickets out of pieces of colored paper, collage.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: crickets, finding voice
Review #104
Citation:
Marion, Jeff Daniel. Hello, Crow. New York: Orchard Books,
1992. Ill. by Leslie Bowman.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy raised on a farm is accustomed to greeting a crow every morning. The crow,
brought up as a pet by the boy’s grandfather, spends most of his time making his grandmother mad by
stealing all kinds of shiny things and hiding them around the farm. On a day the boy forgets to say
hello to the crow, he swears that the crow says hello to him. One day, the crow disappears, and the boy
grows old thinking about the bird and wondering what became of it.
Story Notes: Sweet story of always being kind to everyone, even if they are not the most typically
desirable characters.
Illustration Notes: Colored pencil drawings. Misty, almost ghostly white figures in the initial pages
show us that the narrator is thinking back to many years past. Great information added by the pictures
for Grandmother’s obvious dislike to the crow. Great messy hair, dumpy figures on the characters, true
to the hard work of farm life. Looks like a scene straight out of Appalachia. At the end, it is the
present-day narrator who is ghostly, as if to say that the memories of the old days are more real than the
present, at least for this story.
Applications: Pledge to greet those around you, do good deeds
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: crows
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Page 58
Review #105
Citation:
Lester, Mike. A is for Salad. New York: Putnam & Grosset, 2000.
Ill. by author.

Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Acts like a regular alphabet book, with an “A is for…” sentence on each page, but none of
the “fors” start with the letters for which they are given. Instead, the given letter begins the name of the
animal in the picture, and the word given as a “for” is what that animal is doing. Twist to poke fun at
the traditional alphabet book format.
Story Notes: Commentary is amusing and will help youngest readers get the joke, by acting as if the
narrator is not quite sure of what the letters are for. Lots of surprising animals and actions in the book,
designed to surprise and amuse, not educate, particularly the note that X and Y are unimportant letters
and should never be used. The back endpapers give the answer key, telling what each letter is also for.
Illustration Notes: Mixed media, ink, wood block prints, tinted with different paints. Whimsical
subject matter, usually picking the most unlikely animals to demonstrate the desired subjects, most of
them grumpy-looking. Pictures give away what the letters are supposed to be, with lots of lines to
show motion and an obstinate attitude.
Applications: Write humorous alphabet books, combine with other alphabet books.
Age Range: any/ younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: alphabet
Review #106
Citation:
Waber, Bernard. Good-bye, Funny Dumpy-Lumpy. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A family of five experiences the usual astonishing conflicts and surprises of everyday
family life, from the fact that an old man might pull out his teeth, to the problem that having three
children but two laps poses for parents. Written in a series of episodes.
Story Notes: Has a little feel of a late Victorian family to it in the proper-ness of the parents, looks to
be set maybe in the 1930s from the fashion and the cars, wants to be more modern in details such as
Monroe wanting to wear his hat backward. Reads like an easy chapter book or an early school reader,
with lots of very simple sentences. Stories are more nearly comical sketches of family life (funny
because they are realistic) than traditional school reader fare.
Illustration Notes: Pen and ink drawings, show scenes from the family’s life that fill in the setting and
the characters more than further any action. The picture’s function of showing the setting is very
important for understanding the prim, proper characters of the parents and the manners expected of the
children, which wouldn’t work in a more modern era, like the 1970s when the book was written.
Applications: Use as part of an early 20th century life and culture unit, read aloud to class
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: siblings
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Review #107
Citation:
Henkes, Kevin. Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. New York:
Greenwillow Books, 1996. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Lilly adores school and especially her teacher. When she gets a new purse, she is so
excited that she talks about it all day and wants to show it to everyone, despite her teacher’s warnings
that that needs to wait until sharing time or recess. When she just can’t contain herself, her teacher is
forced to confiscate it until the end of the day. She is furious and writes a note about how mean he is,
putting it in his bag to take home. When she finds that he has put a nice note in her purse at the end of
the day, though, she feels very guilty and is driven to write an apology to him and make everything
better. She does much better the next day about appropriate behavior with her purse.
Story Notes: Incredibly enthusiastic heroine, but in the unfortunate failure-to-listen way that does get
enthusiastic kids in trouble sometimes. It’s great that she assigns herself a punishment and invents a
way to make amends by herself; this is also part of her enthusiasm. Repetitive motif that audience can
respond to.
Illustration Notes: Ink and water colors, mostly small thumbnail pictures to go along with short
chunks of text. No full spreads, but a few large frames that take up most of a page, in which more
action is shown in a single picture. Lilly’s turn to angry, evil ideas at the Lightbulb Lab is readily
apparent from the pictures. The perspective in the series of pictures that shows her getting smaller in
size is a great expression of her terrible guilty feelings about her note.
Applications: Role play good and bad behavior, write letters to teachers
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: purse, guilt, teachers, behavior
Review #108
Citation:
Carson, Jo. You Hold Me and I’ll Hold You. New York: Orchard
Books, 1992. Ill. by Annie Cannon.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A little girl goes with her family to a funeral fro a great-aunt she doesn’t remember. All
she understands is that she is supposed to be very sad. She and her dad hold each other and feel better.
Story Notes: Poignant note of a child’s perceptiveness in describing how this little girl doesn’t like to
hear “I’m sorry”, associates that with big, bad things and much sadness. This dad is great, making her
finish the hated task of cleaning her room even while gently talking to her about the upcoming funeral.
Written clearly from the child’s point of view, not an older narrator.
Illustration Notes: Mixed media, collage pieces add a lot of texture to watercolors. Image of the wall
turning into surrealistic scenes as she walks up the stairs with a perfectly normal stair rail shows her
thoughts as she remembers her experiences with death.
Applications: Cope with death, divorce, and other bad things
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: mourning, grief
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
Page 60
Review #109
Citation:
Barton, Byron. Machines at Work. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1987. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Construction workers spend a day on the job, knocking down buildings, building roads,
dumping and loading trucks, and all manner of things.
Story Notes: Very simple sentences, often three or four words, printed in a nice large font size for the
youngest of readers to practice on. Subject matter will appeal to boys and many girls. Not
grammatically correct all the time in the sentences, but written in the style that most children’s writing
will recall.
Illustration Notes: Very simple one-dimensional characters, reminiscent of Lego men. Bright colors,
could be reproduced by a child. Shows lots of construction machines without mentioning them in the
text.
Applications: Use along with a video of all the construction things happening in the book, so that they
can see more information about the processes and machines and still practice reading on the simple
text.
Age Range: Very young elementary
Awards:
Tags: construction, machines
Review #110
Citation:
Bannerman, Helen. Little Black Sambo. New York: Platt & Munk,
1925. Ill. by Eulalie.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy is walking through the jungle of India wearing new pants, jacket, shoes, and
umbrella. Four tigers jump at him and threaten to eat him, and he offers a piece of his new clothing to
each of them in exchange for not eating him. Each tiger takes the trade willingly and walks away,
boasting that he is the grandest tiger in the jungle. The boy is upset to lose all his new things, but then
he sees that the tigers have starts to argue over which is really the grandest tiger in the jungle. They
take off the clothes and fight, eventually joining in a circle around a tree, each with the next tiger’s tail
in his mouth. They run in their circle and try to eat each other, faster and faster until they melt into soft
butter, while the boy gets his clothes back.
Story Notes: Starts off biased in the very first sentence, with an Indian portrayed as black—not in a
bad way, but obviously wrong. He’s dressed in Western clothes, has nothing to do with local culture.
Cute story, though, in which the greed and egos of the tigers gets in the way of their actions and allows
Sambo to gain the advantage back.
Illustration Notes: Selective color to the pages, with everything in some pictures appearing black and
white except for the finery that Sambo has not yet had to give away.
Applications: Needs badly to be updated, but can then be treated as a fable
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: fable, tigers, ego
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Page 61
Review #111
&
Citation:
Cousins, Lucy. Hooray for Fish! Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick
Press, 2005. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A little fish says hello to all the many kinds of fish in the ocean who are its friends. We
meet its favorite fish in the end: its mother.
Story Notes: Rhyming text with irregular rhythm, small kids will respond well. “How many can you
see” page offers interactive opportunity to count the fish together, with a couple to try to guess what’s
special (they are made to look like fruit). Reminds me a bit of Dr. Seuss, though not as nonsensical.
Illustration Notes: Pictures in Gouache, letters of text hand-painted by author. Setting starts on end
papers, character introduced on title page. Very simple shapes and lines, almost look like finger
painting. Bright colors and swirly patterns throughout; numbers on fish with text “one, two, three”
make up the fish’s scales. Little fish surrounded by school of small fish in circle is a striking figure,
stands out from rest of book. Relative size is also striking when little fish sees its mother.
Applications: Paint fish in this style, learn about all the different types of fish in the ocean, take a field
trip to an aquarium, combine with other books like Swimmy or One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish,
watch a video about fish and try to spot some that look like these.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: fish, ocean
Review #112
Citation:
Fleming, Denise. Lunch. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1992. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A very hungry mouse eats everything he can get his paws on. He takes a nap, but comes
back out ready to go for dinnertime.
Story Notes: Text printed in large bold letters. Phrases are separated over page turns to give you a hint
but still surprise the reader with what comes next, manipulating the pace at which the reader reads.
Illustration Notes: Made out of handmade paper. Gives a hint of story on title page and frontispiece
by showing a mouse scurrying around, sniffing. Mouse seems to be jumping for joy, with his wide
open mouth and one tooth aiming at the huge turnip, etc. Everything in his world is far bigger than he
is, and it’s all coming apart in chunks as he joyfully eats it. I like the splotches of color that get all over
the mouse as he makes a mess, trailing behind him when he moves. Diagram on last page to show what
food each splotch of mess on the mouse came from.
Applications: Raise a classroom mouse, write similar stories and make diagrams of the mess made, use
with another mouse book, perhaps a more demure one.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: mess, hungry, mice
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Page 62
Review #113
Citation:
Hest, Amy. Off to School, Baby Duck! Cambridge, Mass.:
Candlewick Press, 1999. Ill. by Jill Barton.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A young duck is nervous getting ready for her first day of school and doesn’t want to go.
Her parents laboriously get her out of the house and down to the schoolhouse, where her Grandpa is
waiting. He gives her a hug and reminds her of all the things she’s good at, then introduces her to the
teacher. She decides it’ll be okay after all and skips inside.
Story Notes: Naming the duck “Baby” seems a bit condescending to me, not sure kids will want to
identify with a baby, even if it’s going through the same trepidation as they are, especially when the
real baby of this family is named Hot Stuff. It’s nice the way Grandpa duck understands everything
Baby is going through, but also unfortunate how her Parents abandon her in the pictures and go stand
with other parents. I get the impression that she is getting her ego stroked more than her confidence
built when Grandpa reminds her of her good qualities.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and pencil, friendly scenes of family life with great texture to wooden
items. Pictures at the schoolyard show lots of other young ducks totting around, apparently as unsure
as she is.
Applications: Identify with first-day jitters.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: first day of school, ducks, nervousness, confidence
Review #114
Citation:
Cummane, Kelly. For You Are a Kenyan Child. New York:
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006. Ill. by Ana Juan.
&
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A Kenyan boy wakes early and is sent off to watch his grandfather’s cows as they graze.
He is tempted by the many goings-on of the village, though, and slips away to see all the people he
knows. He realizes in a panic that he has forgotten the cows, and he goes shame-facedly home but is
forgiven, like all small boys.
Story Notes: Pronunciation guide and background information given on frontispiece. Quite a bit of
information about the setting given in first sentence, along with nice imagery. The temptation to slip
away from your chores is something all children in the world can identify with. Swahili language is
integrated into text, defined internally but also given in a glossary. Lots of cultural information.
Illustration Notes: Acrylic paint and crayons, lots of bright, rich colors, reflecting the imagery of the
text. Full scenes on some pages, small pictures dancing across the white text pages in other places.
All characters, including animals, have big, beautiful eyes, exaggeratedly so. Adults’ expressions as
they deal with the boy are priceless.
Applications: Use as part of a Kenyan or multicultural unit, world geography
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Kenya, chores, multicultural
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Page 63
Review #115
Citation:
Michelson, Richard. Happy Feet. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2005.
Ill. by E. B. Lewis.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy and his father work in the father’s shoe-shining shop, across the street from the
Savoy Ballroom, which opened the day the son was born. The shop attracts business from many
famous dancers and musicians at the ballroom, so the father knows all the stories related to the place; as
they hang out there on the present night, the father tells the story of dancing there the night the son was
born. The boy dreams of growing up to dance on his “happy feet” at the ballroom.
Story Notes: Language uses lots of superlatives and varying font size to show enthusiasm and
excitement. Full of slang from that era. Touches on racial issues of the day. Historical note and short
biographies of characters mentioned on the last page. Fairly easy text, but the pictures flesh out enough
of a story that this can be used for lots of different levels of readers. Good reminder that “Happy Feet”
does not exclusively refer to a penguin movie, though for fun the movie might be shown in a class.
Illustration Notes: Beautiful impressionistic watercolors of scenes from Harlem in the late 1920s and
early 1930s. Blending of colors in dance scenes, as if all the action blended together in the crowd.
Applications: Learn to swing dance. Use for Black History activities. Use as part of a unit on
Depression-era culture.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: dancing, black history, Harlem, 1920s, Depression
Review #116
Citation:
Gerstein, Mordicai. Carolinda Clatter! New Milford, Conn.:
Roaring Brook Press, 2005. Ill. by author.
