Provo Library Children's Book Blog

Puzzlehead By James Yang Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2009. Unpaged. Picture book. In this book that deals very literally with someone trying to find a place to fit in, little Puzzlehead and his friends find all kinds of interesting things as they go exploring. Children will love matching the corresponding positive and negative shapes and will especially enjoy the satisfying, suprising conclusion in this delightful, wonderfully illustrated book.

Just Like Bossy Bear By David Horvath Disney Hyperion Books, 2009. Unpaged. Picture book. In this straightforward, cheeky book, Bossy Bear just loves to live up to his name--he bosses the life out of everyone he meets. His best friend, Turtle, wants to be just like Bossy Bear, and soon Bossy notices Turtle is starting to imitate him in a not-so-charming way. Bossy's clever solution, paired with Horvath's hilarious, bold illustrations, will have you chortling till the last page.

The Walls of Cartagena by Julia Durango Simon & Schuster, 2008. 150pgs. Historical Fiction. Amadeo de Angola is a slave, but luckier than most. After his mother died on a slave ship in the harbor as he was being born, he was taken in by Dona Isabel, a wealthy citizen of Cartagena de Indias, who gave him every advantage, including education. Nicknamed Calepino for his facility with languages, he often finds himself away from the safety of Dona Isabel's home, as he is called upon to translate for Father Pedro, a priest whose life is devoted to ministering to the slaves coming in to the Colony. On one of his trips to a slave ship, Calepino helps a mother and son who subsequently need his help to escape from a cruel master to the safety of a hidden community of escaped slaves. Calepino's work with a Jewish doctor in a leper colony gives him a chance to help Mara and Tomi, but at what cost? Based on the lives of actual people, The Walls of Cartagena is a short book, but rich

Little Britches and the Rattlers By Eric A. Kimmel; Illustrated by Vincent Nguyen Marshall Cavendish, 2008. Unpaged. Picture Book The Little Black Sambo story goes Out West in this story of Little Britches, a cowgirl on her way to the rodeo to compete in the calf-roping contest runs afoul of a nest of rattlers. Each of the snakes threatens to "s-s-swaller you up" so she trades her hat, gloves, and even her red boots embossed with a map of Texas for the chance to go on. When she is down to her long johns and bandanna she gives up and heads back home, but a wild hissing from a dry waterhole leads her to the snakes who are chasing each other fangs to tails until they swaller each other up and are gone. Vincent Nguyen's muted earthtones are a perfect fit for Little Britches' commonsense ways and the Western landscape, though when the text has LB galloping to the rodeo, her horse is pictured in a stately pace. Still, this is a fun take on the old tale, and Little Britch

Calvin Coconut: Trouble Magnet by Graham Salisbury Random House, 2009. 152pgs. Juvenile Fiction Calvin's dad, Little Johnny Coconut (stage name), left his family for a Las Vegas singing career, but left behind Calvin's unusual last name for bully fodder (Coco-Dork!). Still, Calvin manages to have fun in the Hawaiian sun with his best friends Julio and Maya. Paradise is not without its troubles, though, as Calvin learns when he decides to try out a kiteboarder's chute which he is supposed to be watching, and gets dragged all over the beach before crash landing in the surf. Things get even worse when Tito Sinbad Andrade sees Calvin and his pals laughing at him after a shoplifting incident and Calvin spends much of the rest of this charming story trying to avoid and evade Tito and his goons. Calvin is a great kid--young readers will surely identify with this fourth grader's mishaps and adventures, with the bonus of learning a lot about Hawaiian culture and island life a

In this rather strange little tale, a cat named Oscar loves to jump so much that he jumps all the way to the moon. After befriending the mooncats who live there, Oscar discovers his return trip is much more difficult and that he must find a way to get home before he forgets his boy forever. The story of Oscar & the Mooncats is a bit peculiar, but charming nonetheless, proving the tireless adage that "there's no place like home." The illustrations, however, are the real gem of this book. Italian artist, Nicoletta Ceccoli, is one of my all-time favorite illustrators and does not disappoint in this lovely display of innoventive artwork. Her use of photographed sculpture is particularly intriguing in this book and adds an extra dimension of interest to her ethereal style. This book is designed for those who love to imagine!

