Picture Book - Hey Grandude! by Paul McCartney

Illustrated by Kathryn Durst

2019, Random House

HC $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  3.71 - 486 ratings

My rating:  4
Endpapers: Light blue with white 1/2-inch grid lines

1^st line/s:  "Lucy and Tom and Em and Bob were spending a weedend with the grandad."

My comments:  Magic can really happen, especially when it comes to traveling from one place to another!  I love the premise of this book...a magic compass that whisks the family from one interesting place in the world  to another as well as spending quality time with a grandparent.  Shame on you, all you naysayers, for giving negative reviews just because a celebrity wrote it.  Spoilsports!

Goodreads:  From Paul McCartney—an action-packed picture-book adventure celebrating the fun that grandparents and grandkids can get up to.
          See the compass needle spin, let the magic fun begin!
          Meet Grandude—a super-cool grandfather who is an intrepid explorer with some amazing tricks up his sleeve. Grandude is a one-of-a-kind adventurer! With his magic compass, he whisks his four grandkids off on whirlwind adventures, taking them all around the globe. Join them as they ride flying fish, dodge stampedes, and escape avalanches! Brought to life with gloriously colorful illustrations from talented artist Kathryn Durst, it’s the perfect bedtime story for little explorers

Picture Book - If I Built a School by Chris VanDusen

Illustrated by the author

2019 Dial Book for Young Readers

HC $17.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 4.24 - 413 ratings 

My rating:  5
Endpapers:grenn with white outline drawing of OTHER crazy school ideas - lots of fun to look at!

1^st line/s:  "Jack, on the playground, said to Miss Jane,
This school is OK, but it's pitifully plain.
The builders who built this I think should be banned.
It's nothing at all like the school I have planned."

My comments: I love Chris VanDusen!  I love his illustrations, his ideas, and his very clever rhyming.

Goodreads: In this exuberant companion to If I Built a Car, a boy fantasizes about his dream school--from classroom to cafeteria to library to playground.
     My school will amaze you. My school will astound.
     By far the most fabulous school to be found!
     Perfectly planned and impeccably clean.
     On a scale, 1 to 10, it's more like 15!
     And learning is fun in a place that's fun, too.
                 If Jack built a school, there would be hover desks and pop-up textbooks, skydiving wind tunnels and a trampoline basketball court in the gym, a robo-chef to serve lunch in the cafeteria, field trips to Mars, and a whole lot more. The inventive boy who described his ideal car and house in previous books is dreaming even bigger this time.

Picture Book: Field Trip to the Moon by John Hare

A Wordless Picture Book
Illustrated by the author

2019, Margaret Ferguson Books, Holiday House

HC $17.99

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.24 - 348 ratings

My rating:  5
Endpapers: Bright Goldenrod

1^st line/s:  None, it's wordless!

My comments: Clever, cute, quick story.  A little boy, and artist with his crayons, gets left by mistake on the Moon.  After his schoolbus/spaceship leaves, little grey men come to the surface and make friens with him.  They each take a different crayon, and hide with them when the schoolbus/spaceship returns for the boy.  He's left with only the gray crayon...which he uses to draw his new friends onto his pad on the return trip to earth.

Goodreads: It's field trip day, and students are excited to travel on their yellow spaceship bus from their space station to the moon.
\          Climb aboard the spaceship bus for a fantastic field trip adventure to the moon. Once they land, students debark and set out with their teacher to explore. They jump over trenches and see craters and mountains on the moon's surface and even Earth in the faraway distance. One student takes a break to draw some pictures, falls asleep, and wakes up to discover that the rest of the class and the spaceship are gone. How the student passes the time waiting to be rescued makes for a funny and unexpected adventure that will enchant children all over the galaxy.

Picture Book - The Neighbors by Einat Tsarfati

Illustrated by the author
Translated from Hebrew by Annette Appel

2017/Israel 2019/Abrams Books for Young Readers, NY

$16/99 HC

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.21 - 212 ratings

My rating:  5 A terrific picture book!

Endpapers:  mustard yellow with white line drawings of something from each apartment

1^st line/s:  "I live in a building that is seven stories high."

My comments:  This clever picture book entertains up to the very end - and what an ending!  It's all about a little girl's imagination, with lots and lots and LOTS to look at in each illustration.  It's also about what her life is about to become, I think!  SO MUCH to talk about and share with kids in this one.

