Picture Book - 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental

Illustrated by Joelle Jolivet
Endpapers:  N/A - HUGE BOOK

2006 Harry N. Abrams, translated from French

44 huge, thick pages

Illustrations in Black, white, blue, and orange

Goodreads rating:   4.11 - 914 ratings

My rating:  5!

1^st line/s:  "On New Year's Day, at nine o'clock in the morning, a delivery man rang our doorbell."

My comments:  Loved this book.  But, it's HUGE.  Not sure how I'm going to read it aloud! One penguin arrives each and every day for 365 straight days.  Lots of arithmetic and a few vocabulary words for younger readers (anonymous, three-digit-number, ecologist), one page where you hunt among the penguins for the only one with blue feet, and even a great poem:

    Penguins, penguins everywhere,

    Black and white and in my hair,

    Two or three would be quite nice,

    But hundreds more, let's think twice!

    Bathroom, bedroom, closet, kitchen --

    I've had enough, it's time to ditch 'em!

Goodreads:  From the amazing success of the documentary March of the Penguins to the popular penguins in Madagascar to this fall’s upcoming penguin-themed movie Happy Feet, penguins are everywhere! That’s especially true for the family in 365 Penguins, who find a penguin mysteriously delivered to their door every day for a year. At first they’re cute, but with every passing day, the penguins pile up—along with the family’s problems. Feeding, cleaning, and housing the penguins becomes a monumental task. They’re noisy and smelly, and they always hog the bathroom! And who on earth is sending these kwaking critters? In a large format, and with lots of opportunity for counting, 365 Penguins is sure to become a perennial wintertime favorite.

PICTURE BOOK - Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting

Illustrated by C. F. Payne

2006, Houghton Mifflin

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.07 - 210 ratings

My rating:  5

Endpapers:  Dark Evergreen

1^st line/s:  "My pop is building the Golden Gate Bridge.  Almost every day after school Charlie Shu and I go to Fort Point and watch."

My comments:  I am so fond of this book...I've read it many times, to myself and aloud to different groups of kids.  Last week I read it aloud to a group of nine to twelve-year-olds that were attending the "Bridges" STEM camp that I was facilitating, and it delighted me once again.  I love the Golden Gate Bridge.  I never saw it or drove over it until about 15 years ago when I went to visit a dear friend in Marin County, California.  Since that first visit there have been at least two visits a year, and we always drive at least one back-and-forth trip over "my" bridge.  My friend's mom was one of the thousands of people who walked across the span on opening day in 1937.  She's told me the story several times.  This is a wonderful book of two friends and the dads who built the Golden Gate Bridge.

Goodreads:  The Golden Gate Bridge. The impossible bridge, some call it. They say it can't be built.
          But Robert's father is building it. He's a skywalker--a brave, high-climbing ironworker. Robert is convinced his pop has the most important job on the crew . . . until a frightening event makes him see that it takes an entire team to accomplish the impossible.
          When it was completed in 1937, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge was hailed as an international marvel. Eve Bunting's riveting story salutes the ingenuity and courage of every person who helped raise this majestic American icon.
Includes an author's note about the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

15. Echo Park by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch #12
listened to the CD in the car driving home from Maine
2006, Little Brown & Co.
405 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished 3/12/2017
Goodreads rating: 4.06 - 33,087 ratings
My rating: 4
Setting: Contemporary LA

First line/s: (Part 1, Chapter 1) "The call came in while Harry Bosch and his partner, Kiz Rider, were sitting at their desks in the Open-Unsolved Unit, finishing the paperwork on the Matarase filing."

My comments:  In this segment of Harry Bosch's investigative ups and downs, I saw more cracks and flaws than I'd seen before.  It's not that I disagreed with the morality and/or righteousness of some of Harry's decisions, but I don't quite remember so many of them in previous books.  Admittedly, it's been awhile since I've read Harry, and iI became totally mesmerized, as usual.  Harry's need to make sure the bad guy gets what he deserves is what really stands out in this story.  Many bad guys, a few assumptions that were wrong, and a satisfying ending.  But ... poor Harry is ladyless again.

Goodreads synopsis:  In 1995, Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the 22-year-old woman never turned up, dead or alive. Now Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when he gets a call from the DA. A man accused of two heinous killings is willing to come clean about several other murders, including the killing of Marie Gesto. 
          Bosch must now take Raynard Waits's confession and get close to the man he has sought - and hated - for eleven years. But when Bosch learns that he and his partner missed a clue back in 1995 that could have led them to Gesto's killer - and that would have stopped nine murders that followed - he begins to crack.