Good Morning, Snowplow!

Good Morning, Snowplow!Good Morning, Snowplow! by Deborah Bruss, Lou Fancher, Steve Johnson
Published by Arthur A. Levine Books on October 30th 2018
ISBN: 1338089498
Pages: 32
Goodreads
three-stars

In Good Morning, Snowplow!  by Deborah Bruss, rhyming text tells the quiet story of a snowplow driver working with his dog in the cab throughout the night to clear the roads. Paint, pencil, pen, and collage by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson bring beauty and texted illustrations to this mood piece.  While there are many picture book stories about snowplows, this one features an Asian American plow driver and a female driver in another truck. This will be appreciated by adults who hope to settle children down or who are looking for a quiet book that matches the peaceful feel of a snowy day. For action and a storyline, readers will want to share Katy and the Big Snow by Burton.

Recommended as a quiet mood piece by Margy Soule, Coffin Elementary School, Brunswick, Maine 

three-stars

Cool Indy Cars

Cool Indy CarsCool Indy Cars by Jon M. Fishman
Published by Lerner Publications (Tm) on August 1st 2018
ISBN: 1541519922
Pages: 24
Goodreads
three-stars

Cool Indy Cars by Jon M. Fishman is just what many k-2 students want, clear colorful photographs and just a little text. A table of contents at the beginning and diagram of an Indy Car, facts,  and  index at the end will be welcomed by educators who are teaching young children how to read informational books. Each page has a photograph , two or three sentences,  and often an inserted caption for the photo to break up the reading. Beginning researchers and young racing car fans will increase their  knowledge about a popular subject with this book.

Recommended by Margy Soule, Coffin Elementary School, Brunswick, Maine 

three-stars

Sincerely, Harriet

Sincerely, HarrietSincerely, Harriet by Sarah Winifred Searle
Published by Graphic Universe (TM) on January 1st 2019
ISBN: 1512440191
Pages: 176
Goodreads
four-stars

It is summer and Harriet is stuck in a hot apartment in Chicago. Her family has just moved there and has not made friends. With a lot of time on her hands, Harriet’s imagination begins to run wild. Is the house haunted? Is the mailman evil? When Harriet starts to visit Pearl, the elderly owner of the building, she begins to find constructive ways to use her imagination. Pearl provides reading material for Harriet and encourages her to create stories in her journal. Searle’s large graphic panels are simple and colored in muted berry colors. This story also addresses “invisible disabilities”, particularly  Multiple Sclerosis and Post-Polio Syndrome. The theme of chronic illness is not addressed until the end of the story and feels overshadowed by Harriet’s feeling of isolation. The author does provide resources for further reading about disabilities at the back of the book, but overall it feels like a missed opportunity to fully explore this issue. Recommended for Grades 5 and up. 

Elizabeth Andersen, Librarian, Westbrook High School

four-stars

Squares, Rectangles, and Other Quadrilaterals

Squares, Rectangles, and Other QuadrilateralsSquares, Rectangles, and Other Quadrilaterals by David A. Adler
Published by Holiday House on December 24th 2018
ISBN: 0823437590
Pages: 32
Goodreads
three-stars

Squares, Rectangles, and Other Quadrilaterals  by David Adler and illustrated by Edward Miller presents geometric information for students in grades first through fourth.  A jaunty cartoon style dog and cat are on each page to encourage young mathematicians to grow their knowledge. Taken in small bits and pieces and not all in one reading, children can learn to use terms such as  polygons, angles, horizontal, vertical, 90 degrees, parallelograms,  rhombus, and trapezoid. This amount of information may be overwhelming to some, but the glossary at the end will help. The information is clearly presented. Will some elementary school age students be turned off by the dog and cat guides? Perhaps, but the friendly characters do offer readers a sense of hope.  If this happy dog and cat can learn math, than I can too.

Recommended by Margy Soule, Coffin Elementary School, Brunswick, Maine

three-stars

Giant Tess

Giant TessGiant Tess by Dan Yaccarino
Published by HarperCollins on April 2nd 2019
ISBN: 0062670271
Pages: 40
Goodreads
four-stars

Giant Tess by Dan Yaccarino is a picture book fantasy that will appeal to both adults who recognize the New York inspired setting and children who will like the young giant and her dragon friend. Most of us feel left out and different at times, and young Tess certainly does. She is a little girl giant in a world of little monsters, cyclops, and gnomes. Her parents are fairies. She finds happiness in the end, not by being like everybody else, but by helping a like-sized, kindred spirit dragon. Together they learn to appreciate their large size when they rescue the mayor during city’s big balloon parade. Yaccarino’s retro style digital illustrations direct the viewer’s eyes to lots of fun fantasy features and emotional depth of characterization.

Recommended for ages 4-7 by Margy Soule, Coffin Elementary School, Brunswick, Maine

four-stars

The Frog Book

The Frog BookThe Frog Book by Steve Jenkins, Robin Page
Published by HMH Books for Young Readers on February 26th 2019
ISBN: 0544387600
Pages: 40
Goodreads
five-stars

The Frog Book by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page will interest both casual browsers and and beginning researchers alike. Children k-3 will find fascinating facts on every page, and like peanuts, readers and listeners will gobble them up. Jenkins’ characteristic cut paper collage illustrate this nonfiction work. Careful thought went into the cover’s bold design, back dust jacket, illustrated front flap, and marbled endpapers. The table at the end directs beginning researchers to the page where a specific frog is found, along with a chart with body length, diet, and range. Each double page spread has a uniting theme in bold face such as “What do frogs eat?” and “It’s all about the eggs.” Highly recommended for Cream of the Crop by Margy Soule, Coffin Elementary School, Brunswick, Maine

five-stars

Mighty Truck: Surf’s Up!