#
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A giant falls asleep and eventually becomes a mountain on which many people live. They
are quiet all the time because they are afraid of waking him, but Carolinda can’t help making noise, and
she wakes him. They are terrified and send her to tell him to go back to sleep. He promises not to
move if she will sing him a lullaby every night, and the community becomes musical.
Story Notes: The story of the giant becoming the grassy hill is endearing, engaging, and of mythical
proportions, almost like a pourquoi within the rest of the story. The notification of Carolinda’s birth
would not be foreboding except it is set apart from the rest of the text, just after a discussion of how
quiet everything is. Comments on the importance of music.
Illustration Notes: Fantastic mixed-media pictures start three pages before the text. It’s apparent from
the proportions of limbs and posture that the giant is a giant, even before the text or any other things for
perspective tell us so. Colors are larger than life. Onomatopoeia and jagged lines at her birth are
shocking, a bit comical.
Applications: write and study creation myths, pourquoi tales
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: giant, music, noise, creation
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Page 64
Review #117
Citation:
Birdseye, Tom, and Debbie Holsclaw Birdseye. She’ll Be Comin’
Round the Mountain. New York: Holiday House, 1994. Ill. by
Andrew Glass.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary:
Story Notes: Very silly verses, of the author’s creation rather than traditional. The family is obviously
delighted to see this person, so I’m glad for them, and there’s an explicit theme that time and change
don’t matter to real friends, but the pictures are so uncomplimentary and biased that I’m having trouble
seeing the story as anything but represented poorly.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and colored pencil. Opening pictures show a really unfortunate
stereotype of Appalachian mountain folk, after the author’s note in the beginning of the book has
expressly identified this as an Appalachian song. Everything from Barefoot children to a pregnant
wife, to Grandma reading the bible with her feet up on a rail are represented here, and not kindly.
Applications: Write verses of the song, decide who’s coming.
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: song, Appalachia
Review #118
Citation:
Meddaugh, Susan. Martha Blah Blah. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1996. Ill. by author.

Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Martha the dog has been able to speak since she started eating alphabet soup. When new
management cuts half of the letters out of the soup, she seems to be losing her speaking ability, with
only pathetic half-word sounds coming out of her mouth, no matter how hard she tries. Martha
accidentally runs into Alf, who’d made the letter A for the soup before he was fired in the cutbacks, and
who lets slip to Martha that she’s not getting all her letters every day. Outraged, she walks over to the
new office and demands that the new CEO put all the letters back in the soup. Terrified because she
sees only a portrait of the founder apparently speaking, instead of a hidden dog, the new woman rights
the situation.
Story Notes: Very silly premise, but one that will appeal to kids’ imaginations. Many will probably go
home and feed their own pets alphabet soup to see what happens. This new granny character is pretty
evil, firing people for profit! She gets hers in the end, though.
Illustration Notes: Simple watercolor and ink pictures with simple lines and tinting, backgrounds
mostly left blank for the imagination to fill in. Speech bubbles without letters are pretty funny, and
poor Martha is so expressive in her upset! I love Alf’s apparent terror when Martha starts to sing the
alphabet, with him behind the chair and his soup overturned on the floor.
Applications: Write about what animals would say if they could talk, study how they do communicate.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: dogs, soup
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Review #119
Citation:
Aylesworth, Jim. Old Black Fly. New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1992. Ill. by Stephen Gammell.

Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A fly buzzes around a house annoying anyone and everyone it can manages to annoy,
including the dog and cat. Finally, Momma has had enough, and a massive swat occurs. The fly
misbehaves no longer.
Story Notes: Set up as an alphabet book with a rhyming text and a repetitive refrain than the audience
can join in on. The fly does all the things that a real fly does; I’m getting angry at him just reading of
his exploits! Very entertaining, if morbid, epilogue.
Illustration Notes: Great abstract backgrounds using splatters and indistinct blobs of paint.
Surrealistic style, but very expressive faces. Beautiful leaves on the Ivy page, looks like pastels with
some significant blending. Pictures look nothing like life, but something about their messiness makes
them seem very realistic. I love the swat; it’s so big and pink, it seems to be not just the mess from a
swatted fly but the anger that made it happen. A bit violent, but only reality.
Applications: Make splatter art, write about the life and times of something very small.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: flies
Review #120
Citation:
Fox, Mem. Tough Boris. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company,
1994. Ill. by Kathryn Brown.

Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Boris is a pirate. Like all pirates, he is tough, greedy, scary, scruffy, and many other
intimidating things. When his parrot dies, Boris does what all pirates do: grieve for the loss of a friend,
and cry.
Story Notes: I feel so sorry for poor Boris; even massive, scary, greedy pirates depend on their friends!
The comment that all pirates cry is lovely, after all the hyperbole at the beginning.
Illustration Notes: Very nice watercolors. Portrays as much stereotype as possible even in the first
picture, with stubble standing out like claws from the pirate’s chin. The pirates’ consternation at the
tiny violin is quite the funny picture. Great changes in perspective from birds’ eye to medium close to
a smaller view, on the pages showing greed. Series of pictures after “when is parrot died” are poignant
and heartfelt.
Applications: Talk about stereotypes, what you expect from a character, how you feel when you
discover that’s not really the case. Journal about the changes in your own character after you lose
something or someone beloved.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: pirates, stereotypes, mourning
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Review #121
Citation:
Carle, Eric. Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me. New York: Little
Simon, 1986. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Monica wants the moon and can’t reach it, so she asks her Daddy to get it. He climbs the
ladder and finds that the moon is too big to carry down, but the moon points out that he will shrink
every night until he is just the right size to carry down. When it wanes to the right size, Daddy brings
the moon to Monica, who plays happily with it. However, it keeps shrinking and soon disappears. It
reappears a night later as a tiny sliver, back in the sky and now waxing.
Story Notes: I like Monica’s trust in her Daddy that he can do anything; good Daddies are like that,
even with impossible stuff. The moon’s disappearance after Monica plays with it is unfortunate, given
the trouble her Dad went to, but of course the moon had to get back in the sky somehow, and we
couldn’t expect that it would stop shrinking after it became the right size to carry down the ladder.
Illustration Notes: Looks like a collage out of paintings Carle has done, with thick brush strokes
across the night sky to show wind as well as darkness, colors and shading for texture on the house,
printing on the grass, etc. I love the extra- long pictures, with their slightly humorous perspective on
how to imagine the text, but the fold-out pages, at least in my edition, are very hard to get hold of, and
will give young children with less-developed motor skills a very hard time, probably only resulting in
torn pages.
Applications: Study phases of the moon, learn about how people really got to its surface. Combine
with Many Moons if desired.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: moon, moon phases
Review #122
Citation:
Jonas, Ann. Aardvarks, Disembark! New York: Greenwillow
Books, 1990. Ill. by author.
&
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Noah calls the animals off the ark in alphabetical order, only to find that he’s missed some.
Story Notes: Starts with recap of the Noah’s Ark story. Most of text just shows lots of animals with
unfamiliar names through the alphabet, saying Noah doesn’t know them either. Brief note on each
animal at the end of the book.
Illustration Notes: Hinge of book is placed at the top instead of left of book, so pages open up and
down. Straight interceting lines are used to show rain.
Applications: Have students research some of the animals in the book. Visit a zoo and have a
scavenger hunt to find some of these animals, prepping with worksheets or activities to show which
ones are different names for familiar animals. Work on alphabetical order.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: animals, alphabetical order, Noah
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Page 67
Review #123
Citation:
Shannon, David. Duck on a Bike. New York: The Blue Sky Press,
2002. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A duck decides to try riding a bike, and rides around the farm, saying hi to each animals.
Each animal only says hello in return, but thinks something entirely different from complimentary to
snooty disdain. When a crowd of kids comes in to visit the farm, there are suddenly enough bikes for
all the animals to try riding.
Story Notes: Nice characterizations of each animal through their hidden thoughts while greeting Duck.
Fairly easy text, appropriate for not the very earliest readers but for beginners.
Illustration Notes: Title page gives Duck’s original contemplation of the bike. Pictures of the
different animals show their different personalities in their postures and expressions. Neat changes in
perspective, like showing the duck from below the bike’s front wheel, as the chicken runs headlong.
Bright colors, very reminiscent of a sunny, idealistic view of a farm. The crowd of other animals
looking at the crowd of bikes with wide eyes is priceless, especially after they’ve just voiced their
various opinions on duck’s riding, and I love the way their different kinds of bikes pick up their
personalities. “The End” page shows Duck contemplating a tractor.
Applications: Bring in pictures and stories of bike riding. Visit a farm.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: farm animals, bicycles
Review #124
Citation:
Shulevitz, Uri. What is a Wise Bird Like You Doing in a Silly Tale
Like This? New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2000. Ill. by author.
@
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A silly and stupid emperor of a tiny empire has a very wise bird. The bird is very unhappy
because he is kept in a cage. With some help from the emperor’s brother/janitor, a few clever tricks,
and stories, the bird gets his freedom and flies away.
Story Notes: Seemingly random silliness in the story. This is surely on purpose, given the title of the
book, but seems too much like the things my friends and I wrote in middle school for a literary work.
That said, it is entirely likely to amuse kids like my friends and I were amused then. Text is really too
long, not only making it too long for younger readers but also making the silliness grow tedious, losing
the fun that’s supposed to be the point of this story.
Illustration Notes: Map, flag, national symbols of the story’s imaginary setting on endpapers.
Watercolors, looks like woodblock printing on more detailed spots such as forest scene. Less detailed,
even sillier pictures for when the bird is narrating his story.
Applications: Write and illustrate silly stories.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: emperor, janitor, toucan, silly stories
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Review #125
Citation:
Henkes, Kevin. Owen. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1993. Ill.
by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Owen has a blanket that he’s adored since he was tiny, but his parents (with the instigation
their their nosy neighbor) think it is time to wean him away from it. They try getting him to leave it
under his pillow for the “pillow fairy” to take away, dipping it in vinegar to make it smell bad, and just
saying no, but he thwarts them every time Finally, Owen’s mom solves the problem by cutting the
blanket into small pieces and hemming the edges, so that instead of carrying a blanket everywhere,
Owen can carry small comforting handkerchiefs.
Story Notes: Perfectly characteristic of children. The nosy neighbor, too, is characteristic enough to
hate. This may be funnier to adults in some ways than to children. Cute solution, though painful to
watch Owen’s reaction as his best friend is cut into pieces without his input. It’s unfortunate that Mrs.
Tweezers has to be pleased about all this at the end, but I’m glad they shut her up. 
Illustration Notes: Endpapers show Owen playing happily with his blanket. Pictures vary from one
large panel on a page to many small ones, depending on how many different actions each needs to
illustrate. Lots of bright colors, fairly transparent values.
Applications: Deal with loss of comfort object, write other solutions to the problem.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: comfort object, weaning
Review #126
Citation:
McDermott, Beverly Brodsky. Sedna. New York: The Viking
Press, 1975. Ill. by author.
#&
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Inuit villagers pray to Sedna, a goddess who lives in the sea, for help in a time of crisis.
She agrees, but only if the villagers can arrange to untangle her hair, which has tormented her as a
result of her unhappy marriage to a sea god.
Story Notes: Inuit myth; says “Eskimo” on the front but does better in the text. Uses native
vocabulary. Importance of the water invites a geography lesson on where the Inuit live. Sedna’s story
is pretty harsh, could be for older listeners. Different from stories written in the style we’re used to, but
a good cultural gateway.
Illustration Notes: Pen and brush and ink. Illustrations in folk art style. Almost expressionistic; little
motion or life to pictures, but they seem to convey emotions strongly in their harsh lines. Done in two
colors.
Applications: Use for multicultural unit, Native Americans, folktales, mythology.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Inuit, mythology, pourquoi
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Review #127
Citation:
Tan, Shaun. The Lost Thing. Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia:
Lothian Books, 2000. Ill. by author.

Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy in an extremely ordinary world finds a mysterious extremely extraordinary thing that
appears to be lost. No one else seems to notice it, and his parents won’t let him keep it. He can’t bring
himself to cover it up like it never existed, so he finds a haven of other weird things and lets it stay
there. He continues to think about it long afterward, and sometimes he wonders why he doesn’t notice
many out of the ordinary things anymore.
Story Notes: Mystifying premise, but I think that is the point. This huge unfathomable mutant teapotlooking thing acts a bit like a dog when the boy plays with it. The existence of a Federal Department of
Odds and Ends seems to be a political comment, especially when coupled with the mysterious voice’s
explanation of why he shouldn’t leave the thing there. Sad commentary on failing to notice things that
matter to everyday life, though that’s a theme for older readers. Not a theme usually found in
American books; this one’s from Australia.
Illustration Notes: Surrealistic, dystopian style. Pictures are framed against a background of collaged
pieces of an old physics textbook, for an aged newsprint look. Rather dreary view of the beach, with
ugly walls and industrial things around, but that’s what many shores look like, I suspect. Text is made
to look like handwritten notes on pieces of notebook paper, pasted into a scrapbook. Rows of houses
are made to look like such a sea of ordinary-ness that perhaps this weird lost thing is meant to be
anything unusual, out of the ordinary. Lots of shifts of perspective in different frames.
Applications: Journal about what it might be, where it came from, and why nobody noticed it.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: dystopian
Review #128
Citation:
Zemach, Harve. Duffy and the Devil. New York: Farrar Straus
Giroux, 1973. Ill. by Margot Zemach.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A girl claims she can spin and knit and his hired to do just that—but she can’t, and she
makes a deal with the devil to do the work for her. She must guess his name by the end of three years,
or her will take her away. With help from an old woman and some beer, she finds out the name and the
devil cannot take her, but his knitting turns to ashes behind him. Long text.