Goodreads:   As a young girl climbs the seven stories to her own (very boring!) apartment, she imagines what’s behind each of the doors she passes. Does the door with all the locks belong to a family of thieves? Might the doorway with muddy footprints conceal a pet tiger? Each spread reveals—in lush detail—the wilds of the girl’s imagination, from a high-flying circus to an underwater world and everything in between. When the girl finally reaches her own apartment, she is greeted by her parents, who might have a secret even wilder than anything she could have imagined!

PICTURE BOOK - We're All Wonders by R. J. Palacio

Illustrated by the Author

2017, Alfred A. Knopf

32 pgs.
Read 7/7/17

Goodreads rating:  4.15 - 1142 ratings

My rating: 4.5

Endpapers Bright Red

1^st line/s: "I know I'm not an ordinary kid."

My comments:  I've read the original chapter book thrice - twice aloud to a group of 3rd and 4th graders.  Their discussions about the book were marvelous and right-on.  This book is a simplified version, focusing on the "be nice to everyone" aspect.  Much of our discussion was "try not to stare," there's a really cool person on the inside. Let's face it, there's a certain shock of first seeing someone that looks really, really different.  It's hard not to stare. That's what I think the Ms. Palacio is trying to say. I don't think it's sappy at all (as some reviewers have suggested).  It's a good starting place to begin conversations with younger kids and/or kids who haven't read the original chapter book about how not to hurt other people's feelings, especially when you're caught off guard.  Ms. Palacio's illustrations are bold and colorful.  I like it a lot.

Goodreads:  The unforgettable bestseller Wonder, soon to be a major motion picture, has inspired a nationwide movement to Choose Kind. Now parents and educators can introduce the importance of choosing kind to younger readers with this gorgeous picture book, featuring Auggie and Daisy on an original adventure, written and illustrated by R. J. Palacio.
          Over 5 million people have fallen in love with Wonder and have joined the movement to Choose Kind. Now younger readers can meet Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face, and his beloved dog, Daisy.
          Countless fans have asked R. J. Palacio to write a book for younger readers. With We’re All Wonders, she makes her picture-book debut as both author and artist, with a spare, powerful text and striking, richly imagined illustrations. Palacio shows readers what it’s like to live in Auggie’s world—a world in which he feels like any other kid, but he’s not always seen that way.
          We’re All Wonders may be Auggie’s story, but it taps into every child’s longing to belong, and to be seen for who they truly are. It’s the perfect way for families and educators to talk about empathy and kindness with young children.

PICTURE BOOK - Secret Tree Fort by Brianne Farley

Illustrated by the author

2016, Candlewick

HC $16.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 3.73

My rating:  4

Endpapers:  Simple.  Pale green with individual leaves flicked in.  A great outdoors-in-the-yard kind of feel

Title Page:  Older sister curled up in comfy chair reading.  Younger sister creating a block masterpiece on the floor.

Illustrations:  charcoal, pencil, and ink.  Colored digitally.

1^st line/s:  "It's a beautiful day!  Go play outside!"

My comments:  Ha!  The first pages definitely remind me of me and my own sister.....  And, it's dedicated to "my favorite sister." This book is cute, clever, and imaginative - a little Where the Wild Things Are meets Bink and Mollie.  And, unlike what really happened with my own sister, it has a wonderful, perfect ending.  Great picture book.

Goodreads:  Even a bookish big sister is drawn in by the promise of her imaginative sibling’s spectacular hideaway.
          I have a secret tree fort, and YOU’RE NOT INVITED!
          When two sisters are ushered outside to play, one sits under a tree with a book while the other regales her with descriptions of a cool fort in a tree that grows ever more fantastical in the telling. What will it take to get the older sister to look up? The promise of a water-balloon launcher in case of attack? A trapdoor to stargaze through? A crow’s nest from which to see how many whales pass by or to watch for pirates? Or the best part of all, which can’t be revealed, because it’s a secret?

Trainstop - Barbara Lehman

Houghton Mifflin, 2008
HC $16.00
32 pgs.
Rating:  34
Endpapers:  bright green
A wordless story

A young girl is taking a subway/train home with her parents.  As they progress through the city they pass through a tunnel and when they come out on the other side...they are out in the countryside!?  The train is stopped by a boy waving a flag.  Everyone else appears to be dozing, so the girl steps off the train, to be greeted by a hoard of....LITTLE....umm....SMALL....umm....MINIATURE kids.  Their airplane has gotten stuck  high up in a tree.  Together they figure out how to get it down, a warning comes from the train that it's about to leave, she says goodbye to her new friends, and returns to the train.  It enters another tunnel only to re-emerge back into the midst of the bustling city.  After she gets home, in flies the plane she helped save, loaded with two of her new friends and a tiny potted tree, which she plants in the yard.

