Leon Chameleon P.I. and the Case of the Kidnapped Mouse by Jan Hurst-Nicholson

Rating: WORTHY!

Not to be confused with Leon the Chameleon by Mélanie Watt, which I haven't read, but which is evidently a young children's story about misfits and acceptance, this is a series for somewhat older children about a different chameleon coincidentally named Leon, and who is a private investigator just like his great uncle was. Jan Hurst-Nicholson is the author of Bheki and the Magic Light which I reviewed favorably back in April 2015, as I also did her young children's fiction about a left-handed girl, The Race. I also review the first book in this series on my blog.

I'm not a big fan of series, but I tried not to let that color my review of this chameleon in his second appearance...!

In episode two of Leon's adventures, a woodland mouse is kidnapped by an ill-informed human boy who thinks he can take better care of the mouse - about whom he knows nothing - than the mouse can do for himself. Wrong! This novel not only continues to wise us up to the wildlife, their habits, and behaviors, it also sets out to educate children that wild life is best left wild, and that capturing wild animals in an attempt to domesticate then or keep them as pets, is doomed to failure. Leave them in their natural habitat, and we'll always have a natural habitat to enjoy.

This story was published in the nineties, and is now re-released as an ebook complete with great original images by Barbara McGuire. The main character, Leon lives in an African forest and tries to help out various animal victims of criminal activity such as egg-napping and human abduction of forest critters. This time a woodland mouse has been abducted, and Leon and the police are in full cooperation to rescue one of their own. Using bird spies and a non-naked mole rat (this is a children's story after all!), the mislaid mouse is tracked down to a cage in a garage, but the garage is by a house across a busy highway and there's a dog on guard. Can Leon come up with a plan to save his furry brother?

In a mice, er, nice twist, an unlikely lad from the first story in this series is called into action in a rather heroic role in this story. I really liked that, but I'm not going to rat on the author and tell you which character it is. Once again, Leon's inventiveness and careful thinking save the day. As before, the best thing about his novel apart from the humor and the writing, is the delightful way the author sneaks in educational material about the animals who appear as characters, and in this particular story, sends a message to leave well alone when it comes to nature. I recommend this whole-heartedly, but I can't for the life of me figure out why Leon doesn't like tongue-twisters....

Leon Chameleon PI and the Case of the Missing Canary Eggs by Jan Hurst-Nicholson

Rating: WORTHY!

Not to be confused with Leon the Chameleon by Mélanie Watt, which I haven't read, but which is evidently a young children's story about misfits and acceptance, this is a series for somewhat older children about a different chameleon coincidentally named Leon, and who is a private investigator just like his great uncle was. Jan Hurst-Nicholson is the author of Bheki and the Magic Light which I reviewed favorably back in April 2015, as I also did her young children's fiction about a left-handed girl, The Race. I also review the second book in this series on my blog.

But back to the review in progress. Leon lives in an African forest and tries to help out various animal victims of criminal activity such as egg-napping and human abduction of forest critters. He never seems to get paid, which is par for the course for lowly PIs! He does, however, get all his food and lodging free from the forest, and he doesn't own a car, so his expenses are minimal....

This book was first published in 1993, and re-released as an ebook in 2009. It's amusingly and competently illustrated by Barbara McGuire, and this first book introduces us to the forest, to Leon, and to the local police (the Pigeon Valley Police), consisting of Constable Mole, Sergeant Loerie, and Lieutenant Crow, as well as a host of other forest creatures of all stripes, dapples, brindling, spots, and whatever. Mrs Canary left her nest for only the briefest of times, yet when she returned, her three eggs were missing! Obviously someone poached them and no one is singing! It's time to scramble the police! Call out the frying squad. No, it's actually the flying squad!

I don't know if they really have a flying squad in police departments in South Africa, where the author lives, but she grew up in Britain, so maybe she's conflating. I don't know, but either way, it's funny. In Britain, the flying squad, through rhyming slang, was known as the Sweeney, from Sweeney Todd, and was a huge hit show in Britain many years back. But I digress!