Story Notes: Rumpelstiltskin tale. Ironic juxtaposition of spinning and knitting like a saint and an
angel, when the devil is actually doing the work. The poor squire gets little for his good nature.
Illustration Notes: Simple watercolor and ink, cartoonish style.
Applications: Compare and contrast with other versions of Rumpelstiltskin.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Rumpelstiltskin, devil, knitting
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Review #129
Citation:
Zemach, Harve and Kaethe. The Princess and Froggie. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975. Ill. by Margot Zemach.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Three short stories. In each, a young princess gets into come kind of trouble: she drops her
ball in a pond, she loses her penny, she can’t get a bird off her Dad’s head. When she starts to cry, her
friend Froggie comes and gets her out of trouble. At the end of each, she gives him a lollipop.
Story Notes: Written like an easy reader, with short sentences and repeating words. Divided into three
short stories. In each, the princess cannot cope on her own and starts to cry, until the frog comes and
solves things neatly for her. Lollipops seems to be the universal rewards and solutions. These are not
terrible stories, but they seem to fall into some cliché traps.
Illustration Notes: Watercolors, simple characters, no backgrounds. It is apparent that even though the
girl is called a princess, she is a regular little girl with regular parents, just like many regular girls who
want to be princesses.
Applications: Write and illustrate short fairytales.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: princess, frogs, lollipops
Review #130
Citation:
Goble, Paul. The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. Scarsdale, N.Y.:
Bradbury Press, 1978. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A girl in a nomadic tribe loves horses. One afternoon she is out tending them and falls
asleep. She is caught out in the open when a terrible thunderstorm hits. She jumps onto her own horse,
and the pack runs terrified until they find shelter in hills where another group of horses lives. They
welcome her. After a long time goes by, she is reunited with her parents, but she is never happy living
among the people. They allow her to return to live with the horses, and sfrom then on she visits them
every year and brings them a colt. One year she does not come, and they believe she has become a
horse at last.
Story Notes: Calls the tribe “the people”, which is what most native American tribes names roughly
translate to. The time she spends living with the horses, welcomed and protected by the stallion, invites
the question of whether she wants to go back home, whether she becomes more horse than human.
Wild horses are highly personified, speaking to the girl becoming her relatives, and leading a joyful
reunion. Has the feel of a myth of some kind, though I don’t see any indication of that in the book.
Illustration Notes: Beautiful, bright colors and earth tones watercolors with pen and ink. Depicts a
nomadic plains Indian tribe of characters, in a style reminiscent to that that might appear hand-painted
on folk arts from those people. Shows the dramatic landscapes of the west.
Applications: Learn about lots of native American myths and stories, culture, multicultural unit
Age Range: any
Awards: Caldecott Medal Winner
Tags: horses, Native Americans, mythology, folk tales
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Review #131
Citation:
Wood, Audrey. When the Root Children Wake Up. New York:
Scholastic Press, 2002. Ill. by Ned Bittinger.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Mother Earth wakes her children from their roots and has them prepare to go out into the
world. The make costumes and dance out, bringing spring to all the animals and the landscape. The
cheerful Spring is replaced by wild, energetic Summer, who is then replaced by studious, quieter fall.
The children are called home by Mother Earth again, who sings them to sleep so that they can pass
another winter.
Story Notes: Shows all kinds of mythical characters as literal people, getting ready for spring, gives
each season a character. Beautiful children making beautiful costumes, is surprising and a bit jarring
when they also wake up the bugs and make them beautiful, because we tend to think of bugs as dirty
and scary and not like the children we’re seeing. Pretty song printed with music and chord symbols in
the back.
Illustration Notes: Gorgeous, slightly hazy, impressionistic oil paintings. Pictures spread across a
page and a half, and then in a separate frame on the rest of the page is a continuation of the scene, but
with the text enclosed. Some elements of pictures bridges between the two frames. Sort of magical in
beauty and choice of colors; not at all realistic exactly because of that, makes you feel like a well-drawn
Disney movie, but that’s okay because it’s a myth, a folktale, a fairytale, anything but a realistic story.
Children look incredibly joyful in every scene.
Applications: Learn about seasons, draw characters for each one.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: seasons, nature, mother earth
Review #132
Citation:
Steel, Danielle. Max and the Baby-sitter. New York: Delacorte
Press, 1989. Ill. by Jacqueline Rogers.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Max loves his parents, but they both work and so sometimes he needs a babysitter. He’s
scared of the one he has, so they find him a new one, who is perfect.
Story Notes: Nice little stories about a kid doing fun, educational things with his good, active parents,
but it takes half the book to get to the babysitter, which I thought was the point of the story from the
title? Not artful in that. Pretty patronizing, referring to little girls and little boys. I’m afraid I don’t
understand the point of this story, even having read it cover to cover. The theme is that in bad times
your parents are the best part of life but they become easy to push off once you have a better situation?
Illustration Notes: Pretty good depiction of off-duty firemen standing around being casual in golf
shirts, but very outdated depiction of nurse’s uniform. Watercolors in bright colors.
Applications: ? I’m at a loss, despite having made applications for other pitiful books.
Age Range: very young
Awards:
Tags: babysitters, parents
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Review #133
Citation:
Taylor, Mark. The Frog House. New York: Dutton Children’s
Books, 2004. Ill. by Barbara Garrison.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: When a birdhouse that looks just like an apple is hung in a tree, a frog quickly reasons that
it must be meant for him, since bird houses do not look like apples. Many animals mistake the house
for a real apple or a birdhouse and try to disturb the structure before he points out to them that he lives
there. Finally, another tree frog notices his nice house and decides to stay with him.
Story Notes: I like the frog’s logic as he tries to straighten out the reasoning for this very odd action on
the part of the humans. What a curious relationship between the different animals, as the birds are all
unerringly polite when the frog yells at them, and as the frog instructs the cat to run along and not to
bother any birds.
Illustration Notes: Extremely complicated mixed media, with a very interesting note on the
“collagraph” process in the beginning of the book. It’s worth looking it u to read about, for a buff of
artistic styles. Most faces have no expression, with the pictures looking and acting more like stained
glass windows than anything moving, but the fierce look in the squirrel’s eye when he bites the apple is
pretty entertaining.
Applications: Build birdhouses, learn about habitats.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: frogs, birdhouse
Review #134
Citation:
Bannon, Kay Thorpe. Yonder Mountain. New York: Marshall
Cavendish, 2002. Ill. by Kristina Rodanas.
#&
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A chief grows too old and frail to lead his tribe, so he sends three young men to climb a
mountain and bring back what they find, as a test. Two bring back things that will help the tribe in
great ways, but the third climbs past them and brings back a story of seeing other people that need help.
Story Notes: Gives a forward to the history of the story, where it comes from, and a context in the
cannon of Cherokee literature; also has a glossary of Cherokee vocabulary in the end. Story is meant to
be instructive, a parable, as is apparent and as is detailed in the foreward. Theme is that leadership
involves more than just good intent and even excellent ideas, but requires going all the way through
with finishing a task and seeing beyond your own needs to others’.
Illustration Notes: Beautiful, colorful depictions of the Great Smoky Mountains in autumn. Some
pictures focus on characters and are only one page, but the ones that focus on the landscape always
spread across two pages, including three full spreads in a row at the beginning, to show the vastness of
the mountain range. Images seem to be free of stereotype, well-researched.
Applications: Use for local history, any multicultural unit, American Indian culture.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Cherokee, mountains, oral tradition
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Review #135
Citation:
Bornstein, Harry, and Karen L. Saulnier. Little Red Riding Hood.
Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1990. Ill. by
Bradley O. Pomeroy.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Very basic, no-frills Little Red Riding Hood story. Girl carries goodies to Granny, tells a
wolf where she’s going. Granny is scared when the wolf comes in and hides in the closet. Wolf
pretends to be Granny, umps out of the bed and chases girl around the room, where she screams for
help. A hunter comes and shoots the wolf. Granny comes out of her closet and they all have a party.
Story Notes: This appears to be a cross between a story and an instructional manual about Signed
English. It gives the story in text printed atop the pictures, like in most any book, but also prints each
word along with an icon of a little man showing how to do the sign for that word. Icon changes to a
mother figure, wolf, etc., when that character is speaking.
Illustration Notes: Pleasant but unremarkable watercolors with some other kind of paint on top, not
sure what. Kind of stiff, not inviting, and the style seems a bit mismatched from one frame to the next.
The signs are obviously the important thing to look at here. Portrays the girl and her mother as fairly
modern. Regular printed words are de-emphasized, sometimes printed in places where they almost
can’t be read against the dark values of the picture, sometimes swallowed up in the spine.
Applications: Learn sign language to tell other stories.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Little Red Riding Hood, sign language
Review #136
Citation:
Burleigh, Robert. Pandora. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2002. Ill.
by Raul Colon.
&
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Picks up in the Pandora story where Pandora is already living with Epimetheus and
wondering about the jar. It taunts her, and she does everything she can to stop thinking about it and
resist the temptation of looking inside. She finally decides to just take a little peek; of course all the bad
things tumble out, but the tiny voice of hope remains bottled up, and she clings to it when she is scared.
Story Notes: Notes on mythological characters, Foreword that gives background to Pandora’s
situation. Text written as verse, more difficult cadence of words than many for young readers. Gets
into Pandora’s thoughts and curiosity, makes her much more of a human than a monster, gives more
sympathy than Pandora stories often do.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and colored pencil, lots of texture. Much darker values in scenes after
the jar is opened, dramatic scary stuff jumping out from it.
Applications: Mythology unit, classical history, compare and contrast versions.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Pandora, mythology, Greece, hope
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Review #137
Citation:
Burns, Khepra. Mansa Musa. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 2001. Ill.
by Leo & Diane Dillon.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A young man in a village in Mali is abducted by slave raiders and ends up wandering the
desert for about six years with a lone nomad, who teaches him many things about survival and find
one’s true self. When the nomad mysteriously disappears as suddenly as he had arrived all that time
ago, Kankan knows it is time to return to his people. There he finds that is younger brother has been
made king, for they are descended from the great rules of Mali and have been living in secret for all
these years. He becomes advisor to the king and fulfills his long-held desire to make Mali known to all
the kingdoms of the earth.
Story Notes: VERY long text, needs to be sent home with an advanced reader, not plugged through in
a classroom. Beautiful quality, engaging story, jut too much to read for an audience.
Illustration Notes: Rich gouache paintings of scenes of ancient Mali, showing the prosperity of a great
African kingdom. Map on frontispiece.
Applications: Use for a multicultural unit or as a different approach to medieval history. Maybe book
talk as a very different choice for black history.
Age Range: older readers
Awards:
Tags: Mali, ancient African kingdoms, pre-colonial Africa
Review #138
Citation:
Creech, Sharon. A Fine, Fine School. HarperCollins Publishers,
2001. Ill. by Harry Bliss.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A school is so proud of his teachers and students that he decides that school should take
place on Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, and even the whole summer. Everyone hates this, but they’re
afraid to tell him so. Finally Tillie, his little neighbor who’s a student, points out that not everyone is
learning under the current arrangement, as she’s no longer home to teach her dog to sit or her brother to
skip or herself to climb trees. He realizes the worth in this and returns the school to a normal schedule.
Story Notes: Very silly premise, that anyone would want to go to school so much and that nobody
would complain about it. Even if the teachers and kids like the principal that much, he’d never reckon
with obnoxious parents. However, I notice that parents are pretty much absent from this story. Cute.
Illustration Notes: Cartoon-like watercolors, pictures are FULL of kids, not too detailed in some
backgrounds but always detailed in the kids running around, doing very realistic (not always very
graceful or nice) kid things to do. I like the details on the books kids carry, with titles like “How to
Avoid Sleeping.”
Applications: Read at end of school year when everyone is antsy to get out.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: school, principal, pride
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Review #139
Citation:
Coville, Bruce. Hamlet. New York: Dial Books, 2004. Ill. by
Leonid Gore.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: Hamlet—need I go into details? It’s a surprisingly complete retelling, with many details
left out but all the pot twists left in.
Story Notes: Pretty long, not as cut down as I thought it might be when I saw what it was. Has an
author’s note about Coville’s intent in doing the retelling. Uses direct quotes from the play any time a
character speaks, tries to include famous lines from the play whenever possible, even in paraphrased
form during the narrative.
Illustration Notes: Very vague, ghostly pictures, mostly in dark values with faces often swallowed up
by darkness. People are not terribly realistic, but they don’t really need to be; they get the suggestion of
the story, which is all Shakespeare really needs in this situation, is a hint to get kids involved in the
story.
Applications: Use as intro to Shakespeare for any age.
Age Range: any/older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Shakespeare, Hamlet
Review #140
Citation:
Andreasen, Dan. With a Little Help From Daddy. New York:
Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2003. Ill. by author.
Source: Hodges Juvenile Collection
Summary: A child boasts that he is the tallest, bravest, cutest most polite, and otherwise superlative
kid on the block—with, as the pictures reveal, help from his Daddy.
Story Notes: Very simple text, repetitive sentence structure on each age. Addresses many of the
concerns or desires that lots of children have in comparing themselves to their peers. I think this story
is cute, and it certainly appeals to my own memories of teaming up with my Daddy, but I wonder if it’s
not appropriate to read for a whole class in its portrayal of an involved father as the person who makes
everything possible; many kids won’t have one. This is a case to know your audience, perhaps.
