{ Disney Junior Magazine }

Disney Junior Magazine

This is a great first magazine for toddlers.  It keeps them interested with their favorite familiar characters and finds interesting ways to educate them with easy activities for their young minds.

The magazine normally starts out with a fun comic involving one of the characters to interest the children in reading.  Then in moves on to other fun activities like counting, mazes, matching silhouettes, coloring in the dots, and sequencing events.  By using fun characters like Minnie and Mickey and all of their friends they make learning these simple preschool activities fun.  They also throw in a neat, easy to do craft usually using things from around your home like an old sweater.

This is a great magazine to help maybe a hard to teach toddler or even an easy to teach toddler learn tasks easily.  It also helps with some skills that parents might not have thought about, such as the sequence of events.  

Purchase a subscription here.

{ The Lego Movie }

The Lego Movie
Directed by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord.  Warner Brothers Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures, 2014.  Rated PG.

  
The Lego Movie is the tale of a nobody.  The lead character, Emmet, is just an ordinary lego construction worker.  He is fully invested in his ordinary life, he always follows the rules and all of the instructions, never building anything out of his own creativity.  Until one day, something extraordinary happens.  After the cap to a bottle of superglue gets stuck to his back he suddenly becomes "the special" the master builder who will help the Lego world stop find its creativity again.  He is whisked away to multiple worlds he did not know, testing his creative limits as he tries to think outside of the box.

The animation in this movie is beautiful and the story line that finally makes sense in the end does touch your heart and makes you want to hold your kids a little closer.  The end story line is really in there for the adults, while all of the original lego portion of the story keeps the children entertained.  In the end it does turn out that the "bad guy" is a little boys father who will not let him play with his "collectable" legos, the legos that he has meticulously put together with superglue and does not want them to be touched.  The father spends all of his time with his legos, never letting the little boy touch them or play with them or his father.  It is a really sweet story line that makes the adults want to spend that extra time with their kids that we so often forget wrapped up in our adult world.

This book is a wonderful addition to any collection, it would be really good to incorporate some sort of lego building day with a viewing of the film.

Preorder the movie on Amazon.

{ Abby the Librarian }

Abby the Librarian 
blog by Abby Johnson a Youth Librarian in southern Indiana.

 When looking for a blog to review I tried to step out of some that I already follow and stumbled upon Abby's blog.  Abby's blog is fabulous if you are looking for fresh new ideas for your library to keep your children interested.  She writes about 5 or more times each month and always has wonderful ideas.

Her library has a homeschooler's program where she always comes up with fun and inventive ways to interact with the kids.  A few example ideas that Abby has come up with is hiding Easter eggs in the library for the kids to find, inside they are filled with portions of nursery rhymes that the kids have to decipher and in the winter she had a section on books about hibernating for a winter program.

She also reads and reviews books for children, giving useful ways to help librarians use these resources in there library.

A link to Abby's Blog.

{ Return of the Dapper Men }

Return of the Dapper Men
written by Jim McCann; illustrated by Janet Lee.  Los Angeles: Archaia, 2010.  978-1932386905.  Recommended for all ages by the publisher.

Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann and illustrated by Janet Lee is a visually stunning book.  It is the story of a future world, Arnov, where time has ceased to exist.  It is full of children of the age of 11 who have forgotten what night time even looks like, they have forgotten everything and moved underground where they do nothing but play.  Above ground lives the robots who do all of the work.  Enter in our main characters a boy, Ayden, and his best friend a robot named Zoe.  Ayden and Zoe are different, they interact as robots and humans are not supposed to, they remember and are inseparable friends.  Because of this, Ayden lives above ground with the robots who accept him.  Then one day, unexpectedly time begins to move again and out of the sky come 314 Dapper Men to remind the people of Arnov to remember and not forget.

The main strength in this book is the illustrations.  This book is visually stunning and grabs the reader with its illustrations.  The weakness would be the story, which was pretty simple and sometimes a bit confusing.  It is a graphic novel, so from time to time, if you are not used to reading comics and graphic novels, you can get a little lost.  Overall though it is a wonderful story about friendship and growing up.  It is no wonder that it is a Will Eisner Winner for Best Graphic Album.

This book is good for an afternoon read or for any child that is interested in both art and futuristic tales.  The story does take some thought and would make a wonderful addition to any library.

Purchase it here on Amazon.

{ Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of the Disaster in Salem }

Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem
by Rosalyn Schanzer.  Washington DC: National Geographic, 2011.  978-1426308697.  Grades 5+

Witches!  The Absolutely True Tale of the Disaster in Salem is the dark book written and illustrated by Rosalyn Schanzer.  It was honored by the Robert F Silbert award.  It is a short informational text about the horrible deeds done to those accused and executed in the Salem Witch Trials and their accusers.  From the beginning Schanzer wraps you into the tale with black and white pictures and glowing red eyes.

The book is creepy and scary as it rightfully should be.  Schanzer does a wonderful job introducing the characters and their stories, laying out all the facts as they happened.  She doesn't shy away from the truth and the grisly details, despite her audience.  This is important, it isn't always good to shelter this age group especially in these days of graphic television and video games.  The book is enthralling even if you are already familiar with the story and very informative for children who have either not been introduced to this subject or have only heard the brief social studies version.

A strength for this book would be the pictures and the plethora of information.  Schanzer has included trial scripts and quotes as often as possible to enrich the story and bring out the truth of what happened.  As well she includes these black, white, and red sketch pictures throughout the book that enhance the overall creepy feeling that the book is making the reader feel.

The only real weakness to the book is that it almost plays on the idea that the witches are real.  Although, this is a historical way of writing.  Historians don't take sides, they present the facts.  From the beginning Schanzer never says that what the accusers were experience wasn't witchcraft or that the witches weren't what they were being accused of.  Although at the end she does mention that they could have been lying or dreadfully sick with a disease that might have caused their fits.

This book is a wonderful addition to any historical children's library.  It is very informative in a way that children might not be used to.  With the use of true facts and just the right amount of intrigue this story will keep readers enraptured and make them care about this portion of history.

Purchase it here on Amazon.

Other books you might like:

How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous

The Salem Witch Trials: An Unsolved Mystery from History

Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science

{Frozen: The Soundtrack}

Frozen: The Soundtrack
Demi Lovato; Kristen Bell; Indina Menzel; Jonathan Groff; Josh Gad; Katie Lopez; Maia Wilson; Kristen Anderson-Lopez; Robert Lopez; Christopher Beck.  Walt Disney Records, 2013.  All Ages.

 
Frozen: The Soundtrack is the top selling soundtrack to the hit Disney movie Frozen.  It is a two disc deluxe CD and includes the top selling songs and instrumentals from the composers.

This CD is wonderful for all ages, it is a phenomenal collection of music from the movie that all children and adults can enjoy.

A major strength to this CD is the catchyness of each song, from ages 3-100 these songs get stuck in your head and are easy to listen and dance to.  The only weakness that there is to this CD, from a child's perspective, is the inclusion of the instrumentals.  For kids who enjoy playing this CD on their Ipod's or karaoke machines, it can get a little labor intensive for a 4 year old to have to skip some songs.  However, for the adult to loves to hear these compositions it is a wonderful inclusion.

This CD is a wonderful inclusion into any personal library or library in general.  It is something that will without a doubt be checked out, the only problem will be kids wanting to return this wonderful item.

Indina Menzel's song "Let it Go" was an award nominee for Best Original Song at this year's Golden Globes, the song was written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez.

Purchase it here on Amazon.

{ Flora & Ulysses: Audiobook }

Flora & Ulysses: the Illuminated Adventures
by Kate DiCamillo; read by Tara Sands.  The Listening Library, 2013.  Digital Audio. B00ENNI8HC.  Grades 3-7.

Flora and Ulysses is the Newberry Award Winning book for 2014.  It is the fantastic tale of a 10 year old girl, Flora, who encounters the extraordinary when an ordinary squirrel becomes in her mind a super hero.  Flora is cynical, that is the first thing that you learn about her.  The child of divorced parents she takes solace in comic books, something that her mother does not approve of and sees as a waste of her time.  Then something unexplainable happens, a squirrel is sucked up into the Ulysses vacuum that her neighbor has just been gifted.  When the squirrel awakens (after Flora performs CPR) he is suddenly gifted with unexplained strength, the ability to type, and the ability to FLY. 

A major strength in this book is the general story.  It is a story of an extremely smart girl who is unappreciated by her mother and those around her.  The story is care free and easy to read.  It isn't heavy, it is a book that can be enjoyed by all ages.

Tara Sands, the reader of this book is both a strength and a weakness.  She is an incredible voice actress, with a different voice for each character.  The only weakness to her voice acting is the voice that she chose for the main character, Flora.  While she does a wonderful job at making the character 3 dimensional, the voice she chose can get a little grating to the ears.  At times it is a little hard to listen to because of Flora's voice.

