A short, simple book that sees main character Emma, who's just moved to a new town and does not yet have any friends, working out the steps she can take to meet, be invited to play with, and break through awkward silences with a neighbor her own age. "Maybe if I smile...Maybe if I ask...Maybe if I help..."   posted May 24, 2013 at 11:57AM

Explores what respect means and how to be respectful, and has suggested questions for kids throughout the text. A little "instructional" feeling--kids will be aware that they're being taught something--but well-done and not dry.   posted Apr 26, 2013 at 5:00PM

Feynman’s an interesting guy; the book is well-written and drawn; these together made for a good read. Concentrates less on Feynman’s physics (although there a few 2-3-page illustrated "lectures"), and more on his life: working at Los Alamos on the bomb a mere month before it was dropped on Hiroshima (during this time, his first wife passed away; he mourned but came back to work immediately and made it clear he didn’t want anyone’s sympathy to interfere with the work), finding out at the last minute before presenting as a grad student that his prof had invited Einstein, Fermi, and other big names to sit in (and they came), finding a topless bar more conducive to getting work done than an office (and defending, in court, as a world-famous physicist, the topless bar’s right to exist when none of the other customers would dare show their faces to testify), pretty much figuring out what went wrong with the Challenger and having no one be too pleased with that, etc. This book is being reviewed as a good one for young adults as well as adults, and I agree...it’s neat and eye-opening seeing some key 20th-century history through the lens of Feynman’s life, as well some different things physicists might do (in topless bars or out). Before reading it, I already regretted never having taken physics; now, I do a little more so, and plan to read some of Feynman’s own books. I should say that the portrayal of Feynman doesn’t exactly make you want to throw hero-worshiping arms around him...he comes off as self-centered and arrogant (not having read much, but knowing much of the content was drawn from Feynman’s own books, I can only assume that, well, he was these things) as well as brilliant and strange. From what I’d heard of Feynman, I’d expected to come out of this book admiring him. I didn’t. But I did come out still interested.   posted Apr 8, 2013 at 4:40PM

So good. One of the best graphic-format memoirs I’ve read, and one of the best books on mental illness. Forney makes brilliant use of comix to capture the poles of manic depression and explore "Club Van Gogh"--the high incidence of bipolar disorder in artists, the hell of a choice one has to make as a mentally ill artist between what feels like "keeping one’s edge", the overflow of ideas and creative energy and productivity during mania if one remains unmedicated, and of functioning more responsibly, medicated, where managing to bring even one full idea to the surface is a struggle like dredging a lake with a spoon. And her coining of "cra-dar" (rhymes with ’gaydar’)--a mentally ill person’s real or imagined ability to recognize other mentally ill people--cracked me up (no pun intended).   posted Apr 8, 2013 at 4:37PM

"'Wake up, old friend, it's Spring!' whispered the sun. And the warmed earth woke up." The earth wakes the earthworm, the earthworm the seed, the seed the ladybug, and so on. Exuberant and bright--my favorite spring-themed picture book after Mary Lyn Ray's 'Mud'.   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 3:24PM

A buoyant rhyme full of great movement-related verbs follows a series of baby animals doing what they love to do. From Booklist: "The rhyming text pauses before the page turn where the tip of a tail is pictured and the next spread reveals the new creature. For instance: “So mama helps the baby fish, splish, splash, swim through the weeds and the reeds in the green, green lake. ‘Look,’ blurps the baby fish, ‘I see a . . . [page turn] SNAKE!’” This gives the reader/listener a chance to fill in the rhyme on his or her own.   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 3:17PM

Granted, the two-tone illustrations from a book published in 1974 are probably not going to engage today's kids. But the text remains fantastically fresh and exciting. Read it, especially to a group of kids before going on a hunt for the perfect rocks for them. "The size must be perfect. It has to feel easy in your hand when you close your fingers over it. It has to feel jumpy in your pocket when you run. Some people touch a rock a thousand times a day. There aren't many things that feel as good as a rock--if the rock is perfect." Charming, magical, and kid-like.   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 2:56PM

"A spiral is a growing shape. It starts small and gets bigger, swirl by swirl. It unwraps itself, one curl at a time." A perfect text and amazing woodcut (I think) illustrations invite us to consider a shape that recurs over and over in the natural world.   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 1:36PM

The soft, fresh yellows, pinks, and especially greens of Henkes's illustrations make this book feel like a Spring morning. "Little White Rabbit hopped along. When he hopped through the high grass, he wondered what it would be like to be green...when he hopped over the rock, he wondered what it would be like not to be able to move." While you read, make sure to wonder about the same things Little Rabbit does--then go outside and wonder about the things you see as you hop along.   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 12:49PM

Leslie McGuirk, rock observer extraordinaire, found rocks that look like each letter of the alphabet. The perfect read right before a nature walk with preschoolers through second graders--what shapes will they find in the rocks they see today?   posted Apr 5, 2013 at 12:34PM