There’s nothing particularly offensive about the book, but that can be an awfully sensitive issue.
Illustration Notes: Oil paintings, simpler than many water colors but nice bright colors, and the layers
of oils gives texture that watercolors can’t quite achieve. Pictures show “the rest of the story”:
illustrations of how each statement on the part of the child is true, providing Daddy is there to help. For
instance, he can be the tallest kid on the block when he is riding on Daddy’s shoulders, and so forth.
Applications: Write letters to parents thanking them for all the things they make possible for their kids.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: father
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Review #141
Citation:
Yee, Wong Herbert. Big Black Bear. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1993. Ill. by author.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A black bear smells something good and goes to the house whence it comes. He invites
himself in, and when the girl who lives there keeps reminding him of his manners, he haughtily retorts
that he is a big black bear and can do whatever he wants. Just as he is threatening to eat the girl, a
REALLY big black bear twice his size comes in and stops him. He confesses that he is in fact only a
young bear and suddenly remembers his manners.
Story Notes: Written in rhyming couplets. Bear speaks directly to people, who speak back, even as it
admits that there are things bears just don’t do because they are, after all, bears. Bear is very arrogant
about his right to not be mannerly. Pretty cute when the bear is caught and has to confess his age and
upbringing. Rhyming will make for a great read-aloud.
Illustration Notes: Bright colors, very simple shapes and textures, acrylic paint? I like the bear’s
action as he lopes down the hill to the city, which shows that it’s more populated than a place where a
bear belongs, but gives only the impression of a city with just six house shapes. Bear is obviously
contrite when his mama walks in, hiding behind a chair trying to be invisible because he is clearly
wrong, and caught.
Applications: Write instructional stories, have a tea party to learn about manners.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: bears, manners
Review #142
Citation:
Wright, Betty Ren. The Cat Next Door. New York: Holiday
House, 1991. Ill. by Gail Owens.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A girl spends every summer with her grandparents at their lakehouse, and one of her
favorite traditions is lying on the dock waiting for The Cat Next Door to visit her. Everything seems to
change when the Grandmother dies, and the girl doesn’t look forward to her vacation. She goes out and
lies on the dock, and the cat comes and brings with her two new kittens.
Story Notes: Beautiful relationship between grandmother and granddaughter, sad revelation about the
loss of that grandmother. Also beautiful the way the cat arrives in the girl’ dark mood, helping in the
healing and grieving process, with the new life of the kittens reminding that there’s hope after loss.
Illustration Notes: Warm colored pencil drawings with lots of close-ups on faces. Blends multiple
scenes and/or viewpoints into a single illustration by literally layering pictures over each other, with
one transparent illustration atop another, showing the layers through. This may be confusing to very
literal younger children, but is a nice effect for those who can see in the abstract easily.
Applications: Cope with loss
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: cats, mourning, grandparents, grandmother
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Review #143
Citation:
Wells, Rosemary. Yoko’s Paper Cranes. New York: Hyperion
Books for Children, 2001. Ill. by author.
&
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: As a young girl, Yoko enjoys visiting her grandparents and seeing the cranes in their
garden, learning that they fly away for the winter but return in the spring. Yoko learns to fold paper
cranes from her grandfather. She moves with her parents to America, but keeps in close touch with her
grandparents by mail. When her grandmother’s birthday approaches, Yoko knows that it is cold and
snowy in Japan and that there will be no cranes in the garden. So she folds some paper cranes and
mails them to Japan as a birthday present, giving them a little touch of spring in their house.
Story Notes: Very sweet story of how even a little child can understand how one might long for
something that just won’t happen at that point in time, even knowing it will come back eventually.
Illustration Notes: Map of Pacific ocean on endpapers made of collaged fabric. Beautiful scenes of
Japanese life tucked into frames, with cranes flying all around outside the frames, real and paper. Very
simplistic representations of Japan and America on opposite sides of the ocean, but it gets the point
across, not a bad idea for little readers who don’t have a mental image of where Japan is from here and
how the two places could have different weather at the same time.
Applications: Fold simple origami, make beautiful paper, write to pen pals, Multicultural unit,
geography lesson, use a globe to find Japan and talk about distances, seasonal differences
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: Japan, origami, grandparents
Review #144
Citation:
Talley, Carol. Papa Piccolo. Kansas City, Mo.: MarshMedia,
1992. Ill. by Itoko Maeno.
&
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: An adventurous tomcat is briefly kind to a pair of stray kittens—who promptly adopt him
as their father. He thinks he wants rid of them, but when they disappear he misses them. He is excited
when they turn back up and immediately begins teaching them everything they need to know about
being cats, showing them off as his own.
Story Notes: Depiction of mischievous cat’s adventures will appeal to active kids. The tomcat not
wanting to give up his bachelor ways will appeal to everyone! Note at end about encouraging self
esteem and good role models by not stereotyping boys out of being caretakers.
Illustration Notes: Small pictures with notes about history and cultural items of Venice in the
endpapers. Title page and frontispiece show setting in Venetian canals with the long boats. Kittens are
great, hugging the frustrated tomcat who intends to NOT be anybody’s daddy. Could easily be humans.
Applications: Mentor younger students, study Venetian culture
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: cats, bachelor, father, mentor, Venice
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Review #145
Citation:
Steig, William. Amos & Boris. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1971. Ill. by author.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A mouse who dreams of adventure builds a boat and sails out to sea. His voyage goes
brilliantly until waves pitch Amos into the ocean. He manages to stay afloat for a while, but is
preparing to die when a whale scoops him up and offers to take him back to land. The two become
great friends, each very curious about the other’s life. When they part, Amos thanks Boris for saving
him and offers his help in the future, though neither of them can think of how a mouse might help a
whale. When Boris is beached after a hurricane, however, Amos discovers him and is able to find two
elephants to roll Boris back into the sea, saving him also.
Story Notes: Cute story about being friends with someone very different, looking very hard for
similarities but having trouble finding them, coming to admire all the difference. Shows how little
people can do things for big people, even when no one expects it. Rich vocabulary.
Illustration Notes: Fairly simple watercolors, slightly cartoon-ish style.
Applications: Plan what to pack for an ocean journey. Use with other stories about saving lives,
remembering powerful friendships even when the friends are far apart.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: mouse, whale, friendship, rescue, sailing
Review #146
Citation:
Brisson, Pat. Melissa Parkington’s Beautiful, Beautiful Hair.
Honesdale, Pa.: Boyds Mills Press, 2006. Ill. by Suzanne Bloom.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: Melissa is so frequently complimented on her beautiful hair that she begins to feel that no
one notices her for herself or for anything she does. She decides to become excellent at something;
basketball and drawing don’t work out so well, but she becomes excellent at kindness. One day, in an
act of kindness that her parents don’t quite understand, she cuts her beautiful hair to donate to Locks of
Love. She reminds her dad that her hair is still beautiful, just on someone else’s head.
Story Notes: Shows teen angst, worrying that one will never be good at anything. Feeling invisible
because of hair that people admire is something I can relate to, also appears in Belle Prater’s Boy.
Great message that kindness is something you have to work at and not a natural trait, lovely that it’s
shown as something that’s a real achievement, and better than beauty. Also shows a lot of different
ways to be kind. I hate that the dad hesitates to call her hair beautiful after it’s cut, though; not a good
portrayal of the value her father places on her, or how well he notices what she does.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and colored pencil, sometimes full spreads, sometimes small pictures
interspersed with text.
Applications: different definitions of beautiful, practice purposeful kindness.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: hair donation, kindness, identity, hair
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Page 79
Review #147
Citation:
Bernard, Robin. Juma and the Honey Guide. Parsippany, N.J.:
Silver Press, 1996. Ill. by Nneka Bennett.

Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A man hears the honey guide bird calling that it is time to go gather honey. His son asks to
go, so he takes him and teaches him the ways of gathering honey. He breaks off a piece of the
honeycomb and asks the boy to put it up in the tree to thank the bird, but the boy does not want to
“waste” it on an animal. When the man warns the boy that selfishness may lead the bird to lead him to
a lion instead of a hive the next time, the boy suddenly becomes generous and suggests that maybe they
should leave even more to thank the bird.
Story Notes: Gives pronunciations and translations of Swahili words in front. Offers a good bit of
information about this culture and customs of honey-gathering, without too many words. Excursion
ends with reminding child (and us) that we can’t do things without the help of others, and we need to
show our gratitude rather than being greedy and selfish. Explains in author’s note that the honey guide
bird is real and has a symbiotic relationship with a tribe of people in East Africa.
Illustration Notes: Pastel drawings. Gives scenes of Africa as setting on title page and frontispiece.
Nice texture to grasses. I like the close-up of the giraffes’ faces, as well as the other animals depicted.
Applications: Multicultural unit, practice unselfish gratitude
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: East Africa, honey, birds, selfishness, greed, gratitude
Review #148
Citation:
Radunsky, Vladimir. Manneken Pis. New York: Atheneum Books
for Young Readers, 2002. Ill. by author.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A boy lives in an idyllic village. When a war threatens his town, all seems to be lost.
Struck by the need to relieve himself, the boy pees over the town wall, right down into the conflict.
Everyone laughs, and the war stops.
Story Notes: Clearly propaganda about the evil of war, not subtle at all. Gives a stupid reason for its
beginning (maybe they were jealous of the town’s beauty) and suggests that there can never be any
happiness ever again after a town is hit by war, except that there’s a ridiculous happy ending tacked on.
Makes light of the magnitude of the conflict even as it vilifies it, with the boy needing to pee even more
than he needs his parents. Suggests that laughter at the urine makes everyone bright and happy again.
Appears to be heavily propagandized version of real folk tale in Belgium.
Illustration Notes: Mixed media, abstract style, text set in different font sizes for emphasis and some (I
suspect) to put the reader off-kilter, out of the comfort zone. Paints soldiers as ugly green goblins,
makes war look like a helter-skelter, disorganized mess of evil. Shows urination in detail.
Applications: Use with much older readers against pro-war propaganda to examine bias in literature.
Age Range: older readers
Awards:
Tags: propaganda, anti-war, pacifist
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Page 80
Review #149
Citation:
Runcie, Jill. Cock-A-Doodle-Doo! New York: Simon & Schuster
Books for Young Readers, 1991. Ill. by Lee Lorenz.
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: On a farm, the farmer sleeps soundly knowing the rooster will wake him in the morning.
The rooster sleeps soundly too, though, because he knows he’ll be woken by the dog, who was woken
by the cat, who was woken by the cow, and so on back until everyone is ultimately woken by the
farmer’s terrible loud snores.
Story Notes: Cute chain of events, fairly predictable but has the sentences broken up so that you don’t
know who’ll be woken next until you turn the page. Funny premise, too, that the famer’s snoring
wakes everyone but he is soundly convinced that the rooster wakes him by some mysterious prompting.
Kids will react well, laughing at the snoring (needs some good sound effects by the reader) and
predicting who’ll wake up next.
Illustration Notes: Bold, slightly sloppy watercolors. Sloppiness is not a bad thing, for farms are
sloppy, and half the premise of this story is that the farmer thinks the wake-up is all neat and simple but
it’s really not. Shows sun beams emanating from the center of each picture of an animal who’s being
woken up.
Applications: Use with other cumulative stories, write a chain of events for how students wake up.
Age Range: any/younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: morning, farm animals, wake up, rooster
Review #150
Citation:
Schertle, Alice. The Skeleton in the Closet. HarperCollins
Publishers, 2003. Ill. by Curtis Jobling.
@
Source: Johnson City Public Library
Summary: A boy is woken at night by a knock on the door. He answers it, only to look outside and
see a skeleton looking back. Terrified, he hides in his bed while he hears the skeleton creeping up the
stairs to his room. The skeleton chants about how his bones are bare and he’s looking for something to
wear. But he doesn’t mean he’s looking for skin or flesh; when he reaches the boy’s room, he walks
into the closet and puts on as many clothes as he can find. Then he leaves, to visit someone else.
Story Notes: Lots of cool language, literary devices, unusual similes. Rhyming couplets, good to read
aloud. Suspenseful at first appearance of skeleton. Needs a dramatic voice for the skeleton’s chant.
Descriptions of underpants and zipping up flies will make little ones laugh.
Illustration Notes: Simple gouaches, character looks very easy to relate to.
Applications: Read for Halloween, dress up skeleton pictures with variety of art materials, combine
with other books about bones, study what bones are which, bring a plastic skeleton model to dress up.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: skeleton, clothes, scary
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Review #151
Citation:
Keller, Holly. Farfallina & Marcel. HarperCollins Publishers,
2002. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A caterpillar and a gosling become friends, playing together despite their physical
differences. One day the caterpillar says she needs to rest before playing, and the gosling says he’ll
wait. The caterpillar goes into a cocoon and stays for a long time, growing and changing. The gosling
fairly gives up waiting on her and swims on his own in the pond, where he too grows and changes.
When the now-butterfly emerges, she looks for the gosling, can’t find him and decides she’ll wait. The
two finally recognize each other in their new and different forms and become fast friends again,
eventually deciding to migrate south for the winter together.
Story Notes: Author’s note explaining the process of turning from a caterpillar into a butterfly. Story
is written in verse, though not rhyming. Nice little description of animals that are friends despite
differences, admiring those differences and taking them into account when they play together. Fairly
simple words, but not simplistic. Short sentences, manageable for not a very early but somewhat early
reader. Almost like a love story, accepting limitations so that they can stay together and waiting
patiently on each other for a long time even with no indication that the other will ever turn up again, but
no indication of anything other than friendship.
