Reviews
The Horn Book Guide Review for A First Look at America's Presidents
K-3. First Look at America’s Presidents series. Each highly abbreviated biography of a US president uses a variety of visual and textual elements arranged informally on pages designed to look like cork bulletin boards. The brief, uninspired narratives are supported by photographs on… View →
Booklist Review for Franklin D. Roosevelt: The 32nd President
This brief biography condenses the life of Franklin D. Roosevelt into 24 pages of facts and full-color photos. The first double-page spread summarizes the “tough times” America experienced while FDR was president. From there, each successive two-page topic takes View →
Dark Labyrinths
The topics of the Scary Places series may seem familiar—castles, cemeteries, haunted houses—but the format elicits a surprisingly expansive reach. Each book is divided into 11 two-page spreads, and while this doesn’t allow for a lot of depth, it does inspire the authors to cycle… View →
Series Made Simple
Readers learn about a broad variety of helping professions, including ones that might not immediately come to mind, such as reporters. The cultural diversity of children featured is a positive, although the quality of the stock photographs varies. The major weakness of this set is its… View →
Series Made Simple
Readers learn about a broad variety of helping professions, including ones that might not immediately come to mind, such as reporters. The cultural diversity of children featured is a positive, although the quality of the stock photographs varies. The major weakness of this set is its… View →
Snowshoe Hare
Kids may or may not have heard of the snowshoe hare, but they will certainly be intrigued by what they learn in this compact title, part of the Arctic Animals: Life outside the Igloo series. A fine example of an animal suited to his surroundings, the hare has a snow-white coat in the… View →
Bark Scorpion
All that a young arachnologist would want to know about the bark scorpion appears in this installment in the Desert Animals Searchin’ for Shade series. The large-font sentences and highlighted vocab words accompany open-ended questions at the end of each two-page spread, and each section View →
LEGO
This book explores the business of LEGO. The reader will learn about the creator of the LEGO brand, Ole Kirk Christiansen, and the history of the brand throughout the years. Chapters included are: What is the Lego Brand, Ole Kirk… View →
For those who know nothing about this holiday, Pettiford gets straight to the point: “Diwali is the Hindu New Year. It begins in fall. It lasts five days.” That s a bit vague fall is an awful broad period but readers will still get plenty out of this short, upbeat, and… View →
Using an early reader format, these entries in the My First Pet series introduce young children to basic care of common pets. Extreme cuteness with large color photos of animals and their diverse kid owners in action (highlighted by vibrant frames and occasional labels) drives the… View →
Series Made Simple
These bright, slight, upbeat introductions to pet ownership are designed for early readers. Basic information is shared through a collection of vignettes. The text, never more than four brief sentences per spread, always gives a name to the pet in the photo and the child, who may not… View →
Using an early reader format, these entries in the My First Pet series introduce young children to basic care of common pets. Extreme cuteness with large color photos of animals and their diverse kid owners in action (highlighted by vibrant frames and occasional labels) drives the… View →