This little box turtle was born without a shell.  His parents give him a nice cardboard shell that the box turtle loves until someone tells them it is “weird”.  A journey to find a new shell ensues, but nothing is quite right.  This book is lovely.  The pictures are what really make this story.  It has been told many times in many ways. You are you, and you are special.  That is it, but the illustrations are what makes a reader keep turning the pages. 

 The seed books are really good with puns and playing on common words and phrases. This time they take a jab at “cool beans”.  This book is about the cool beans in school, and how one lonely bean feels left out.  It is a great lesson in what actually makes someone cool.  It’s a bit long for story time, but would work well in a classroom setting. 

 

This collection of children’s poem from Jack Perlutsky is centered around dragons.  Most of the poems are happy or funny, a few heartfelt, but all are lovely.  They are all set off by great illustrations by peter sis.  This book may be old but it can and will stand the test of time. 

 This book was both classic and entirely unique.  The two main characters are Amelia and Chase.  Amelia has this amazing tarot card deck that was handed down from her grandmother.  Her grandmother taught her and Chase everything she knows about the tarot, and now year later, as a last great hurrah of the summer before college, 4 friends set off on a trip guided by tarot. Their trip quickly turns to an adventure when their first stop sets in motion a grand treasure hunt to find the 4 intentionally missing cards from her famous deck.  This book was a wonderful adventure.  It is a choices novel, so the reader helps make choices throughout the book.  What makes this unique is the choices center more on the characters personality rather than actions, and it helps change the meaning and the thought process of the trip.  It also will teach the reader a bit about themselves and they learn about the tarot.  Overall, this was a great fun read and should get more attention. 

Not bad for a celebrity kids books.  It will make kids laugh.  It is a simple enough story but gets it point across.

oes Jan Brett ever write a bad book?  Probably not.  This is a retelling of the three little bears, but underwater with mermaids and octopi.  There is nothing new about the book or the story.  The change of setting is nice, but the most important thing for a jan Brett book, is the Jan Brett illustrations. And they are in full force.  A love ready for the ears and the eyes.

Worm loves worm.  No one has to be a bride and know one has to be a groom.  It does not matter how things used to be, the only thing that matters is that worm loves worm.  This is another way of saying Love is Love.  It doesn’t matter who you are, how you dress, or what you call yourself.  The only thing that matters is her and now and that worm loves worm.

I was greatly surprised how much I liked this book.  Most easy readers are meant to practice reading, and don’t really look at telling a good story.  That is not the case here.  This is a rebus reader (meaning some of the words are replaced by pictures).  It rhymes, and has a fully flushed cadence that never skips a beat.  The illustrations feel like they are from 2000, but it doesn’t matter, the story does not age (only the book cover).

A lonely abandoned house sits high on a hill.  Maybe it it sits quietly, people will not think it’s spooky and want to come live in her.  But one night, a big storm comes in and House learns how much she loves to make noise and that it is okay to be spooky, she just has to find the right family.  This book was really cute and would be fabulous read aloud for story time. It has so many should word that the kids will really get into.

This book is hard to describe. It is about the author Margaret Wise Brown, but it is not a biography.  It’s about the fact that she wrote a book that was not liked by the main lady at the New York Public Library, but that it still exists in our modern lexicon because she believed that children deserved weird little books.  This book was so unique.  The way the author chose to do the book (one page for every year of MWB’s life, but not a chronology. It’s weird but fascinating all at one time.