Illustration Notes: Fairly simple watercolors, appropriate for the simplicity of the text. Warm colors.
Applications: Journal about staying friends in changing circumstances, study growth of baby animals
into adult forms, make butterfly art.
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: caterpillar, butterfly, goose, growing up, friendship
Review #152
Citation:
James, Simon. Little One Step. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick
Press, 2003. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Three ducklings are lost far from their mother, and the youngest feels weak and fears he
can’t make it back. His brother advises him to “do One Step,” i.e. to concentrate on one step at a time.
This makes the duckling feel stronger, and he makes it home safely to his mother.
Story Notes: Good lesson even for adults about feeling weak and overwhelmed upon looking up at all
the tress, but being able to make it when concentrating on the small tasks at hand. I especially like that
the older brother shares advice with the younger and encourages him when he’s down.
Illustration Notes: Simple watercolor and ink, all in shades and values of orange.
Applications: Teach as a study skill. Set a year-long goal and work at it “One Step” Read in
combination with Tortoise and Hare stories. Help younger students.
Age Range: any/ younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: ducklings, perseverance, encouragement
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Page 82
Review #153
Citation:
Scieszka, Jon. Squids will be Squids. New York: Viking, 1998. Ill.
by Lane Smith.
@
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: 18 fables with modern characters and rather silly morals plus a “serious historical
foreword” and a “very serious historical afterword”. Makes fun of the premise of fables.
Story Notes: Introduction to what fables are. “Fractured fables” with very modern situations and very
silly—though not unreasonable—morals. Broken into short chunks, but many of them, so it ends up
being a sizeable text for one sitting; might just use selected fables for classroom. A number of morals
about calling home.
Illustration Notes: Mixed media. Very silly pictures to complement text, capture emotions and
expressions even in silliness. Surrealistic style. Sometimes full-page pictures, sometime small frames
interspersed with text. Some pictures, like the blowfish, remind me of the style of a few cartoons on
Nickelodeon and the like these days, though not very cartoonish in style.
Applications: Suggest alternate morals for the fables at hand, write fables, use in combination with
Aesop or other fables. Find morals in real-life stories. Act out fable scenarios.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: fables, Aesop, fractured fairytales, morals
Review #154
Citation:
Raschka, Chris. Yo! Yes? New York: Orchard Books, 1993. Ill. by
author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A friendly boy greets an insecure boy, who is shy about being approach and protests that he
is no fun because he doesn’t have any friends. The friendly boy is shocked at this and offers to be his
friend. The insecure boy doesn’t quite believe this at first, but happily joins him and has a great time.
Story Notes: Only a word or two on each page, but conveys a whole story when combined with
characters’ postures and expressions on the pictures. Easy enough speech for very young readers.
Illustration Notes: Shows two very different boys, one “cool” and friendly, the other “nerdy” and
insecure. Cool kid is black, nerd is white. Uses size and color of font more visual information in
addition to pictures. One character appears on each page, the two opposite each other, with just that
character’s words above his head. No background, just a pink wash with a white spotlight circling each
character. Characters finally enter the same page at the end, when they acknowledge friendship and
jump for joy together.
Applications: Icebreaker activities to make friends with new people.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: friendliness, acceptance
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Page 83
Review #155
Citation:
Osborne, Mary Pope. New York’s Bravest. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 2002. Ill. by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A larger-than-life legendary firefighter runs time and again through 19th century New York
City saving lives and extinguishing fires. After a particularly devastating fire, Mose is not seen
afterward. Fearing the worst but not able to admit it, people start circulating rumors that he is in many
different places, doing different things. An old man points out that Mose was the spirit of the NYC
firefighters and is still among them in everything they do.
Story Notes: Author’s historical note on frontispiece. Dedicated in memory of firefighters who die in
9-11-01 terrorist attacks. Tall tale, based on an urban legend of the 19th century who was larger than
life and unrealistically heroic and able, though he symbolizes the truly heroic things that emergency
workers really do. Takes a more serious tone when the other firefighters realize Mose has not come out
of the hotel fire from which he saved so many. Old-timer’s words open speculation as to whether Mose
was really an actual person or just an idea. Fairly easy text but more complicated theme, appropriate for
many different levels.
Illustration Notes: Oil paintings, scenes of New York before skyscrapers are very interesting, with
low, quaint storefronts and mule-drawn carts. Perspectives from odd angles or from underneath,
viewpoints that don’t quite look like reality, to go with tall-tale exaggeration of the story and character.
Applications: Visit fire station, 119th century history, local history of fires (like in downtown
Knoxville), learn about the events of September 11, 2001.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: New York, firefighters, tall tales, heroes, heroism, bravery
Review #156
Citation:
Nakatani, Chiyoko. The Zoo in my Garden. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, 1970. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy recounts all the animals that live or visit in or around his house, and exclaims that
together they make a zoo.
Story Notes: Makes a zoo out of the ordinary creatures present in an ordinary backyard, and even
inside. Takes a close look at some very ordinary animals. Very simple text, only a few words on each
page. Not a dramatic or particularly impressive story, but worth noticing the little things in life.
Illustration Notes: Fairly simple paintings, often just animals against a colored background, maybe
with a plant or two.
Applications: Make posters of the “zoos” in students’ yards or around the school. Visit a zoo. Make
up a zoo of imaginary animals.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: zoo, backyard, animals
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Review #157
Citation:
Hoff, Syd. Duncan the Dancing Duck. New York: Clarion Books,
1994. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A duck begins dancing one day. His mother tells him to stop and stay in line, but he dances
all over the farm, where the other animals ignore him. When the farmer and the wife see his dancing,
they take him to town, then to the big city, where his dancing is broadcast all over the world. He has
fan clubs in far away places and is given a Golden Duck award for his amazing skill. But then he gets
tired, and he goes home to be with his mother and have a normal life again.
Story Notes: All the other animals think Duncan is being weird, but the farmer and his wife think
Duncan is great and show off his skill to the world. Shows that it only takes a little belief to turn a nonconformist into a star, puts to shame those who tell their children to just fit in and be normal. But in
the end, Duncan remembers his roots and enjoys conformity, too.
Illustration Notes: Cartoonish drawings show joy of dancing duck and consternation of his mother.
Cute depictions of the eight Duncan gains in his easy climb to fame, with his fan club in Antarctica and
his appearance on the red carpet.
Applications: Brainstorm the places students might go with their own peculiar talents, write stories.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: conformity, non-conformist, celebrity
Review #158
Citation:
Hoban, Tana. Round & Round & Round. New York: Greenwillow
Books, 1983. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Pictures of round objects are assembled, small and large, all different colors, all different
places and people.
Story Notes: Wordless book. No plot or storyline between the pictures, but images are gathered under
a theme of all the different ways to show “round”, showing lots of different takes on the title.
Illustration Notes: Photographs of various scenes from everyday life. Each pretty much fills a full
page, with a white frame around each picture. Photos feature round objects encountered in day-to-day
business, such as a large bubblegum bubble. Often feature complex compositions of circles of various
sizes, like a view of a woodpile showing logs’ cross-sections, or a view of a steering wheel with its
outer and inner circles, buttons, gauges on the dashboard, and so forth.
Applications: Give a piece of paper with a circle on it and ask kids to make it into a picture. Use
different sized circle stencils to make art. Assemble a collage of circles of different shapes from all
around the school or home. Make a scavenger hunt by showing pictures of circles from the school and
having students find those objects.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: circles, shapes
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Review #159
Citation:
Hogrogian, Nonny. One Fine Day. New York: Simon & Schuster
Books for Young Readers, 1971. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A thirsty fox helps himself to an old woman’s milk. The woman is mad and cuts off his
tail, saying she will only give it back if he gives her the milk back. So the fox goes off to ask for milk,
but he can only get the milk if he gets some grass, which he can only get in exchange for some water,
which he can only get by securing a jug, and so on. Finally a kind man gives him what he needs
without asking for something in return, and he can satisfy all requests and get his tail sewn back on.
Story Notes: Not only animals but all of nature, like the field, can talk. I feel kind of sorry for all the
trouble the fox has to go to, and all the run-around he’s put to for the one mistake he made. But the
point is clear that it’s not okay to take what isn’t yours and there can be far-reaching consequences to it.
The point is also clear that one kind action can affect a lot of things, and that fear of embarrassment can
be more motivating than any amount of trouble.
Illustration Notes: Different painting techniques layered together to give texture to illustrations.
Endpapers give setting in the woods. Frontispiece and dedication page introduce and give the
background for the woman and fox characters. All characters are fairly realistically portrayed except
the fox, who has very little detail to his shape; this must surely be on purpose, but I haven’t figure out
why yet.
Applications: Use with other cumulative stories, write cumulative tales/ sequences of events.
Age Range: any
Awards: Caldecott Medal winner
Tags: fox, cumulative story, payment
Review #160
Citation:
Geisert, Arthur. The Giant Ball of String. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2002. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A small mining town is very proud of its amazing huge ball of string. When the string is
washed to another town by a flood, Town 2 knows where it came from but decides to keep it anyway.
The first town finds this out and comes up with a prank to get their string back.
Story Notes: Theme of competition between small, poor mining towns, characteristic of all petty
rivalries. Ends by showing that ill-gotten gains do the getter no good, but it also shows destructive
pranksters getting praised.
Illustration Notes: More of an illustrated story than a true picture book. Pictures rage from full
spreads to several small pictures within a single frame. Very detailed, all from a very zoomed-out
perspective, showing actions on the behalf of whole towns rather than individual citizens.
Applications: Brainstorm uses for a giant ball of string, read with knot scene from Maniac Magee.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: rivalry, string, pranks
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Page 86
Review #161
Citation:
Frame, Jeron Ashford. Yesterday I had the Blues. Berkeley, Ca.:
Tricycle Press, 2003. Ill. by R. Gregory Christie.

Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy explains his moods and those of the other members of his family in terms of colors,
giving brief metaphors to explain what each color means. He starts sad, but ends happy and secure in
his family.
Story Notes: Lots of imagery in the words describing the colors the characters have “got”. Depends on
metaphors to convey meaning; some are more vague than others, but the pictures fill in the meaning
nicely. Concludes with theme that family makes everything, good, bad or indifferent, worthwhile and
happy, or “golden”. Written in short verses.
Illustration Notes: Kind of chunky acrylic and gouache paints, with harsh splotches and lines of color.
Expressionistic style, exaggerates lines in faces to show pain and frustration, joy, etc. Expressions in
pictures are what defines the vague imagery in the text, what tells us whether those colors are good or
bad. Pictures also give additional information like the boy’s reaction to his sister’s “pinks”.
Backgrounds and sometimes foregrounds are done in different shades of the color the boy “has”. Big
shapes and colors but no details in the setting, could take place anywhere.
Applications: Art projects of various sorts showing students’ moods through colors.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: colors, moods, family
Review #162
Citation:
Engel, Diana. Josephina the Great Collector. New York: Morrow
Junior Books, 1988. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Two sisters play together all the time, until one of them takes up a collecting hobby that the
other has no interest in. Rose, the non-collector, feels abandoned because Josephina, left to her own
devices just retreats further and further into her collecting hobby. Frustrated with the clutter in their
shared room, Rose convinces Josephina to leave some her things at their uncle’s house, but she walks
out with more stuff than she leaves. Rose finally gives up and sleeps on the couch. Lonely after Rose
leaves, Josephina starts to think about her actions, and decides to use her collection to make a beautiful
playhouse—outside—that the two of them can share and play in together.
Story Notes: Poor Rose can’t understand why her sister has started to snub her! Having experienced
that from a long-time childhood playmate of my own, I can sympathize. Josephina doesn’t understand
what she’s doing wrong, tough, and is lonely when Rose can’t take it anymore. Sweet reconciliation at
the end.
Illustration Notes: Watercolors, very detailed scenes, especially of collections.
Applications: Show and tell collections.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: sisters, collection, junk
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Page 87
Review #163
Citation:
Bang, Molly. When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry…
New York: The Blue Sky Press, 1999. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: When Sophie’s sister takes her turn playing with the gorilla, Sophie is furious. She starts
off kicking and screaming, then runs away as far as she can go. She cries, starts to calm down, and then
climbs a big tree and is calmed by the water in the bay. She goes home and is no longer angry.
Story Notes: Figurative language, very clear metaphor, unusual in such a simple text. Deals with all
the feelings of an outraged girl (whom we don’t know if she’s justified or not) and then shows how she
deals with that anger. Setting seems like the author couldn’t decide where Sophie lived, so she’s near
both a forest and an ocean. It’s good that Sophie works off her anger without hurting her sister, and
nice that she’s welcomed home as the prodigal, but I’m uncomfortable with the way Sophie is able to
just run off with no consequences.
Illustration Notes: Very bright colors, thick lines, nothing delicate; lots of outlines of characters and
objects, often in contrasting bright colors, make everything seem surreal. Close-up on Sophie’s face
when describing how angry she is, shows her shadow in red smashing things as she wants to. Uses lots
of warm colors for anger, especially red. Becomes more delicate and detailed when she goes outside
and runs, as she starts to be aware of the world outside herself.
Applications: Consider what Sophie did right and wrong, write other ways to handle the situation.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: anger
Review #164
Citation:
Alexander, Lloyd. The King’s Fountain. New York: E.P. Dutton
& Co., Inc., 1971. Ill. by Ezra Jack Keats.

Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: When a king decides to build a fountain that will cut off water to the city below, a poor man
decides someone must stop him. The man tries to get a learned, cunning, or strong and brave man to
commit to going, but none are willing or able. As per his daughter’s suggestion, he finally goes
(trembling) to try it himself. The king realizes the error of his plan and stops the fountain.