Barbara Lehman has done another great piece of storytelling without uttering a single word.

Little White Rabbit - Kevin Henkes

Greenwillow Books, 2011
HC $16.99
for very young kids
32 pgs.
Rating: 4.5
Copyright information is on the bottom of the title page - this is the first time I've seen that.

Two 10 x 10ish square pages facing each other. One is a thick-green-line bordered illustration, the other is the text - just one or two lines - large green font on white-white page. Every so oftrn ther is an edge-to-edge illustration. All the illustrations look like they're outlined in green marker and colored in lightly with colored pencils. Lovely.

As the little white rabbit travels through the surrounding s near his home, he wonders. What would it be like to be green? to be tall? to be immobile? to fly? But he never wonders who loves him.

Gentle. Simple. Lovely.

Mattoo, Let's Play - Irene Luxbacher

Kids Can Press, 2010
$16.95
32 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Dark rusty clay

Illustrations: Black and white with added colors of dark red, olive green, mustard, dark blue. Collaged a bit - mainly the fabrics, I think. It's different and very cool. All the way to the edge of the page.

Story: Simple, but boy does it bring back memories. A boisterous little girl keeps trying to get her cat, Mattoo, to play with her. She's imaginative and her ideas are clever and loud and wild. Poor Mattoo just isn't up for any of it. In each of the illustrations you can see his fluffed-up tail peeking out from wherever he's trying to hide. It isn't until the girl decides to go on a safari, where you have to be really quiet to see animals, that Mattoo comes around.

There aren't a whole lot of words in this book, there don't need to be. it's a great story, imaginative and creative.

Irene Luxbacher's website.

58. House of Dolls - Francesca Lia Block

Illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Harper, 2010
HC (a small book) $15.99
64 pgs.
Rating: 4

This quick, quick short read is for any child who believes that dolls have a life of their own. Madison Blackberry envies the lives of her five mismatched dollhouse dolls. They are happy, content, safe, in their lives, and she is unhappy and lonely in hers. So she begins taking things away from them.

The dollhouse and Wildflower, one of the dolls, used to belong to Madison's grandmother, who visits occasionally and still makes wonderful clothes for the dolls and furnishings for the house. When one of the dolls leaves the grandmother a message, she gets clued into her granddaughter's loneliness and life begins to ges better for Madison. And when it gets better for Madison, it gets better for her dolls.

The book starts like this:

"Wildflower, Rockstar, and Miss Selene lived in a house from another time, a white house with a red roof and red shutters and a red front door. In the garden was a real bonsai tree and a reflecting pool made from a pocket mirror tucked into a lawn of real moss."

Don't you just love it?

Dory Story - Jerry Pallotta

Illustrated by David Biedrzycki
Charlesbridge, 2000
$16.99
32 pages
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Rusty red

Brendan and I went to the Acadia National Park visitor center yesterday, looked at the huge relief map, watched the movie, and decided to participate in some junior ranger activities this week. We were drawn to this big, colorful book and bought it, stamped it with the National Park passport stamp, and signed the inside cover. So this will be a very special book. We've already read it three times.

Not only does this relate the ocean adventures of a curious boy, it teaches about the food chain....from plankton to shrimp to eels to mackerel to bluefish to killer whales. We see seals, gulls, lots and lots of ocean, and see how imagination and curiousity can create a whale of a tale.

The illustrations and layout of the book are lovely - the picture covers most of the two-page spread -- oh those blues! -- and the font, a large blue type, is on a white vertical strip down the side.

Informative and fun, what more could one want?

Chalk - Bill Thomson

Marshall Cavendish, 2010
$15.99
40 pages
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Bright green

This is a wordless picture book that is SO beautifully illustrated! I'd love to see the words that kids would create to go with it!

Three kids are out walking through a playground in the rain. They find a shopping bag that holds pieces of colored chalk. When one kids grabs a yellow piece and draws a sun on the wet sidewalk, a sun rises to the sky, drying up the rain and wetness. When another kid grabs a peach chalk and draws butterflies, monarchs flutter up into the air. The third kid chooses a green one and draws the outline of a dinosaur. And suddenly they are overshadowed by a huge real one! They run, screaming, into the playground's slide tunnels. The kid grabs a blue chalk and, on the inside of the tunnel, draws a cloud and raindrops. As the rain starts falling, the dinosaur drips to nothingness.