So, with eggs missing and the police struggling, Leon leaps, well quivers, to the rescue, the long tongue of the law, using his keen mind and his swiveling eyes which, to paraphrase Joseph Heller, could see more things than most people, but none of them too clearly! Nevertheless, paying close attention to the clues, Leon soon has it all figured out, and as the police run down one useless 'lead' after another, Leon closes in on the likely suspects despite some rather unfair disparagement from the law.

The best thing about his novel apart from its sense of humor and the beautiful way it's written, is the sneaky way the author slips in educational material about the animals who appear as characters. This is the way a really good children's novel ought to be done, but rarely is. I recommend this completely.

A Party for Pepper by Sarah Hartsig

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a great book for helping teach young children to count up to ten. It's presented in the form of a birthday party for a charming young mouse named Pepper (full disclosure: this is a favorite name of mine, having known two different people who were named or nicknamed Pepper, and loving both of them!). As the preparations for the party are undertaken, it so happens that a progressively increasing variety items are encountered - it's almost as though the author planned it that way!

Pepper is a charmer and the author's art work makes it clear how fun and warm this whole celebration really is. I recommend this one for a sweet and colorful story, and for its educational value.

Webster's Bedtime by Hannah Whaley

Rating: WORTHY!

This short young children's book was a great idea in my opinion. It teaches children that staying up late playing with electronic devices isn't a good idea - because the devices need to get their rest too! Told in rhyme, it's a nice way to work it!

Webster is a spiderling who has a veritable plethora of electronics, from phone to games to pad. When his mom tells him it's bedtime, he resorts to that age-old children's ruse - the negotiation. I won't make a sound he claims. Any parent knows how well that works. Even if it were true, it still didn't address the issue, which wasn't the noise, but the lateness of the hour.

Webster has a harder time trying to rationalize his behavior when his toys start complaining that they're tired too, but he does give it the old college try. Or in his case, as a youngster in several quick images, maybe it's the collage try? He offers to read to the electronics, sing them a song, tuck them in, but the smart phone, as you would expect, objects. Sharp arachnid that he is, Webster quickly realizes that the only way to deal with this is to turn them off so they can recharge, just as sleep will recharge him.

Illustrated amusingly by the author, this colorful book represents a practical and fresh approach to addressing modern parental concerns. If you can teach children that electronics are their friend, and just like their friends, have to sleep regularly, then it's likely to be a lot easier prying Gameboys and controllers and pads out of kids hands and luring the kid into a good night's sleep, too. I liked this book and recommend it.

Disaster Capitalism by Antony Loewenstein

Rating: WORTHY!

The cronyism and good old boy networking that arose under the Bush administration when it cavalierly kicked-off the two longest-running wars in US history – and significantly privatized them – was a shocking disgrace. The problem is that when such things are let loose, it becomes a lot harder to eradicate them than it would have been to prevent them in the first place.

That the US military is ridiculously profligate in how it spends your tax dollars is so well-known that it has become a cliché, but this does nothing to alleviate how much the mind boggles at the discovery by the GAO (Government Accountability Office) when it looked into 95 defense projects last year that there was $295 billion in wasteful spending!

This amazing book starts by covering Middle East war, specifically Afghanistan and the contingent and subsequent profiteering. Chapter two looks at the state of Greece, which is dire, and their human rights abuses even more so. Chapter three moves on to post-earthquake Haiti which is even more dire than is Greece, having been a pawn in the capitalist-communist cold war, and which therefore had two brutal dictators in a row, using US-supplied arms and money to simultaneously shore-up their power base and beat down the locals.

The fourth chapter covers Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the copper and gold mining at the Paguna mine in Bougainville. The fifth takes a look at the US prison population which is the highest in the world despite the USA being one of the most fundamentally religious nations on Earth. I guess organized religion does nothing to keep people honest, huh?!