Story Notes: The right answer of who should advocate comes from an innocent child. Story explores
personal responsibility and different kinds of bravery, believing in oneself.
Illustration Notes: Oil paintings are exactly detailed enough an no more, with ragged blending of
colors in the harsh environs of the poor’s living quarters. Shapes in the background of the city indicate
the architecture of grand onion-domed towers and low rectangular buildings, putting the setting in the
near east. Often doesn’t show faces, just as the poor are so often faceless.
Applications: Use with other tales of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, take on an
extraordinary project by the students, journal about how to save the world.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: poverty, initiative, responsibility, leadership
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Page 88
Review #165
Citation:
Adler, David A. The Babe & I. San Diego: Harcourt Brace &
Company, 1999. Ill. by Terry Widener.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy during the Depression goes out with his friend and accidentally spots the boy’s
father selling apples on the street, when his family believes he’s holding down an office job. Upset, the
boy joins his friend in selling newspapers to help supplement the family income, but doesn’t tell his dad
he’s bring in extra money, wanting to save face for him. The two boys make pretty good money by
selling near the Yankees stadium and advertising the headlines about Babe Ruth. When the father spots
the boy with his papers, they quietly keep each other’s secrets. One day the boy is given a five-dollarbill by a customer for a two-cent paper and is told to keep the change; the customer is Babe Ruth. The
friends use some of that money to go in and watch the game.
Story Notes: Author’s note that story is fictional but anecdotes about Babe Ruth are historical, from
events in July 1932. Despite sunny pictures, clearly shows the horror of discovering his dad’s
occupation selling apples when his family believes he is holding down a job. Some pretty complicated
thematic material, with the boy trying to reassure his father while saving face and the father getting
pretty upset about it. Eloquent resolution between father and son, revealing their jobs to each other.
Illustration Notes: Acrylic paintings show the Bronx during the Depression, a very poor sector and yet
very clean and sunny, mood of illustrations not reflecting the economic situation of that era. The
pictures are pretty, but don’t really match the subject matter of the text.
Applications: Use with history unit on the Depression, see a baseball game.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Depression, poverty, baseball, Babe Ruth
Review #166
Citation:
Edwards, Michelle. Eve and Smithy. New York: Lothrop, Lee &
Shepard Books, 1994. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A retired woman in Iowa loves taking care of her garden and painting. Her neighbor, a
prize gardener, gives her advice on her vegetables, and she paints him paintings to thank him. He
decides to give her a gift to thank her for all the paintings, and decides to give her his lucky hat.
Story Notes: Has old people as characters, but I think kids will respond to them. More a sketch of the
life and relationship between the two neighbors than a story with any plot.
Illustration Notes: Warm colors, but kind of still and lifeless. Not bad, but not my favorite. Give a
context to the story in Iowa—which is fine if it’s accurate, but I sure hope it’s not propagating any
stereotypes here. Other than context, pictures don’t add a lot to the text.
Applications: Brainstorm ways to show friendship, learn about different parts of the country, plant
garden seeds.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Iowa, garden, friendship
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Review #167
Citation:
Gollub, Matthew. The Jazz Fly. Santa Rosa, Ca.: Tortuga Press,
2000. Ill. by Karen Hanke.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A fly is lost, and he asks for directions, but he speaks Jazz and the animals he encounters
don’t. Finally he makes his way to town and joins his band at the jazz club. They’re doing well, but
the Queen Bee is not satisfied. The fly responds by making up a new sound that incorporates the
speech he heard from the animals on his way there, and his band and the club become famous.
Story Notes: Has animals communicating without speaking each other’s language. The fly uses jazz
syllables before we find out that he’s headed to a jazz club. This should almost certainly be used with
the audio cd, which I unfortunately don’t have a way to hear right now, but could be done effectively
by a reader who’s got some clue how to perform it. Should be spoken in rhythm, at the very least.
Credits in the end the animals who couldn’t speak his language but who contributed to an all-new
sound he created from his experience with them.
Illustration Notes: Pictures are almost black and white, with subtle tints or sections of color livening
up the scenes. Neat shapes, different in a way I can’t quite put words to, that make up the animals and
scenes. Fairly simple, uses geometric (but often…twisted, not quite right) shapes. Frontispiece shows
characters that appear in the jazz cub.
Applications: Listen to jazz, learn about its origins and the 1920s culture.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: jazz, bugs, farm animals
Review #168
Citation:
Danneburg, Julie. First Year Letters. Watertown, Mass.:
Charlesbridge, 2003. Ill. by Judy Love.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: see story notes
Story Notes: Written in the form of a lot of letters from students and others to their teacher, apparently
a first-year teacher with a whole lot of exciting ideas about getting kids to learn and a whole lot of
unexpected obstacles to those ideas going off without a hitch. It’s almost more of a story to comfort the
first-year teacher that he or she is not alone than a story for kids, though I think they’ll find it
entertaining.
Illustration Notes: Full of kids doing very realistic (and mischievous) kid things to do, like stuffing
ears with junk food and falling asleep in class. Pictures let the reader in on the hilarious hard time the
teacher is having wrangling lively children, telling the punch line behind the students’ words.
Applications: Write letters to teachers and students over the course of a year
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: letters, teacher, students
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Review #169
Citation:
Choi, Yangsook. Behind the Mask. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2006. Ill. by author.

Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Kimin needs a Halloween costume. His mom suggests he find something in the belongings
of his grandfather, who was a famous dancer in Korea, but Kimin is scared of his grandfather’s things
because the last time he saw the man before he died, he had appeared very scary. When he looks
through the boxes, though, he finds that his grandfather danced in masks and that the time he was
scared of him, the old man had been wearing a mask. He puts on that very mask and goes out. He trips
and damages it a bit, but upon tripping a note falls out from the grandfather, stating his wish that Kimin
should have that mask, for the grandfather’s spirit lives in it.
Story Notes: Points out that Halloween is not just about dressing up and getting candy, but also
traditionally a time to honor the dead; he does both by wearing his grandfather’s mask that frightened
him as a young boy. More complex than any story about a boy dressing up for Halloween or
accidentally damaging a family valuable, because it addresses the issue of having been scared of his
grandfather and now rediscovering and understanding the old man, coming closer to him after death.
Illustration Notes: Show all kinds of varied and silly costumes, underlining in their occasional silliness
the significance of Kimin’s costume. Gouaches, with nice characters but lackluster backgrounds.
Applications: Multicultural unit, make masks, read for Halloween.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Korea, masks, grandfather, Halloween
Review #170
Citation:
Hoberman, May Ann. The Marvelous Mouse Man. San Diego:
Harcourt, Inc., 2002. Ill. by Laura Forman.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A town is heavily infested with mice. A wandering man comes in, saying that he goes
around ridding towns of mice, for a hefty fee. They pay him and he does so, waving a fan to create a
smell that the mice cannot resist, though the people hate it. The mice follow them man away—but then
the pets follow the mice, and the children follow the pets. The people pay the man again to bring their
kids back, but they get the whole kit and caboodle, and this time they’re stuck with the smell, too.
Finally, a girl as an idea that they should build a home for the man, which he will pay them for, and he
will live in it, with the mice and the smell shut away from the others.
Story Notes: Written in verse, rhymes AAABCCCB. A Pied Piper tale, though the mouse man creates
an enticing smell and waves it around rather than playing music. He allows the children to come
back—with the mice, of course, allowing him to ask for more money.
Illustration Notes: Delicate watercolors of scenes from a Victorian town.
Applications: Compare to Pied Piper stories, practice reading comprehension.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: Pied Piper, mice, smell
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Review #171
Citation:
O’Brien, Thomas M. To Know a Tree. New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Inc., 1963. Ill. by author.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Goes over basic information about trees, such as what the bark is for, how the roots anchor
the tree in the ground, how trees’ nourishment is made, etc.
Story Notes: Lots of information stated very simply. May be too old for facts like the oldest known
tree, but most of the information is probably still good; tree science doesn’t move too awfully fast.
Illustration Notes: Lots of nice texture to tree bark, showing how rough and thick it is, and also
showing leaf details. I like the view of the tree roots, showing from ground level down. Also nice is
the picture showing both whole tree (leafless) and the root system; the fact that the branches are bare
emphasizes the fact tat the roots look almost just like the branches, and are in fact nearly as extensive
underground as the branches are above ground.
Applications: Use with ecology unit, brainstorm all the things we need wood for, learn about
environmental issues and “tree saving”, lead into a paper recycling drive, visit an arboretum and see
different species of trees.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: trees
Review #172
Citation:
Provenson, Alice. Shaker Lane. New York: Viking Kestrel, 1987.
Ill. by Matin Provenson?
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Two old ladies who’ve inherited a large mansion and a great deal of land have no means of
income, so they gradually sell off bits and pieces of their land for cheap. Poor people buy the lots and
set up a small community, ridiculed by wealthier outsiders and referred to as Shaker Lane. One day,
the local government builds a reservoir and floods that land, so everyone must move away. The
mansion remains on its higher ground, but the rest of the community disappears beneath the waters, and
new houses are built; nothing is ever the same.
Story Notes: I’m not sure where this is supposed to be set, but the threat of moving the people out so
their town can be flooded for a reservoir is reminiscent of Butler, TN. Kind of an odd ending, doesn’t
seem like much of a plot happened and yet I don’t dislike the book; it just seems like a snapshot out of
life in the hills. Seems a bit anti-progress, in a quiet way.
Illustration Notes: First page of text has no picture, just an illuminated letter with a kind of lonelylooking theme, perhaps to show that the pictures of the farm are a memory from the past. Jarring
juxtaposition of little shacks with the sisters’ mansion. Still more jarring change, when the newer
houses go up after the flood.
Applications: Learn about Butler, talk about how towns grow and change.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: poverty, small town
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Review #173
Citation:
Avi. Silent Movie. New York: Atheneum Books for Young
readers, 2003. Ill. by C.B. Mordan.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A family immigrates to America, first the father and then the mother and son. They are not
able to find each other when the latter two arrive, so the mother and son take what work they can find
to get by in the city. The son is offered a job as a child actor in a silent movie, and his performance is
played at many nickelodeons. Meanwhile, the father is still looking, and when he happens into a
nickelodeon and sees his boy on the screen, he hastens to the studio to inquire about where the boy is.
He finds them there, and the family is reunited.
Story Notes: Notes from author and illustrator in the back. Has a poignant theme that doesn’t get quite
enough attention, which is the anguish of the father at being separated from his family; that probably
happened not infrequently with immigrant families. I had a lot of “almosts” with this book: almost a
strong theme, almost dramatic in wordless pictures,
Illustration Notes: Series of frames in black and white, lined and cross-hatched as if printed from a
wood black. I feel like it’s in between two good things, though, with mostly pictures and a few words
on each page; I think it’d be more effective either with a more fleshed-out text or no words at all, which
would be dramatic.
Applications: Learn about silent movies, stage one; learn about immigrant life
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: immigrants, silent movie, separated family
Review #174
Citation:
Allard, Harry. The Stupids Die. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1981. Ill. by James Marshall.
@
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: The Stupid family goes about a normal day of meals, doing chores, and so forth. They are
watching tv after dinner when their power goes off; they believe they are dead. Their dog and cat fix
the fuse box and the lights come back on; they believe they are in heaven, until Grandfather Stupid
stops by and tells them they’re actually in Cleveland. They give up and go to bed.
Story Notes: Very easy text, humor will appeal to kids’ sense of slapstick humor. Probably a good one
not just for reluctant readers but also for those who are perhaps behind in reading level, because it’s
easy words but a slightly older interest level.
Illustration Notes: Cartoonish characters, simple scenes in few but bright colors, doing stupid things
even more than those in the text.
Applications: point out what’s wrong in pictures, write goofy stories for fun
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: nonsense, mistakes
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Review #175
Citation:
Ehrlich, Bettina. Pantaloni. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.
Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy gets a puppy in partial payments for goods at his father’s business. The boy’s friend,
Roderigo, is ticked at the boy and decides to kidnap his dog to scare him. The boy is distraught, and
when Roderigo tries to give his dog back, he finds that the dog has escaped and run all over the
countryside. Rumors of the dog’s damage have spread and exaggerated him into a monstrous wolf, so
the boy panics. He finds him in the arms of a girl who has claimed the puppy, and is only able to get
him back by promising her that his father (to the father’s irritation) will buy her a new doll in return.
Story Notes: Great Italian names for all the characters. The old man is pretty slick, offering the dog
while knowing it can’t possibly be refused by the boy, and putting on the pants to sneak away before
the boy’s father has confirmed the exchange. Fairly horrifying how events escalate after Roderigo’s
tasteless prank, enough to warn anybody off from trying to fool a friend.
Illustration Notes: Alternates between black and white ink drawings and watercolor tinted inks in
color pages. Has small snippets of text stuck here and there on the pages in any place that doesn’t
interrupt the pictures too badly; this makes it a little hard for the reader to make sure they’ve gotten
everything on the page if they’re reading quickly, lightly confusing to the reader. Grief of boy on
missing his dog is palpable on his face.
Applications: Use with other Italy or prankster tales.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: dogs, prank, Italy
Review #176
Citation:
Graham, John. A Crowd of Cows. New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, Inc., 1968. Ill. by Feodor Rojankovsky.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: The names are given for crowds of different kinds of animals; a crowd of cows is a herd, a
crowd of hens is a brood, and so forth. After naming the crowd of each animal, it gives a little
information about what that crowd does, such as the sounds of the animals and what they’re used for.