Another strength to the book is the way that they chose to incorporate music to convey drama.  Since the listener is not able to see the illustrations in the book, the audio version incorporated a sort of super hero theme whenever Ulysses is about to do something extraordinary like type a poem or save Flora's father.  It is a wonderful incorporation that really adds to the story.

This book is a wonderful addition to any audio library.  While I do believe that the print version might be a bit better do to portions of the voice acting, this book would be a fun family "read" for a short road trip or family vacation.  It is a definite way to keep kids of many ages entertained on a long trip.

Purchase it here on Audible.

{ Dream Animals }

Dream Animals: A Bedtime Journey
by Emily Winfield Martin.  New York: Random House, 2013.  978-0449810804.  Ages 2-5.

 
Dream Animals is a beautiful Picturebook by artist and author Emily Winfield Martin.  The poetic story is about all of the different animals that take you to your dreams.  Animals that live in dreams and in the stars, helping children reach their dreams every night.

The major strength in this book are the pictures, this should be no surprise to followers of Emily Winfield Martin's work.  The animals and children in this book are complete works of art.  They look like they come straight out of a fairy tale and any page on this book could be framed as a piece of art.

 

Another strength in this picture book is the way that it flows, Martin uses a poetic language that take the reader from page to page, lulling a child into sleep.  Each animal is riding across the page to the right, helping the reader know when they need to turn the page and keeping the story flowing.  It just works, each page in this book is beautiful from verse to picture.

This book is a beautiful addition to any library or home collection.  It is stunning and the poetry inside will help your child fall to sleep and dream of fantasy.  It helps the reader grow to read fantasy and will enrich your nighttime routine.

Purchase it here on Amazon.

If you like this book you will also like:

Oddfellow's Orphanage 

Sleep Like a Tiger

Journey

{ Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same! }

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!
by Grace Lin, New York; Boston: Little Brown and Company.  2010.  978-0316024532.  Early Reader Level 3.  Grades 1-4.

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same! is the award honored early reader by Grace Lin.  The book is composed of 6 stories that interconnect.  They follow twins Ling and Ting through a few adventures all revolving around how they are similar, yet different.  In the first story Ling can sit still while her hair gets cut, however, Ting cannot causing her bangs to have a big chunk cut out making the twins once and for all not exactly the same.

Since this is an early reader, it is very successful at using site words to help young readers feel more confident and practice reading on their own while still keeping them entertained.  Lin's illustrations as well help the story move forward and keep an early reader interested.

It is no surprise that this book won the Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor, it is an exceptional read alone book for young children.

Purchase this book on Amazon.

Other books you might like:

Ling & Ting Share a Birthday

Ivy & Bean

Judy Moody was in a Mood
 

{ Wonder }

Wonder

by R.J. Palacio. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012.  978-0375869020.  Grades 3-7. 

Wonder is the groundbreaking, New York Times Bestselling, novel by R.J. Palacio.  All over town and in reading groups I have heard about this book.  I knew what it was about before I ever started it.  I heard that it was the story of a boy, a boy who was born with a facial abnormality and his first year in "regular" school, middle school.

Wonder is so much more than just that.  Yes, it does revolve around a boy, August, who does have a physical abnormality.  However, it is so much more than just that.  Palacio takes you into the mindset of each of the children who encounter and befriend August and what they are thinking.  From his sister Via to his best friend Zach.

By allowing the reader into each person's mind Palacio encounters the bigger picture, seeing things from everyone's perspective and not judging.  Sure when Via's best friend Miranda stops speaking to her we want to dislike her or when Jack, August's first friend at school, says that he would kill himself if he looked like August and was only his friend because the principal made him, we want to hate him.  However, when Palacio shows the reader their side of the story you begin to understand, divorce and social pressure caused these things to happen.  These are both things that children can relate to, especially social pressure.

This book is a must have in any library.  It teaches children about acceptance, not just of people who are different from you, but even your friends who begin to grow apart from you or say something stupid without thinking about it.  You never know another person's story and in this easy to read and relate to book does an outstanding job at teaching children and adults what it is like from another person's perspective.   

This book is a must read for children and adults and I hope that you will pick it up today.

Purchase it here on Amazon.

Other books you might like:

Paperboy 

Mockingbird  

Out of My Mind