The sixth chapter is hardly better - it covers private company G4S (formerly Group 4 Securicor, the largest security corporation in the world measured by revenue) in Britain in maintaining (supposedly) housing for asylum seekers in Britain. It covers other such corporations too. The author mentioned Sheffield which I have visited, although not the area he discusses.

People there are living in appalling conditions with no idea of when their case will be reviewed (or even if it is being reviewed). This is in a nation where the top five richest families control more wealth than the poorest twenty percent of the British population - in a world where the wealthiest one percent of people are richer than the other 99 percent.

There were many writing issues with the advance review copy which really never ought to have made it that far in this age of ebooks and spell-checkers. Errors that running a spell-checker would catch included: Portau-Prince, and twentiethcentury. I found many examples of words run together, such as “warlordcontrolled” where it should be “warlord controlled”. There were also instances where an apostrophe ‘s’ after a word was separated from the word by a space, such as in “state ‘s” instead of “state’s”. I don’t know if these were in the original text or if they were simply created as part of the process of moving that text into Kindle format. Hopefully they will be eradicated before this actually gets published.

There were other instances which did not arise as a result of any transformative process, such as where I read, “myriad of ways” which should have simply been “myriad ways”. There were three other instances where this was written in the same way. Myriad can be used as a noun or an adjective, but I’ve never seen a case where trailing it with “of” has made sense. In this same vein, I noted an inappropriate use of 'entitled': "released a report in 2012 entitled The Shadow State". I see this a lot - entitled used where it should be simply 'titled'. I think this word is going the same way as inflammable and irregardless! Sad but true.

One more complaint: the text has references in-line, but the references are not clickable, and unless they’re offered in that format, it’s a lot harder to skim screens back and forth and look up a reference in an ebook, than it is in a regular print book to turn a few pages to the end of a chapter or to the reference section at the end of the book. It's worth a thought!

At one point the author describes a certain political mentality as "Debtocracies, not democracies," which strikes me as a writing issue. How do we use made-up words? Strictly speaking, since we’re dealing with Greek roots here, it ought to have been something like ofeilí̱ocracy, but since no one would know what that meant, and since 'debtocracy' isn't actually a word (I guess it is now! LOL!), it should have been written as 'debt-ocracy' in my opinion. But you pays your drachmas and you takes your choice, I guess. And let's not get started on 'thugocracy'...!

All that aside, I recommend this book as a worthy read because it's as awesome as it is depressing. For example, at one point the author says "The average age of Papua New Guineans was twenty-one, and 30 percent of the population was under thirty". Now math is far from my strong point, and this seemed weird to me, but when I looked into it, it turned out to be true. How disturbing is that? There's a massive population in PNG of kids aged below fifteen years, and it's disturbing given what big business wants to do there.

The US prison population scandal is as upsetting as anything else. The author quotes from a book, The New Jim Crow (which I haven't read) by Michelle Alexander who tells us that the US imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than did South Africa under apartheid, believe it or not. She also tells us that three out of four Washington DC young black males will serve some time in jail, and The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelve-fold since 1980.

And how angering is this:

CCA sent letters to forty-eight states in 2012 offering to buy their prisons— on the condition that the states guaranteed 90 percent occupancy and a twenty-year management contract. Some states did deals with the GEO Group to ensure contractually that 100 percent of prison beds would be filled every night.

Talking of doing well out of it, the author clues us in: "In 2013 CAA’s revenue reached nearly $ 1.7 billion, with a profit of $ 300 million. All of this money had come from government contracts." And this while there are ten times as many mentally disturbed people in jail as there are in psychiatric institutions. Is this the definition of insanity?!

I was more than willing to overlook the technical issues I encountered in view of the wealth of information which even to someone who is aware of what can go on and go wrong with these things, is still staggering. It becomes quite horrifying when we realize that we have to do something about this once we get over our paralysis from the sheer magnitude of these issues and of how shameless and brazen government and big business are. I recommend this book completely.