Story Notes: Haha, I never knew what a passel actually was! The language regarding the children is
kind of outdated, but the vocabulary is good.
Illustration Notes: Colored pencil drawings, shows a whole crowd of each animal from a zoomed-out
perspective, and then zooms in on the following page to show just a few of that animal up close while
telling more about the animals in the text. Vicious expression on the lion’s face!
Applications: Learn more names for groups of animals, pick a group and study that animal.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: animals, vocabulary
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Page 94
Review #177
Citation:
Graham, Bob. Max. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2000.
Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Two superheroes have a baby, who begins to walk and talk so early they expect him to fly
any day. When he doesn’t they are worried. Max goes to school and is teased for not being able to fly
and be tough like his parents. When the time is right, though, Max flies when it matters: to save a baby
bird fallen from the nest, also not ready to fly. Max learns to do quiet good deeds and his parents allow
him to progress in his own time.
Story Notes: Misguided parents expect too much from their kid; theme of some people just being late
bloomers in some aspects, even when they’re precocious in other ways; they fly when they’re ready!
Also theme explicitly stated that everyone’s different somehow.
Illustration Notes: Starts to show the characters of Max and his parents on the endpapers, frontispiece,
and title page. Ridiculous house in painfully normal neighborhood gives larger-than-life idea very
quickly and clearly. Pictures vary from full spreads to comic-like strips of small frames, with some in
between. Will get caws and perhaps complaints for showing Max’s bare bottom.
Applications: Talk about developing in one’s own time, not rushing into things too early. Use with
other superhero stories.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: superheroes, flying, precocious, developmental rates
Review #178
Citation:
Ueno, Noriko. Elephant Buttons. New York: Harper & Row,
1973. Ill. by author.

Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: An elephant has a row of buttons across his belly. When the row is unbuttoned, a donkey
climbs out of the elephant skin. The donkey also has a row of buttons on his belly. Animals continue
to climb out of the unbuttoned “suits” of the previous animals, decreasing in size like a matryoshka
doll, until finally the mouse unbuttons to come full circle, revealing an elephant again.
Story Notes: Silly premise, though if one wanted to be very philosophical one could explore the idea of
a person being like a tiger on the inside or having an inner self that is betrayed by their appearance. I
don’t think that’s the aim here; I think it’s simple humor.
Illustration Notes: Wordless book, all made of a series of pictures of animals. All animals look
pleased with themselves as they climb out of the previous animal’s skin, but on the next page they
appear to have a tummy ache or otherwise be uncomfortable, and then another animal climbs out.
Applications: Use with other matryoshka doll books. Talk about why it’s extra silly that the elephant
comes from the mouse (relative size).
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: animals, matryoshka
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Review #179
Citation:
Thomas, Patricia. “Stand Back,” Said the Elephant, “I’m Going to
Sneeze!” New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books, 1990. Ill. by
Wallace Tripp.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
@
Summary: An elephant declares his impending need to sneeze, and all the animals around him are
terrified because of the terrible things usually caused by his enormous sneezes. A mouse scares him so
that the elephant quite forgets to sneeze; this seems like an incredibly clever rescue by the mouse.
However, upon realizing the humor of the situation, the elephant begins to laugh so loudly and roll on
the ground so enthusiastically that all of the things that would have happened with the sneeze happen
anyway with the shaking of the ground.
Story Notes: Animals speak in elaborate poems, with far more words than could possibly be spoken
before the occurrence of a sneeze. They plead with the Elephant not to sneeze, as if he has a choice.
Apparently this is a catastrophic event! Great rhyming, with all kinds of exaggerated consequences that
kids will find very funny.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and ink. Animals appear to be sincerely terrified through their posture
and facial expressions, with wide-eyed expressions. The crocodile is portrayed as humble and
submissive, which is unusual and pretty winsome. Elephant’s fear of the mouse is quite funny, because
it’s well apparent from the pictures how big he is and how tiny the mouse is.
Applications: Use to show rhyme and the dangers of lacking moderation.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: elephants, animals, sneeze
Review #180
Citation:
Yarbrough, Camille. Cornrows. New York: Coward-McCann,
Inc., 1979. Ill. by Carole Byard.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Two children have their hair braided in cornrows while their mother and grandmother tell
them stories of where the cornrow tradition came from.
Story Notes: Includes a good bit of song; needs careful consideration on how to treat that aloud before
reading with a class; could be sung to a made-up song, or maybe just spoken. There seems to be a
strong family connection to the deep South and its heritage, though I don’t know where they are now or
why they moved. It’s real important to pass down stories in this family as part of their closeness.
Gives a cryptic, dark image of slavery, giving older readers something to chew on.
Illustration Notes: Charcoal, shows a warm, caring, connected family. Abruptly switches to scenes in
the character’s minds of lands far removed in time and space, where the cornrows came from in the
cultures of Africa. Pictures of civil rights leaders.
Applications: Black history month
Age Range: any/ older elementary
Awards:
Tags: cornrows, hair, stories, family, tradition, heritage
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Review #181
Citation:
Harshman, Marc. A Little Excitement. New York: Dutton, 1989.
Ill. by Ted Rand.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Way out in the country on his farm a boy tires of the endless winter snows and wishes for
some excitement; clearly, playing with his mom and sisters doesn’t count, and his dad is too tired after
winter chores to do anything. He visits his grandmother and listens to her stories of childhood, and she
advises him to be careful when wishing for excitement or he might get it. A few days later, exactly that
happens: his father’s fatigue catches up with him while setting the fire for the night, and suddenly the
house is in danger of going up in a blaze. Everyone works quietly and bravely together to contain the
flames until the volunteer fire brigade can get there, and they keep the damage at bay.
Story Notes: Written from the point of view of the boy, and realistic in his perspective with comments
about how rotten his sisters are. It’s nice how he admits that the sisters aren’t so bad in the end; the
disaster brings out the best and the most important things in everyone.
Illustration Notes: Lovely watercolor and pencil, realistic style. Pictures give a great deal more
information about the boy’s life and where he lives, but don’t add drive to the plot, more like filling in
background and setting.
Applications: Use with fire safety, other stories on rural life and disasters, wishes gone awry, etc.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: fire, boredom, farm, excitement
Review #182
Citation:
Browne, Anthony. Gorilla. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Hannah loves gorillas, but her workaholic father is always too busy to tae her to the zoo to
see one in person. She asks for a gorilla for her birthday, and is disappointed when she receives only a
small toy. But the toy grows in the night into a real gorilla, and he takes her on a wonderful birthday
adventure, with a trip to the zoo, a movie, and dinner, before she goes back to sleep. When she wakes
up everything is back to normal, but her father offers to take her to the zoo, for real this time.
Story Notes: Poor Hannah is set up in a really sad situation about the negligence of her workaholic
father. This will ring familiar to many students. He becomes human again at the end, though.
Illustration Notes: Wow, the pallor of the dad in the kitchen on the second page is NOT subtle in
portraying how the dad treats his daughter. The loneliness on the girl sitting in the corner of her room
is also palpable. I like all the gorillas in the décor of the house.
Applications: Visit gorillas at the zoo, journal about what you’d do in a night with a gorilla, write a
story about a favorite toy coming to life.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: gorillas, toys, father
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Review #183
Citation:
Blake, Quentin. Snuff. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company,
1973. Ill. by author.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Snuff is the page for a knight. He has all kinds of chores to do for the knight, and the
knight gives him lessons on how to be a knight when he grows up, but his enthusiasm and his
adolescent awkwardness get in his way so that he ends up not being good at much of anything. After
he’s failed to mend a pair of boots, the two go to the boot maker for a new pair, just in time to see boot
thieves running away from the shop, threatening to come back with a cart to steal all the boots. The
knight, boot maker, and Snuff are outnumbered by the thieves and can’t put up a proper fight, but Snuff
saves the day by carrying as many pairs of boots out as they can hold. When the thieves enter the ship
to steal, they all put boots on their hands and feet and walk past the windows, so that it looks to the
thieves, who can only see the boots, as though they are the ones who are greatly outnumbered. The
thieves panic and leave, and the boot maker rewards them with free boots and a horse for Snuff.
Story Notes: Really needs to rely more on pictures and leave some things unsaid; it’s like the author is
just inexperienced and clumsy about trusting the reader to figure out what has happened with the boots.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and pen, very sort of grotesque, exaggeratedly skinny or flawed
characters and scenes, appropriate for this but not every story.
Applications: Use with other stories of creative solutions to problems, use with math or science
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: knight, page, problem solving
Review #184
Citation:
Peppe, Rodney. The Mice Who Lived in a Shoe. New York:
Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1981. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A large family of mice lives in a shoe. Weather is very uncomfortable in the drafty shoe,
and the lack of a roof becomes a real problem when a cat reaches into the shoe and spreads his claws
out. They decide to build a house in the shoe. They all work together on the construction, each
volunteering for an appropriate job (the smallest brother makes tea), and they end up with a lovely
house. Friends give them furniture to fill it, and they are kept safe from weather and cats.
Story Notes: Cute, not much to chew on in terms of plot. Not aimless like some, but no conflict other
than they live in a crummy place so they make it better.
Illustration Notes: Fairly simple pictures are effective at giving each mouse a separate personality.
With all the text bubbles for the mice’s speech, the pictures are really too busy for a good read-aloud; it
won’t be fluid if you get everything. A kid with patience could have fun poring over this, though.
Applications: pleasure reading, read with the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: mice, shoe, house
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Review #185
Citation:
Pedersen, Judy. When Night Time Comes Near. New York:
Viking, 2000. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Evening and then night set upon a neighborhood. Everyone puts up the things they’ve used
outside during the day, the animals and plants power down, and a boy goes in for the night and gets
ready for bed as the sun goes down.
Story Notes: Feels a bit like an imitation of really successful books that say goodnight to the world as
it gets ready for night. No strong plot, doesn’t necessarily need one, but it doesn’t really offer anything
new to the genre since Goodnight Moon.
Illustration Notes: Front endpapers have the beginning of a sunset, and back endpapers show a full
night scene. Frontispiece, title page, dedication are all used for setting and characters. Very active,
friendly neighborhood depicted. Doesn’t make enough use of value to show that the sun is going
down; colors are too bright after the sun has slid down, pictures don’t match text in that way.
Applications: Write and illustrate stories of how students get ready for night in their own families.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: night, evening, sunset, goodnight
Review #186
Citation:
Lasker, Joe. Lentil Soup. Chicago: Albert Whitman & Company,
1977. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Matt tells his wife that she’s a wonderful cook and that his favorite food is his mother’s
lentil soup. She tries to make him some lentil soup to please him, but because her soup is not just like
his mother’s Matt won’t eat it. She tries every day for a week making it in different ways, and on the
seventh day she finally throws a fit and stalks off—leaving that pot of soup on the fire, overcooking.
Matt finally says that she’s made the perfect soup, and she angrily dumps it over his head, but then they
both realize how silly that was and they make up.
Story Notes: Opens with an author’s note that the book is about relationships, between people,
numbers, their order, and the days of the week, but except for the relationship between Matt and Meg
(which is a strong and good theme), I don’t see this in the book.
Illustration Notes: Alternate between colored pictures and just pen and ink drawings. Poor Meg goes
to such great lengths to make the soup work! And it would be tempting to put down Matt for being too
particular, but you can see from the pictures that he takes good care of his wife, helping her with chores
and so forth. Pictures show a very humorous reaction by Meg to Matt’s finally liking the soup, and
ends with a concluding series of small pictures that gives a happy ending which needs no words.
Applications: make and eat lentil soup
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: soup, relationships
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Page 99
Review #187
Citation:
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. Keeping a Christmas Secret. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989. Ill. by Lena Shiffman.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Michael, who’s four, helps his family pick out a Christmas present for their dad. His
siblings keep reminding him not to tell, and he is annoyed because he’s determined that he can keep a
secret. He lets it slip, which seems to him like he was tricked into it, and everyone is a little mad at
him. He decides to make his own secret present, and he keeps the secret this time. His family takes the
sled out in the snow, and when they realize they have no rope to pull it back with, all are upset until
they realize that Michael’s secret—an old jump rope without handles—makes the perfect solution.
Story Notes: Aww, I feel sorry for Michael when his brother and sister keep getting on him before he’s
even done anything wrong, and then when they call him a jerk after he lets it slip; he’s only four! This
boo is the opposite of many books I’m keeping an eye out for, in that it’s got a higher reading level
than its interest level. This would make a good challenging book for a young, precocious reader, or one
to read aloud to younger ones.
Illustration Notes: watercolor and pencil, fine pictures but nothing that jumps out at me as
extraordinary. The text does most of the storytelling in this case.
Applications: read at Christmas time, remind kids about being kind to younger siblings.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: Christmas, present, secret, siblings
Review #188
Citation:
Ets, Marie Hall. In the Forest. New York: The Viking Press, 1944.
Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A boy goes for a walk in the forest, wearing is new paper hat and carrying his horn. He
meets up with many different animals, who decide to join him on his walk, forming a grand and elegant
parade. After they walk, they eat and play games. All the animals hide for hide and seek, but when the
boy looks, the animals have disappeared and he sees only his dad, who beckons him home.
Story Notes: Not only is the lion not a threat, but he combs his hair before accompanying the boy;
what a surprise! I love that the stork doesn’t talk or put on shoes, but he’s the only one that might not
be real. Cute twist, the way the animals hide right before they disappear into the imagination, instead
of just plain disappearing.