Mighty Truck: Surf’s Up!Mighty Truck: Surf’s Up! by Chris Barton
Published by HarperCollins on April 30th 2019
ISBN: 0062344765
Pages: 32
Goodreads
four-stars

Surf’s Up! is an I Can Read Book! from the Mighty Truck series. Clarence is a humble pickup truck but when he gets wet, he turns into Mighty Truck, a superhero-like monster truck. In this early reader, Clarence agrees to accompany Mr. Dent and his cat Throttle to the beach for some surfing. Mr. Dent believes that his cat loves to surf. He does not. When Throttle gets into trouble in the waves, Clarence heads out to sea to save him. Of course, the water turns Clarence into Mighty Truck, who saves Throttle and the day. A touch of humor, excellent vocabulary words, and a hint of suspense will keep a young reader in preschool through grade two turning pages to find out how Clarence/Mighty Truck solve the problem and get Throttle back to safety. Clear, bright illustrations from Troy Cummings accompany the text. A worthwhile addition to a reader collection.

Reviewed by Jill O’Connor, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth

four-stars

The Little Guys

The Little GuysThe Little Guys by Vera Brosgol
Published by Roaring Brook Press on April 2, 2019
ISBN: 1626724423
Pages: 40
Goodreads
three-stars

Cautionary tale? Fable? Brosgol’s picture book definitely has a message, but it might depend on the age of your audience as to what part of the message they hear. The Little Guys are the smallest creatures in the forest, but there are so many of them that together they are strong. They are so strong, in fact, that when they band together, they take anything they want. And they want everything. They take so much that soon none of the other animals have anything. So while the book starts out feeling like a teamwork book for younger readers/listeners with a message of “no matter how small you are, you can get the job done if you work together,” which is true in the story, it ends up really being the story for older readers about how a large group of any people *can* take what they want, but what is the point if no one else has anything? The book shows how community works. The Little Guys are powerful, but they should use their power for good, to help. The artwork is fantastic – you can almost feel the Little Guys, a group of acorn dwarfs or dwarf acorns?, marching and chanting across the cover (“oh-wee-oh, oh—o” or perhaps “hi, ho, hi, ho, it’s off to work we go”) and the forest scenes are comical and well-drawn. Somehow, Brosgol imbues the Little Guys with emotions though they wear no expressions. As a read-aloud, it is a bit tough as the Little Guys get more and more forceful in their quest to take what they need (or is it want?) even resorting to violence against the Bigger Guys.  Children, who don’t always attach as much depth of meaning or layers of politicized feelings, will appreciate the idea that being little is okay, and working together to get something you want is usually easier than working alone but, in the end, recognizing the need to share and practicing kindness so that everyone has enough is the best approach to a happy community and, perhaps, world.

Reviewed by Jill O’Connor, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth

three-stars

The Magnificent Migration: On Safari with Africa’s Last Great Herds

The Magnificent Migration: On Safari with Africa’s Last Great HerdsThe Magnificent Migration: On Safari with Africa’s Last Great Herds by Sy Montgomery
Published by HMH Books for Young Readers on June 11th 2019
ISBN: 0544761138
Pages: 176
Goodreads
five-stars

Sibert medalist, Sy Montgomery takes the reader to the plains of Africa to join a prestigious team of scientists, guides, and photographers on her greatest quest yet- follow the herds of wildebeests that migrate with the rains. Led by her friend and the world’s foremost expert on wildebeests, Dr. Richard Estes, they will follow the wildebeest which according to Montgomery “drive the ecology and evolution of the largest savanna ecosystem in the world.” She goes on to say that wildebeest migration defines wild Africa. Montgomery always excites her readers with an abundance of  facts, supported by  extraordinary photographs, on this trip those of father rand son team Roger and Logan Wood.  Montgomery details her trip as they follow the migration of a quarter of a million beasts along with hundreds of thousands of zebra and gazelles in the largest movement of animals on land. This is a book that takes time to read and reread. Not only does the reader gain information on the herds but there are stories of other animals- lions that climb trees to escape biting insects, Arctic terns that fly from Antarctica to Africa, then to South America and on to the Arctic, hyenas, red crabs, and hippos cover just some of those in the book. This is Montgomery at her best! A must for every library ! Use in grades 5 and up.

Reviewed by Kathy George, Gray Public Library, Gray

five-stars

Shark Quest: Protecting the Ocean’s Top Predators

Shark Quest: Protecting the Ocean’s Top PredatorsShark Quest by Karen Romano Young
Published by Twenty-First Century Books (Tm) on August 1st 2018
ISBN: 151249805X
Pages: 128
Goodreads
five-stars

An engaging nonfiction title that details the story of how sharks became the most feared and hunted creature on the planet and what is being done now to turn the tide and protect this necessary apex predator. Well-written and thoroughly researched, this title would be useful for a project on the work being done to document and study sharks and it would be an absorbing read for anyone fascinated with these magnificent animals. Supported by photographs, maps, and graphics, Young covers the history of the lure and thrill of shark hunting, which has led to the drop in numbers of sharks in the wild, the physiology of this efficient, powerful predator, the behaviors of sharks, and all of the work being done by scientists to understand these creatures who are vital to the infrastructure of the oceanic world. Due to the density and complexity of the writing, this book would be best for a high-school audience, but anyone interested in sharks could enjoy flipping through.

Reviewed by Jill O’Connor, Merrill Memorial Library, Yarmouth

five-stars