Oceans Of The World In Color

Rating: WORTHY!
>p>
I loved the title of this children's book - like Oceans of the World in gray scale would be considered a possibility? I don't think so! But the thing is that it's not just a book full of really pretty pictures; it also contains factual text that puts the pictures in perspective. In short, it's a book about the ocean that has depth, a few salty remarks about species diversity and so on, that are plentiful enough to make then worthwhile, but concise enough that some of them at least will stick with the child and maybe have some lasting effect. Without our oceans we're screwed and the sooner children appreciate and embrace this fact the better in my opinion. I recommend this book.

Mammals

Rating: WORTHY!

I recommend this Scholastic Voyages of Discovery book about mammals. It's yet another in a series which offers engaging and colorful images, and introduces our closest cousins in evolution's majestic and historic portrait of life on Earth. Ideal for young children. it has gorgeous images depicting the diversity of life and the inventiveness of evolution in equipping that life to survive, something which I am wondering will apply to the poor tiny male spider which is even now in my back yard playing a silent melody on the huge female's web, no doubt desperately hoping, in his spiderly way, that he will be lover and not lunch. This book is really well done and even has a page that I thought was really neat where the footprint tracks of several different animals, including giraffe, deer, cheetah, rabbit, and kangaroo, and impressed in the page so you can not only see them, but run your fingers over the page and feel them. Wonderful, I would have loved this as a kid, and I recommend it.

Musical Instruments

Rating: WORTHY!

I recommend this one from Scholastic, which aims to teach the instruments of the orchestra and elsewhere - facilitated with a map showing different kinds of music on different continents. As other books in this series, it is full of attractive and illustrative images, and it offers a really good and useful basic grounding in musical instruments for young children.

There's a page showing how music is annotated, so you know the score, a page showing how an orchestra is arrayed radially and radiantly, and a page of stickers for children to apply in applicable locations throughout the book, so you'll stick with it. A wealth of information suitable for the child's mind so they can see sharp and not be flat. Not to harp on it, but recommend this one to stave off boredom and cause the scales to fall from your kid's eyes! Make a note. This could be key to your child's education!

Architecture and Construction

Rating: WORTHY!

I recommend this one for Scholastic which aims to teach the beauty and joy of architecture. As other books in this series, it is full of attractive and illustrative images, and it really highlights how entrancing really good architecture can be. It begins with a quick overview of construction from something as ostensibly simple as an igloo, to the huge buildings in modern cities, but it also focuses not just on the buildings, but how and with what they are built. It talks of the materials - including the glass and iron of the Victorian Crystal Palace, now better known as a soccer team than an expo building as it happens! I recommend this.

Our Changing Planet

Rating: WORTHY!

I recommend this educational book about how geological and other events change Earth. It's colorfully illustrated and has lots of fold-outs and fun things on every page to engage young minds and keep interest.

It has images such as one which shows how it would look were the Pacific ocean drained away and you could see the topography way down on the bottom. It has in-depth views of volcanic activity, something which has changed history on our planet as well as preserved magnificent treasures such as the footprints at Laetoli, and it has fascinating images, such as the large fold-out comparison of a modern view of Earth's continents side-by-side with one which shows how people thought the world looked before it was properly charted. I recommend this book for engaging young minds.

Trashed by Derf Backderf

Rating: WORTHY!

18 months of trash generated by Americans would form a line of full garbage trucks that would stretch to the Moon. A quarter billion tons a year - three pounds of trash per person per day - even after recycling. Half a century ago we generated less when there was no recycling (granted the population was less, though)!

That's the vein in which Derf Backderf launches his graphic novel, and he apparently knows what he's talking about, having worked as a garbage-man at one point in his life. This is both a reality-based fictional romp through the garbage and an instruction manual on what's wrong with our 'waste lots care not' society vis-à-vis our generation and disposal (or not) of our trash.

