Spell sweeper is the perfect amalgamation of Harry Potter and Worst Witch. There’s the magic school, the secret magic the normal society can’t know about. There’s even the non-magical society that the magical call Bliss: as in ignorance is bliss! Cara is a young witch who happens to come from a bliss family and she can’t let anybody know that she’s magical. However at magic school she learns that she may be magical but just barely. Her magic is good enough to be the janitor. In this magical world all magic has repercussions and if these are not cleaned up it can cause disasters. So if you don’t have someone trained as a spell sweeper the Bliss are going to learn about magic one way or another. We follow Cara as she comes to term with being a Magical Occurrence Purger (aka MOP) and learns that her sister knows more than she ever let on. This book is both a great thriller, a magic story, and a family story. It gives you everything readers of Harry Potter want without letting a person who doesn’t believe in all people profit from her fandom. Spell Sweeper was so magical that I want more books in this land and I think movies and TV shows would be absolutely great. It seems like a series that could do well on Disney+ if they gave it a chance. I was so watch it and champion it. This is a magic people can believe in and this is the magic people should believe in. 

 

I’m a bit disappointed in this book. Tt started out pretty good with describing each emotion has a color. I think that works. Each page also has a description of that emotion, and these get a little long.  It has a little blurb from the Little Prince. Mainly the Little Prince is the illustrations the story part is extremely lacking. To me this is the book I would check out once. 

 

Originally, I wanted to read this for the cover, but this book needs to be read because it’s fantastic. This is a true story of four very famous people: Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and John Burroughs.  They went camping together and there are pictures and home movies of their wild adventures. I love a book that teaches me something I did not know, and this fits that bill perfectly. What I think is the best thing about this book or the illustrations. They feel old timey, like 1920s, but they are so vibrant and colorful and wonderfully odd that children cannot resist picking up this book and flipping through the pages. 

 

This was wonderfully done. Start with five ostriches and unlike other books where one expects a countdown, all these ostriches get to stay together. Which is a good thing since there is a lion on the prowl and they’re playing hide and seek. One of my favorite things is that at no point in time do the ostriches put their heads in the sand. The author knew that that is not what truly happens. Overall, this book works, and I see it being really really fun for story time. 

 

This book is too long. The book rhymes quite well but it has no cadence which can make it a bit of a tongue twister to read. The illustrations are soft and colorful and will grab the reader. But younger kids may find it hard to sit through. I love the characters interaction with their grandmother and think the story is full of warm and full of home 

 

This story is a rhyming adventure on a bee’s life from spring through summer and fall. It shows how bees help grow gardens and make nature a beautiful tastier place. At the end of the book there are infographics about different types of bees and what they do and why they are important. Overall, this book really works the illustrations are lovely watercolors and I think kids will enjoy it. 

 

This is one of the better picture book biographies of Dolly Parton. I would expect nothing else from Susan Slade who has a long history of putting out excellent children’s books. This book mainly focuses on Dolly’s young life. None of the information is new but it is put in such a way that children will find the story enjoyable. The illustrations perfectly match the tone in the text of the story while bringing the appeal of the age for which it is written. 

 

There are consequences at the end of book 3 and we see those consequences at the beginning of this edition.  We also find that one of the oldest three children is going to be fostered. Emma is not happy. Ray is not happy. They do not want Norman to go because they know this means the end of his life. However, all of them will do everything they can to escape the orphanage. Some plans are better than others but only one plan will work, and we finally get to see that plan put in the action. This is a great continuation of an amazing series. A little bit more violent than the others have been, but still entirely worthy. 

 

The art in this book was amazing, but the violence was so over the top that it was hard to put myself in the story.  This modern version puts Watson and Holmes as Black men in Harlem.  Holmes is still a private eye, but one willing and likely to use a gun and get in street fights.  He still uses his mind but comes off more brute than brain.  Watson is just a medical intern, and he has lost his heart.  He is an Afghanistan war veteran with PTSD who feels pulled to Holmes.  However, the friendship between the two does not feel real.  It feels more like hero worship.  Watson seems more inclined to find action like his military duty, while Holmes is not so much about showing and learning, as bragging and snobbery.  I wanted to like this but didn’t.  However, I think the main problem is I am the wrong audience.  I have never lived in Harlem or neighborhoods like it.  I have never had to deal with the issues and hardships of inner-city life.  So, to someone else, this book is probably amazing, and I think libraries should carry it, but for me, it just was not my thing. 

 

I read Hellboy to fill a diesel punk prompt for a reading challenge.  I never thought of this book as diesel punk, as most of the action takes place in the 90’s.  It does start in the diesel punk era of 1944, but I think moreover it is a feeling, and not just the period that makes it diesel punk.  It’s that dark and grittiness that comes after water and steam.  That smell of diesel fuel and heavy equipment, the feeling of oppression and resistance.  You get all that from the original Hellboy comics.  Hellboy is a monster, but a friendly one with a poor attitude.  He is a great anti-hero.  He is who he was raised to be.  I watched the movie years ago and loved it.  I have read newer iterations of Hellboy but going back to the original really shows off that Hellboy is not just another Merc with a mouth, or a supped-up version of Deadpool, but a sensitive, broad backed character, with unusual friends and abilities, that turn a teddy bear rock hard. I thoroughly enjoyed this read, between the unusual art style for a graphic novel and the modern story that was both historical and new.  It all works together to create a lasting work or fiction.