Illustration Notes: Black and white drawings, texture looks like crayon. Very civilized-looking
animals walking in a neat row behind the boy, very tidy and orderly.
Applications: Write a story of who you might meet on a walk in the woods
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: woods, animals, imagination
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Review #189
Citation:
De Paola, Tomie. Mice Squeak, We Speak. New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1997. Ill. by author. Text from poem by Arnold
Shapiro.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Animals make all different kinds of sounds, but kids talk, speak and say.
Story Notes: Text is taken from a pre-existing poem. Just two words on each page, i.e. two words per
picture. Easy to read, but richer vocabulary for very beginning readers in that the sounds given are not
all the usual basic variety.
Illustration Notes: Shows animals and the sounds they are making. Each page has a different animal,
and it is framed within its page with a border around it, different color background/ frame on each page.
Series of animals is interrupted occasionally for the kids to point out that they speak or say. Pictures
show the kids at the beginning pointing at the animals, giving the impression that they are examining
the different animals rather than just appearing next to them.
Applications: Talk about all the different sounds animals make, brainstorm all the different sounds we
can think of, think of all the different words for what people say, talk about other ways to communicate
like sign language, body language, etc.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: animals, talking, sounds
Review #190
Citation:
Freeman, Lydia and Don. Pet of the Met. New York: The Viking
Press, 1953. Ill. by authors.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A mouse lives in the attic of an opera house and earns a living by helping the stageprompter turn pages. One day, the mouse is so excited about the opera that he jumps out of the
prompter’s box and onto the stage. This makes him visible to the cat who also lives there, who runs
onto the stage and catches him. Just in time, the cat also is overcome by the music, and the two dance
to it. The cat and the mouse become good friends after that.
Story Notes: Gives cat as a stock evil character. Tales about imitating the operas are better understood
if you know the operas; would be nice to find some easy summaries of The Magic Flute to share with
them, for instance. Very long, but not too awfully wandering, kids could probably pay attention as long
as it is not labored in the reading.
Illustration Notes: Bright colors, pen and in and crayon, it looks lie from the texture. Pictures add
especially to the scenes of the opera taking place on the stage, because most kids will not know what an
opera looks like. The cat is certainly portrayed as evil-looking, kind of reminiscent of the Grinch in the
scene where his face changes as the music takes him over.
Applications: See an opera, learn about The Magic Flute.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: music, opera, cat, mouse
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Review #191
Citation:
Anholt, Laurence. Picasso and the Girl with a Ponytail.
Hauppage, N.Y.: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 1998. Ill. by
author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A girl is sitting outside with her friends when Picasso turns up out of nowhere and
announces that he wants to paint and draw her. She sits as his muse for a summer, and the two share
stories and secrets. Sylvette has secretly dreamed of becoming an artist for some time now, and Picasso
encourages her to let go and be more daring and honest in her work.
Story Notes: Based on a true story, one which is the equivalent of many a girl’s dream: to be
discovered and taken in by someone famous. Includes an author’s note and a photograph on the back
endpapers to tell about the real Sylvette and show what she looked like.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and ink. Fairly simple style, though there is a great deal of detail in the
backgrounds. Avoids the temptation of illustrating in an abstract style because it’s about Picasso; that
would get in the way of the story, which is the important thing here. Shows fanciful backgrounds to
illustrate the stories Picasso is telling. Has a few blocks of text at an angle, framed as if they are
pictures in Picasso’s home and using perspective like they’re pointing to a vanishing point, with the
lines of the text collapsing accordingly.
Applications: Learn about Picasso and other master artists.
Age Range: older elementary
Awards:
Tags: art, artist, Picasso
Review #192
Citation:
Cole, Stephen. Shrek, The Essential Guide. New York: DK
Publishing, Inc., 2004. Ill. by various contributors.
@
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: DK book based on the Shrek movies.
Story Notes: Written as an information book, like the plot of the movies is a thing one needs to learn
about. Will appeal to fans. Text divided into lots of short snippets of information, filling the page but
not in long, sustained thoughts. Includes table of contents and profiles of the major characters in the
first two Shrek movies.
Illustration Notes: Made to look like diagrams, showing Shrek, his home, his clothes, etc., and
labeling the various important elements thereof, or telling tidbits of information about things portrayed.
Pictures are scenes from the movies, like snapshots of the computer animation done in them. Lots of
colors, lots of things to look at. One spread made to look like a newspaper article from the town’s
paper.
Applications: pleasure reading, no place in the classroom
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: Shrek, movie
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Review #193
Citation:
Yolen, Jane. The Seeing Stick. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell
Company, 1977. Ill. by Remy Charlip and Demetra Maraslis.
#
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: The emperor’s daughter is blind. He offers a fortune of jewels to anyone who can help her,
but no one and no amount of potions or treatments or prayers can heal her. An old man comes with a
“seeing stick”, a stick he has carved with the images of his journey there, and he teaches her to see with
her fingers by feeling faces and the carvings. She believes she is cured, and it turns out the old man is
blind too.
Story Notes: Written in verse. Theme of being able to see what you believe you can see. Last line
gives new twist to the whole tale, because everyone around him believed he could see.
Illustration Notes: Beautiful pencil drawings, all shading done in gray pencil lead until the girl gets the
seeing stick, at which point the pictures are tinted by watercolor and colored pencil. Scenes are set in
the beginning on what looks like some hills on top of an odd narrow geological formation that rises
high above the rest of the land; when a large hand is shown wrapping around this landscape, it becomes
apparent that the beginning of the story has been set on the seeing stick itself. Rich detail in the stick,
but only stern, stock faces in the people, perhaps to give a view as the girl can see with the stick? Last
line appears with only a gray blur, to emphasize that a blind man could teach others to see.
Applications: Carve a story in soap
Age Range: elementary
Awards:
Tags: China, blindness, walking stick, carving
Review #194
Citation:
Wiesner, David. Tuesday. New York: Clarion Books, 1991. Ill. by
author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Early Tuesday evening, to their surprise but considerable pleasure, frogs begin to float on
their lily pads out of the water and through the air. They have an adventurous night on the town,
zooming into birds, chasing dogs, floating into people’s houses via window and chimney, crashing
through laundry lines, and generally wreaking havoc. When morning breaks they return to their pond,
which seems very boring now, and humans are very confused when examining the evidence left behind.
The following Tuesday, pigs begin the same type of journey.
Story Notes: The only words give times of night/morning, really to show that time is passing more
than anything else. They are easy enough for very young readers, and really could just be skipped by
the smallest ones. Story has an interest level that will suit all ages, though, despite the level of its text.
Illustration Notes: Premise to story starts before frontispiece. Nearly wordless book, with the action
told in varying perspectives to show height and speed of floating frogs and others’ reactions to them.
Applications: Write about frogs’ adventures from their point of view
Age Range: any
Awards: Caldecott Medal winner
Tags: frogs
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Page103
Review #195
Citation:
Tobias, Tobi. The Quitting Deal. New York: The Viking Press,
1975. Ill. by Trina Schart Hyman.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A mother and daughter make a deal that if the daughter will quit sucking her thumb, so that
her new teeth will grow in straight, the mother will quit smoking, because it’s terrible for her. They
know they have to stick together to make it work, and they try all kinds of strategies to help each other
quit. None of them work, and they finally decide to work on it gradually, which goes better when they
work together.
Story Notes: Goes through a number of attempted cures for their respective habits, showing how hard
it can be to kick a bad habit even with a plan that seems effective. Heavily emphasizes the fact that
mother and daughter are working together on their quitting deal, which is nice, even though dated
elements of this book probably make it unusable in a classroom (cigarettes, décor, fashion, so forth).
Really a pretty good and sensitive story about the difficult of giving up bad habits.
Illustration Notes: Mostly pencil drawings, some color added. Clothes of characters date the story
firmly in the seventies. Shows many scenes of mother and daughter doing various things closely
together.. Shows mother nursing a baby, may get criticized for that and for depictions of mother
smoking, despite the fact that she’s quitting.
Applications: Resolve to change a habit
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: smoking, thumb sucking, quitting, habits
Review #196
Citation:
Kimmel, Eric A. Anansi and the Magic Stick. New York: Holiday
House, 2001. Ill. by Janet Stevens.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: Anansi, looking for a way to neaten his home without any effort, steals Hyena’s magic
stick. Unfortunately the stick is very literal, and when Anansi goes to sleep after telling the stick to
keep watering, the stick waters until a river sweeps everyone downstream. Hyena makes the stick stop,
and the animals enjoy the resulting lake while Anansi plans more tricks.
Story Notes: Repeated words like “working” and “walking”, given in sets of three, have text in bold,
on three different lines, increasing in size as they move down the page. I read this with a lilt, because
that’s how I have it in my head from hearing Anansi stories told, but it really looks dramatic like that
last “walking” is the walking of doom
Illustration Notes: Anansi’s yard, to show his laziness, is strewn with trash, covering the title page.
Pictures show the havoc of the stick and the involvement of the neighboring animals better than the text
expresses. Two humans appear in the mighty river picture, probably the author and illustrator.
Applications: Think about the stick, act out over-literal commands gone wrong.
Age Range: any
Awards:
Tags: Anansi, animals, laziness, literal
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Review #197
Citation:
Budney, Blossom. A Cat Can’t Count. New York: Lothrop, Lee &
Shepard Co., Inc., 1962. Ill. by William Wondriska.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: This is a counting book that starts by pointing out that a cat can’t count but knows how
many kittens it has, a bear can’t tell time but knows when to wake up, etc. Then it gives lots of
different things to count, like people, things to be fixed, bright shiny things, and others. Goes over
some things that need to be measured.
Story Notes: I don’t understand the point of the comment on seventy-‘leven and ‘leventy-seven. Good
examples of tools for measuring, though.
Illustration Notes: Sort of surrealistic illustrations, out of context and out of proportion. Gives clearly
separate items to count, but not my favorite visuals, not much color. Would be a much richer
experience if used with real objects to count and measure.
Applications: Use with a math unit. Count, measure objects around school and classroom/ library,
count and measure things at home. Learn about other things animals do without the ability to count.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: counting
Review #198
Citation:
Carle, Eric. The Grouchy Ladybug. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1977. Ill. by author.
&
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A friendly ladybug sees some aphids on a leaf and decides to eat them; as she approaches, a
grouchy ladybug decides the same thing. The friendly one offers to share, but the grouchy one wants
them all for herself. When the friendly one offers to fight over them, the grouchy one suddenly gets
unsure of herself and says the friendly one is too small for her to fight. She goes off to find someone
bigger to pick on. She offers to fight a number of bigger creatures, from a yellow jacket to a whale, and
announces that each is too small to fight. The whale’s tail finally flips her back to land, where the wet
and hungry grouchy ladybug finally becomes willing to share with the friendly one.
Story Notes: I like that the grouchy ladybug didn’t get to eat any of the aphids after being rude to the
friendly ladybug about them. Pretty classic case of a bully giving ridiculous statements of bravery in an
effort to cover its own insecurity; she would’ve had breakfast if she would have just shared.
Illustration Notes: Characteristic Eric Carle illustrations in style and medium. Great face-off between
friendly and grouchy ladybug, with facial expressions to show character. Increasingly big flip-pages of
all the animals the grouchy ladybug offers to fight give a very clear perspective on how much bigger
(and increasingly so) they are than her. I like the unstated lunch of the boa she offers to fight: a squirrel
on the branch beside him.
Applications: Talk about bullies and sharing, learn about ladybugs and aphids in science
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: ladybugs, bullies, insecurity, size, sharing
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Review #199
Citation:
Johnson, Crockett. Harold’s Fairy Tale. HarperCollins Publishers,
1956. Ill. by author.
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A small boy gets up in the night and walks through a garden where nothing is blooming.
He decides to ask the king what the matter is; this requires drawing the castle, king, and problem with
his purple crayon. When he discovers that it is an invisible giant witch, he makes mosquitoes chase her
away, and then gets rid of them as well, ultimately allowing the garden to fill with flowers.
Story Notes: Plot progresses as a child’s playtime does, which is exactly in the order it occurs to his
imagination. Harold seems to have some pretty advanced imagining for a toddler, as he appears to be.
Haha, poor guy gets carried away drawing and closes himself out of things, has to draw solutions too.
Illustration Notes: Pictures and setting are created by the main character, Harold, who draws them as
he goes along with his purple crayon. Background is just blank white space (Harold hasn’t drawn it).
No color except for the purple crayon marks; Harold is black and white. Nice how pictures build from
each other.
Applications: Draw a story with just one color, use with other fairy tales.
Age Range: younger elementary
Awards:
Tags: imagination
Review #200
Citation:
Reynolds, Peter H. The Dot. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press,
2003. Ill. by author.
$
Source: ETSU Sherrod Juvenile Collection
Summary: A girl who believes she can’t draw is told by her art teacher to just make a mark and see
where it takes her. She jabs a dot in the middle of some paper, and the teacher tells her to sign it. To
her surprise, her dot is framed on a wall the next day. She decides she can do a better dot than that, and
experiments with all kinds of dots, getting ever more creative. When approached by an admirer at an
art show of her dots, she encourages a young boy in the same way.
Story Notes: Great story about using creativity even when you think you can’t do something, solving a
problem in a novel way. Also great in the way the girl uses her success to encourage another kid who’s
struggling with the same problem.
Illustration Notes: Watercolor and ink, small round (dot-shaped) unframed pictures with text on each
page.
Applications: make pictures from a dot, make different dots.
Age Range: any
Awards: Christopher Award winner
Tags: art, creativity
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