We learn a lot about the dubious joys of this line of work from the disgustingly liquid and stinking garbage of the summer to the frozen to the curb garbage of winter, as well as other issues such as the weight of the garbage, the dangers of driving a truck on icy roads, and the exhaust fumes coming out at face height on a truck supposedly designed to allow guys to ride on the outside - right behind that exhaust! The authors tells us that garbage collection has the sixth highest mortality rate, behind only logging, commercial fishing, piloting aircraft, roofing, and iron working. Yep, they beat out even policing and fire fighting!

So what's in our trash? According to the author, using an EPA survey, a third of our trash is food and yard waste, which effectively recycles itself as compost. Another third is recyclable materials such as wood, metal, plastic and glass. Less than ten percent of the plastic is recycled. And the EPA figures used here may not even be telling the whole truth.

The distressing thing is that this graphic novel itself wastes paper by having way too much white space and empty pages! In the e-version which I read, this doesn't matter of course, but it would if it went to a significant print run. In addition to assorted blank pages throughout the course of this book, and the occasional page with only one small illustration, there is a rather staggering twelve blank pages at the end of the book. That's an even number, meaning this book could have been significantly smaller and thereby used proportionately less paper in a print version. It's worth thinking about - but then so is the content of this book.

The novel is illustrated crisply and competently in black and white line drawings. The author doesn't know how to spell temperamental (tempermental? No!) or asbestos (asbestoes is not a disease you want, trust me on this!). After a while it occurred to me that this had been done deliberately, but I wasn't sure. Other than that, this is good, interesting, fun, and best of all, informative enough to make a reader think. For example, although we now have less than a quarter of the active landfills we used to have, the size of the landfills has increased. The example this author gives is of Salton, which expanded from eight acres, 45 feet deep in 2008 to 287 acres 250 feet deep in 2012. Some can dip down to four hundred feet. Some can cover more than two thousand acres, or over three square miles, such as the one outside Las Vegas. The author gets all these things across without any long and boring lectures.

On the up side, landfills can produce methane which can be captured and used as energy for up to half a century after the landfill becomes land full. On the down side, even a ten acre landfill can leak 3,000 gallons of toxic fluids into ground water every year, and the decomposition of the waste takes almost forever. Even a steel can might take half a century to disintegrate; a plastic bottle almost half a millennium, and both of them should have been recycled. Don't even get started on the yellow torpedoes - the plastic drink bottles full of urine that are tossed out by truckers who don't want to stop for a rest break. Utah, so we're told, found 30,000 of these one year!

There are over 4,000 landfills in Texas alone, both functional and defunct. This reminded me of the John Lennon contribution to the Beatles song, A Day in the life: "I read the news today, oh boy! 4,000 landfills, Texas, USA, and so the stink was rather large, and we could smell it all. Now we know how just how much stench it takes to fill the Astrodome! I have to re-cy-cuhl-uh-uhl-uh-uhl...."

I highly recommend this book as a very informative and worthy, if rather depressing, read, but get the e-version!

The Math Inspectors by Daniel Kenney and Emily Boever

Rating: WARTY!

This is a really short (~127 pages) novel aimed at middle graders. It's book one of a series, and although I originally rated it a conditional 'worthy' the rating was a vote for improvements in future episodes. I had two issues with it which I hoped would be resolved in future episodes in this series. They were not, hence the downgrade. The first problem was with how this novel viewed the police.

I'm writing this review on the same morning that the Dallas police escaped a massacre when a severely disturbed and unfortunately also very violent person launched what appears to have been a one-man assault on a police precinct using bombs and automatic weapons - and this wasn't even a terrorist attack as such. It was just a pissed-off guy who didn't take kindly to police interfering in his cozy little abusive relationship.