If you took Little House on the Prarie and Harry Potter and mixed it up in a bowl, this charming story is what you'd get as a result. In Eff Rothmer's world, where magic is the norm, a thirteenth child is considered to be a curse. Everyone knows a thirteenth child is filled with evil magic and will always go bad in the end. Eff is the thirteenth child in her family and no one in her home town is going to ever let her forget it. To make matters worse, Eff's twin brother Lan is the seventh son of a seventh son and the whole town believes he will someday become one of the most powerful magicians of all time. To protect Eff and Lan from the prejudiced influence of family and neighbors, their parents decide to move out west and settle in the western frontier--where dangerous magical creatures roam and no one knows Eff and Lan's birth order. The rules of magic in this fictional world are wholly believable. The attention to detail makes you sometimes forget it is n

BIRDS By Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek HarperCollins, 2009. unpaged. Picture book. How unusual to have a picture book written by Kevin Henkes, but not illustrated by him. In this lovely, surely Caldecott-contender, offering, Henkes and his wife Laura Dronzek have combined text and illustrations to perfect effect to reveal to their readers things everyone knows and loves about birds but cannot find the words for, until now. Birds on a telephone wire, for instance, that don't move, don't move, don't move and then you look away for a second and then . . . gone. What if clouds were birds? they would look like this. "Sometimes a bird in a tree looks like one red leaf left over." Just lovely. As comforting and beautiful a book as I have seen these many years.

With a title called Totally Irresponsible Science this is a book that is sure to grab a young scientist’s interest. This book is full of fun experiments that anyone, including myself would be interested in trying. Some experiments are how to turn milk into stone (I am going to try this one tonight!), a rubber chicken bone, slime and even homemade lightning. These are only a few of the amazing and fun experiments in this book. Check it out and see if there is a mad scientist somewhere in you! Only check it out if you’re daring and make sure you take all the precautions necessary! There is also a brief explanation of how the experiment works at the end of each experiment.

The Odd Egg by Emily Gravett is a delightful book about a duck. One day all the birds around duck began to lay eggs except for duck. Not to be outdone, duck takes matters into his own hands and find himself his own egg which is much larger then duck is. Soon all the eggs but duck’s begin to hatch. However, when the egg does open the reader is in for a surprise. This book with its charming text and illustrations is great for any story time. Make sure you notice on the last page what duck spends his time knitting!

As a child I always loved those simple little stories where magic and reality collide. Books like those of Ruth Chew, Edith Nesbit , and Dick King-Smith. Saving the Griffin is just such a book. It's the gentle tale of a brother and sister who discover something magical one day as they are playing ball in a fantastic garden in Italy. They must keep their delightful secret from the neighbors, their parents, and their older brother who has recently lost his belief in magic now that he has become a teenager. The storyline is simple, the characters are not deep, nothing really bad ever happens--so if you are looking for something edgy and literary--you might want to look elsewhere for your entertainment. However, if you love charming, family stories that you could read aloud to your first grader as they fall asleep at night, this is the book for you.

MOONSHOT: THE FLIGHT OF APOLLO 11 By Brian Floca Atheneum, 2009. Unpaged. Juvenile Nonfiction How well I remember, forty years ago, being spitting mad at my father for making us go to church on the night that Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were landing on the moon. Lucky for him (and our domestic [sea of] tranquility) we got home in time to hear Neal Armstrong utter his immortal phrase, and see his booted foot settle into the moon's dust. Brian Floca has perfectly reproduced not only the events of those days, but the spirit in this lovely new picture book. "High above there is the Moon, cold and quiet, no air, no life, but glowing in the sky." As the astronauts approach the moon, it is the earth that glows in the sky, and the contrast of the two, earth and her moon, is the thread that takes the venturers there and back again. Floca's text is spare and evocative; his text exquisite. Best book I have seen, or expect to see, on Apollo 11's voyage to the moon

THE RED BLAZER GIRLS: THE RING OF ROCAMADOUR By Michael D. Beil Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. 298 pgs. Juvenile Fiction. What a terrific new mystery series for girls twelve and up! The cover promise--"a puzzling mystery! A mystery with puzzles!"--is amply fulfilled as the Red Blazer girls, 7th grade students at St. Veronica's Catholic school in Manhattan--use geometry, linguistics, and logic--to outsmart the villains and find the treasure. Refreshingly, the story is filled not only with wit, suspense, excitement, reading(!), and adventure but with caring parents, teachers, priests, and other strong adult role models. Religion is treated as a natural and respected part of life, and in these pages it is actually cool--and crucial to solving the puzzle--to be smart and work hard in school. Parents may wish to know that this book includes occasional minor-league swearing and the casual, careless use of the name of Deity that is common to young people these days, but on the whole, th

HANSEL AND GRETEL Retold and illustrated by Rachel Isadora G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2009. unpaged. Picture Book In an African setting, the story of Hansel and Gretel comes brightly to life as the two children are taken deep into the forest (jungle), surrounded at night not by lions and tigers and bears, but by snakes, lizards, and wart hogs. Isadora retells the story straightforwardly and with admirable economy of expression, but it is the pictures that truly dazzle.