Superb!

*Read this aloud and then give kids a piece of chalk.
*Write the story.
*Choose snazzy vers, adverbs, or adjectives to describe each page.

Miss Brooks Loves Books! (and I Don't) - Barbara Bottner

Illustrated by Michael Emberley
Alfred A. Knopf, 2010
$17.99
24 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers - Vertical 3/4" plum and green stripes

Miss Brooks is a librarian that will do anything in her power to interest kids in books. She particularly loves to dress up as the characters when she introduces one. The protagonist, an unnamed first grade girls, just doesn't understand it. She certainly can't find any books that she loves like Miss Brooks does!

And then, horror or horrors, during "book week," the girls had to dress up and share her favorite story. She's fit-to-be-tied. There's no favorite story to dress up as. She reads and reads -- and then reads some more. And then she finds it! A book she loves! She can dress as a "stubborn, smelly, snorty ogre" --- Shrek! Yay!

The illustrations are terrific. the two protagonists are funky and fun. Miss Brooks has a Ms. Frizzle craziness to her and our protagonist's messy hair protrucing from her striped knit hat and her specs are adorable.

The pages are almost too glossy and seem to have a musty, moldy smell to them. Sort of unpleasant, like it's the survivor of a flood....and it's brand new, still in the store!

Otherwise, cool book.

The Heart and the Bottle - Oliver Jeffers

Philomel Books/Penguin Group, 2010
$17.99
32 pages of THICK cardstock
For: well....great for adults.....
Endpapers: Blue-line drawings of the young girl and her father

The very first illustration is of a little girls and her father in the forest. The little girl has stick legs and the flowers have no leaves. I was reminded immediately of The Great Paper Caper and I was right - this is the same author and illustrator. The father always wears pants, so you can't see his stick legs.

The little girl is an explorer, a questioner, nurtured and guided by her dad. In the evening he sits in his chair by the window and they discuss the "curiosities of the world." Then, one day the chair is empty. The little girl feels she needs to protect her heart so she puts it in a bottle around her neck. Her joy, her curiousity about the world is gone. As her life continues, the bottle gets bulkier and more awkward, but when she tries to take her heart out of the bottle, she cannot get it out. It takes another curious, questioning little girl to help her....and the book ends with her sitting, as an adult, in the empty chair with a huge pile of books beside her.

Grief is a simple thing. It's not complicated at all. It just.......is.

There's a video on the internet of Oliver Jeffers. He's from Northern Ireland with the adorable accent to prove it. I find his story interesting, clever, and beautifully illustrated. It grew on me more and more with each reading. But I'm not sure how or if a very young child would understand it.....

There's a difference between Heart and the Bottle and Heart IN the Bottle. An interesting discussion-in-my-head.

My Garden - Kevin Henkes

Greenwillow, 2010
32 pgs.
$17.99
For: ages 3-6?
Endpapers: Navy with round white (actually light blue) sunflower covering the page

A girl helps her mother in the garden - and with great imagination thinks about what her own garden might be like - no weeds, flowers that change colors or instantly reappear when they've been plucked, chocolate bunnies to eat vs. real bunnies eating, jelly bean trees - and on we go.

Each two-page spread has one full white page with sage blue font, facing Easter-colored pastel illustrations with lots of sage blue. I'm not sure if sage blue is a real color, but it's the best way I can describe it.

Lots of imaginating.
Cute story, lovely illustrations. Love love love Kevin Henkes, but this one just didn't jump out at me.

Pssst! - Adam Rex

Harcourt, 2007
$16.00
Rating: 4
Endpapers: zoo map in lt. brown, lt. green & lt. rust
Clever title page - info is incorporated into a NYC subway station illustration

Jacketflap: "What happens when a bunch of animals have been cooped up too long? Pssst! You're about to find out."

A girl goes to the zoo, where animals repeatedly get her attention to ask for something. Every 2-3 pages there's a conversation between her and a different animal. These pages are divided into six boxes with graphic-novel-type conversations taking place.

