Provo Library Children's Book Blog

Bizzy Bear: Fun on the Farm By Benji Davies Nosy Crow, 2011. Unpaged. Board book. Help Bizzy Bear with his day on the farm by feeding the pigs, counting the ducks, gathering eggs, and waving goodbye! Although the text in this book is weak with the bulk being "Bizzy Bear, Bizzy Bear," it is more than redeemed by the darling, cozy illustrations and sturdy sliders to push and pull. Toddlers will be entranced with this book and will want to spend hours reading and re-reading this book and interacting with the busy little bear! The format of this book is so wonderfully sturdy that it can even be given to a small child to read on his own without fear of destruction. This book is perfect for busy little children!

                  Fake Mustache: Or, How Jodie O'Rodeo and her Wonder Horse (And Some Nerdy Kid) Saved the U.S. Presidential Election from a Mad Genius Criminal Mastermind by Tom Angleberger Amulet, 2012.  196 pgs. Fiction      When Lenny Flem Jr.'s best friend Casper buys a Heidelberg Handlebar Number Seven mustache ($129.99) at Sven's Fair Price Store and a junior-size Man-About-Town suit at Clancy's Big & Small Short & Tall clothiers, everything changes. The Heidelberg gives Casper power over the minds of just about everyone and he uses that power to rob banks, the Federal Gold Reserve, and then to buy the Heidelberg Novelty Company, makers of the voting machines used in presidential elections. Only Lenny and former child star of stage and screen Jodie O'Rodeo and her Wonder Horse Soymilk know what Casper is up to, and their adventures and efforts to stop hi...

Hound Dog True by Linda Urban Harcourt, 2011, 152 p. Realistic Fiction  Eleven year old Mattie is a shy girl and making friends is agonizing for her.  She and her mother come to live one summer in her mother's family home with her uncle who is a janitor at the local grade school.  Mattie decides that if she can become her uncle's special janitor's helper, she can hang around with him before and after school, and during lunch and she won't have to face the other kids at her new school. She is a sweet and intelligent girl, but she has been bullied before and is insecure when her new neighbor shows interest in being her friend. Linda Urban has an amazing view into a young girl's inner thoughts.  In both her first novel, A Crooked Kind of Perfect , which won several awards, and this one, we see the main characters' little emotional waves and tides--what they hope and think will happen, and how they feel when it does or doesn't. This is a great...

A Young Scientist's Guide to Defying Disasters With Skill and Daring By James Doyle Illustrated by Andrew Brozyna Gibbs Smith, 2012.  151 pages. Non-fiction. This is a fun guide to natural disasters, weather, and beasts. Also included are science experiments to explain the principle behind each challenge, which gives the reader a chance to reenact them with little danger. I have a fear of earthquakes, so I turned right to that section to read about earthquake science and survival tactics. The tips are informative for children without being scary, and the overview on historical earthquakes is really interesting. The accompanying science experiment teaches about pressure with a soda can and water. The water is boiled inside the can and then when removed and placed into a bowl of cold water, the can crushes itself immediately. Instructions may be found in the book excerpt on Google Books .  A must-check out for school science projects or long summer days!

Agent Angus by K. L. Denman Orca, 2012.  121 pgs. Mystery (sort of)      The Orca Currents series continues to impress with its high interest/accessible vocabulary books, especially for boys.  In this story, Angus finds himself standing next to the goddess-like Ella Eckles after a stink-bomb explosion forces the evacuation of their middle school. Not normally a lucky guy, Angus sees a chance to make his move when Ella shows him her sketchbook of finely drawn portraits and he makes up a story about wanting to be a mentalist, and being something of an expert on facial expressions himself. So when Ella's sketchbook is stolen from the art room, she asks Angus to see if he can figure out who did it.  Angus and his best friend Shahid are quickly on the case though Shahid thinks Angus should just confess that he lied so the two of them can get back to building their remote-controlled robot, Gordon. Angus, wishing to win Ella's affection, presses on, shad...

The First Girl Scout: The Life of Juliette Gordon Low by Ginger Wadsworth Clarion Books, 2012. 210pgs. Nonfiction Juliette Gordon Low was not your typical girl in the late 1800’s. She liked excitement and out of doors adventures which was frowned upon by those of her time. She didn’t let that stop her though.   Juliette lived through the civil war, traveled the world as an adult, and was even presented in court at Buckingham Palace.   But her greatest adventure began later in life, when she first heard of a popular British improvement group called the Girl Guides.   Juliette made it her life’s work to bring this movement to the United States. Under her driving influence it soon evolved into the Girl Scout program which took the whole nation by storm. If you’re looking for a great book for a biography report or just want to learn more about this amazing woman’s history—then this is the book for you.

Same Sun Here by Silas House and Neela Vaswani Candlewick, 2011. 297 pgs. Fiction      Same Sun Here is a book about activism: points are made against strip mining/mountain top removal, New York apartment house owners grinding the faces of the immigrant poor, or being unkind to anyone of different skin color, language, or gender-attraction, among many other causes.  Normally this would be annoying in its didacticism, but the two children whose letters back and forth tell their stories are so delightful, and their correspondence carried on with such vigor, honesty, and humor that the book is a joy to read. Meena is an immigrant girl from India whose family lives (illegally) in a rent-controlled apartment in New York's Chinatown. River is a Kentucky boy whose mother is depressed because his father works away from home, so he is mostly cared for by his beloved Mamaw (his grandmother). The two meet as part of a pen-pal project in their school, and both choose ...

Yoshi's Yard: The Sound of Y Written by Joanne Meier and Cecilia Minden Illustrated by Bob Ostrom Child's World, 2011. 24 pages. Easy Reader. Yoshi's Yard is part of a great new phonics series by Joanne Meier and Cecilia Minden. In this book, the focus is on "y" words. Join Yoshi as he plays in his yard, looks at yellow flowers, and yells while playing with his friend York. The short sentences and bright colors make for a fun reading experience. There are visual clues on every page to help new readers as they sound out short sentences. The end of the book has suggestions for parents to help their children make connections to the text, including a craft activity with creating colors. There are also book lists and helpful links. Meier and Minden have done a thorough and thoughtful job in creating just the right phonics series!

A Diamond in the Desert By Kathryn Fitzmaurice Viking Children's Books, 2012. 258 pages. Historical fiction. A Diamond in the Desert (based on true events) focuses on an often-neglected but important part of American WWII history. In this novel, young Japanese boy Tetsu and his family are sent to a "relocation" camp in Arizona after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was done in paranoid hopes of limiting the Japanese threat to Americans on the mainland. It was not an easy time for the families who were sent to the middle of nowhere to live in desert barracks. Tetsu misses his life back home. He was a baseball player before camp, and is thrilled when some of the other boys decide to pull a team together and even build a baseball diamond in the desert sand. The internment camps are a blemish on American history, but Kathryn Fitzmaurice eloquently tells the story in a hopeful way while not glossing over the real tragedy of the times. She does a thoughtful job of port...

The Obstinate Pen by Frank W. Dormer Henry Holt and Company, 2012. Unpaged. Picture book. This is the story of a pen with a flair for the perfect insult. When Uncle Flood gets himself a beautiful brand new pen he quickly discovers that it won't write what he wants it to. Instead it lets him know how gargantuan his nose is. Uncle Flood angrily throws the pen out the window, and that's how the pen's many hilarious adventures begin. Kids will love all the silly insults that the pen writes to the different people it meets along the way and their various reactions to its snide revelations. Little ones will also enjoy the simple answer the boy, Horace, comes up with to tame the pen in the end. A great read aloud if I ever saw one.