Here is a delightful Aztec version of the old tale The Fisherman and His Wife . The storyline is basically the same. A humble fisherman catches a magical turtle (not a fish) who grants him a wish if he will set him free. All the fisherman wants is a good catch that day. It is granted. The fisherman is happy, but his wife is not. She insists that the fisherman go back and ask the turtle for something much more grand. Again and again, she sends her husband back. Each of her wants is granted, but she's never satisfied for long. In the end, both she and the fisherman get exactly what they wish for. Aviles' illustrations in acrylic and liquid watercolor are beautiful. I especially like the ocean scenes which grow stormier with each of the wife's requests. Kimmel adds a nice touch with short little poems that the fisherman calls out to the turtle each time he comes back to ask for more. This is a wonderful story in any setting and Kimmel's writing makes this version a great

CAR SCIENCE: AN UNDER-THE-HOOD, BEHIND-THE-DASH LOOK AT HOW CARS WORK ; Richard Hammond; New York: Dorling-Kindersley, 2008. 96pgs. Non-fiction. Motorheads old and young, large and small should be enthralled with Hammond's take on everything automotive in this new release. Dorling-Kindersley's trademark illustrations draw the reader in to Richard Hammond's fascinating text which starts at the very beginning ("The history of the car is really the history of fuel.") I always thought I knew why horsepower is called horsepower, but in these pages we discover that when James Watt introduced the comparison, he was measuring the amount of coal mine ponies could pull one hundred feet up a mineshaft in one minute. Estimating that horses are 50% more powerful than ponies, he settled on 33,000 pound-feet per minute as equaling one horsepower. In fact, horses can't pull twice as much as ponies, so "a real horse only has 0.7 horsepower." But I digress. Divided in

HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS ; Alec Greven; New York: HarperCollins, 2008; 46pgs. Juvenile Non-fiction. Alec Greven is a nine year old fourth grader at Soaring Hawk Elementary school, where he did his research on talking to girls. Nominally his book is directed towards other elementary school boys, but his is truly one of the better books I have read on how to make friends and get along. Alec wisely points out that a boy would be better off trying to be friends with a regular girl instead of a really pretty one because although 73% of regular girls ditch boys, a whopping 98% of pretty girls will bum you off. So "when you see a pretty girl, don't let her tractor beam pull you in." Getting a girl's attention is necessary, but difficult, because girls don't like show-offs. Just say "hi" and if she says "hi" back, you are on your way. Also, if you like a girl "comb your hair and don't wear sweats." Young Alec is delightful young man, and so i

I loved toe socks, back when they were all the rage. Had a few pair, actually. So, naturally, the cover picture on this book caught my eye. Once I started reading, though, it was Zoe, the 11-year-old main character, and her resilient adaptability to her quirky world, that drew me in. Zoe's mother is a dedicated controller for the state of Michigan. She is often absent from home, where Zoe's father, a slightly agoraphobic, although the word is never used, takes course after course from "Living Room University". Zoe had a best friend, Emma, until Emma decided to be best friends with someone else. And the odd, bullyish kid from school, Wheeler, suddenly starts following Zoe home after school and baking with her dad all afternoon. Underlying Zoe's daily life is her dream of playing the piano at Carnegie Hall. Pianos are expensive, so Zoe has to make do with a used Perfectone D-60, an organ. Even in the face of disappointment, Zoe does not despair. She works with what

THE HINKY PINK ; retold by Megan McDonald, illustrated by Brian Floca; New York: Atheneum, 2008. unpaged. McDonald and Floca give a vivace redo to the old tale of the fractious Hinky Pink in this story of Anabel (alas, not Anabella), a seamstress who spends her days over piles of "mending unending" dreaming of creating a ball gown for someone who will dance the tarantella. Her wish comes true when the princess of the realm drips raspberry tart juice on her best dress and needs a new one made quickly. Enter the Hinky Pink who gives Anabel no rest from pinching her and yanking off her covers at night--her sewing suffers. Mag the nursemaid suggests making the Hinky Pink his own bed, but the Hinky Pink finds none of her efforts suitable until she fills a thimble with silky satin and adds a rose petal coverlet. Anabel and the Hinky Pink both get a good night's rest, the dress is finished in time for the ball, and all is well in Old Italy. A perfect combination of sprightly t

Henry was ready to start his job as a critter sitter for the Mahoney family. He had the uniform, the vital information, and the motto, " Critter Sitter is my name and Creature Control is my game". He needed all the control he could muster for the creatures in the Mahoney household. They had a dog, a cat, a snake, a bird, and a frog. Oh yeah, and a goldfish! With this many critters to tend, chaos is sure to follow. Chuck Richards wrote an entertaining and fun story, but his illustrations are amazing! He uses a watercolor and colored pencil technique that is fun and slightly quirky, yet full of incredible details. Each page is full of wonderful colors and fascinating perspectives. When you check out this book be sure to spend some time looking at the whole picture as there are lots of fun things in the backgrounds that add to the story. Critter Sitter is my favorite picture book of the year, so far.