Their requests are interesting but make sense - the gorilla needs new tires - his tire swing broke. The bats need flashlights - the hippo in their cave can't see. And so on. And she's good...she figures out how to grant all their requests - phew! But, there's a great surprise twist at the end. And you realize that if you'd thought about the jacket flap a little more, you would have guessed something was going to happen!

The Marvelous Toy - Tom Paxton

Illustrated by Steve Cox
Includes a 4-song CD
Imagine! A Peter Yarrow Book
$17.95
24 pgs.
for: ages 3-5
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: a mesmerizing blue/aqua shooting-star filled sky

Magical. Every page is magical.

I've been a Tom Paxton fan for a zillion years. Seen him in concert four or five times. He's funny, clever, and quite politica (he doesn't miss anything)l. A very cool guy. And I've heard this song dozens of times - including live. So I sang along as I read. The book follows the words to the song, showing a father giving a cool new toy to a son...and ending with this same son, now grown, passing it along to his own son. The gorgeous bright-blue toned illustrations are a blast to ingest.

This is a yummy book - a great gift for a young child - with four Paxton songs included! ! !

(And I see that not only did Paxton get a Life Achievement Grammy this year, he has a new album (Comedians and Angels) out. Bravo, Tom Paxton!)

What Can You Do with a Rebozo? Carmen Tafolla

Illustrated by Amy Cordova
Tricycle Press, 2008
$14.95
28 pgs.
For: kids
Rating: 4
Endpapers: Edges of a red rebozo scarf (and two colorful butterflies!)

If you don't know what a rebozo is, you will by the end of the book. And now I want one! I saw someone wearing a pretty white sleeveless dress with a deep lime/avacado rebozo draped across her shoulders, and she looked stunning. I bet it'd look good on anyone of any shape and size. And we watch as a family uses the mom's rebozo in many ways - carrying a baby, playing hide and seek, wrapping in lovely long hair, for warmth as a shawl, covering your eyes when playing pinata, as a superhero cape, and eve to clean up spills when nothing else is handy.

The illustrations include all sorts of colorful Hispanic/Mexican/American art and traditions and cover the entire page with bright beautiful color. I really enjoy this artist! (Amy Cordova owns a gallery in northern New Mexico (Taos, I think). Road Trip!

When I Wore My Sailor Suit - Uri Shulevitz

Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2009
$16.95
32 pgs.
Rating: 4
Luscious vocabulary: provisions, destination, arduous, departure, valiantly, luxurious, disrupted, pelting, barrage, resume, sternly
Illustrations: 7/8 of page, boxed by white
Endpapers: Azure

A young boy dresses as a sailor and goes to visit his upstairs neighbor. They have a model ship - and his imaginative journey begins. He makes it through a storm and arrives on a jungle island. He escapes pirates and finds a treasure map. but when he feels like someone is watching him he "returns" to the room and sees a painting of an ominous-looking man, whose eyes seem to follow him wherever he goes. It unsettles him. After fleeing for home, the boy realizes something. Returning to the painting he says, "you can't leave this wall, you can't leave this room, but I can go far away on an exciting journey."

Bravo for great fanciful works, a great message, and lovely illustrations.

The Red Book - Barbara Lehman

Wordless
Houghton Mifflin, 2004
36 pgs, ages 5-8
Rating: 4.5
Endpapers: Red

The story is told by examining illustrations inside boxes, sometimes one box on a page, sometimes four. The illustrations are simple but not simplistic - there's plenty to see, examine, and admire.
         In the city it is snowing and a boy is on his way to school. He finds a red book in a snowbank. At school he opens it and is taken to a desert island where he sees another boy find a similar red book poking out of the sand. This boy opens it to find --- the boy in the city! They can see each other!
          After school the boy buys a huge bunch of helium balloons. They pull him up...up...up into the air and he drops the red book. The boy on the deserted island sees all of this transpiring on the pages of the red book that HE has, and is quite sad. Sad until - as we see in the pages of HIS book - his balloons floating onto the island!
          Our story ends with another boy in the city in the sonw, this time riding a bike. He finds the fallen book, sticking it under his arm and heading off along the sidewalk.
          Magical. Fun.

Goodreads: This book is about a book. A magical red book without any words. When you turn the pages you’ll experience a new kind of adventure through the power of story.Winning a Caldecott Honor for its illustrations of rare detail and surprise, The Red Book crosses oceans and continents to deliver one girl into a new world of possibility, where a friend she’s never met is waiting. And as with the best of books, at the conclusion of the story, the journey is not over.