Police are human, and as such they can be clueless and idiotic and even violent, but they are all we have between us and a wild west existence where might makes right. I certainly don't want my kids living there, although all too many kids do suffer such an existence. I didn't think this novel took the right tack in portraying these police as being incompetent, arrogant, and downright knee-jerk stupid. Cops are a heck of a lot smarter than that when it comes to seeing through the foggy veil of criminal theft and violence.

The other issue I had was with the portrayal of one of the female characters. One minor problem with this story is that we don't get much information about the four main characters, young children who are really good at solving problems, using math. We didn't get an info dump at the start, for which I was grateful, but we didn't get much info doled out as the story progressed either, which I think was a mistake. Maybe the middle graders won't worry about that. One character we did learn about was Gertie. I can't imagine anyone calling their kid Gertrude these days (or Stanley, or Felix for that matter. Charlotte I can see), but my problem wasn't actually with her name, it was with the fact that she's chubby and evidently sensitive to it.

The problem is that we don't know if this is merely "baby-fat" in which case it's of no concern as long as the kid is otherwise healthy, and eating wisely and exercising judiciously, or if it's really a health problem. It would have been nice to know more, but without better information, I have to say that I was sorry to see this represented as an issue in a world where women are already pressured (and yes from that age and younger) to conform to a certain male ideal as represented on fashion runways, and in movies and TV shows - as well as in an ungodly amount of fiction.

In the US, a nation which accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, 30% of people are overweight or obese, and this is going to get worse. This five percent of the population represents thirteen percent of overweight people world-wide. America is living large and that isn't a compliment - it's a tragedy which is not only waiting to happen, it's already happening. This doesn't help those women who have a perfectly fine weight and shape (ie they are neither stick insects nor Goliath beetles) to have this added pressure of feeling like they're part of the problem. This isn't just an adult problem either, it's a children problem too, and it starts at a disturbingly young age. Most people are not overweight, and that includes most women. It doesn't make things better if young children are given to understand that they're overweight when they're really not, so I wish this novel had been clearer, or had not mentioned this issue at all if it's not going to be relevant to the story.

Okay, after that rant, let's get to the story! The four afore-mentioned, Charlotte, Felix, Gertie, and Stanley are sixth-grade friends who love math and like to solve problems. It's commendable that there are books like this showing kids doing math in the real world and getting useful, meaningful results. Frankly, I never cared how many apples Johnny had or how many friends he had to share them equally between. It never happens! But to show Stanley work out that the prime suspect could not have driven his car to the point where police picked him up if he had committed the crime as first indicated, was wonderful! I would have liked to have seen more math - and seen illustrations showing how the math problems are worked rather than the handful of illustrations showing scenes from the story, which were neither very good nor particularly helpful.

I would also have liked to have seen the work-load distributed more evenly over the group, so each of them did some math, rather than have Stanley steamer the math whiz do everything while the others, including the two girls (including the "chubby" one), serve very little purpose other than be his minions. It seems that Gertie's only distinguishing feature is that she has a good memory. I felt that this demeaned her and I would have liked to see a more equitable distribution of talent, work, and drudgery, all of which is needed, and all of which merits praise.

I liked the way that clues were dropped here and there, and that there were some red herrings and wrong turns, but like I said, I was hoping that this series improved as it went on, and instead it has deteriorated. My review of volume two was in January 2017

Things You Might See Swimming Under the Sea by Louise Lintvelt

Title: Things You Might See Swimming Under the Sea
Author: Louise Lintvelt
Publisher: Amazon
Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated by Do Thai Thanh

This is one of a pair of reviews I'm doing today of books by the same writer (Louise Lintvelt) and illustrator (Do Thai Thanh). This particular one depicts some interesting life you might find under the sea. As usual, none of this life is plant life - apart from a brief mention of coral. For some reason, non-animal life always seems to be given back seat in these things. We do get a refreshing variety of animal life, though - from invertebrates to reptiles to fish, and mammals. We're also treated to a wrecked galleon sporting pirate treasure.

One of the interesting factors here (other than the sea life, of course!) is that the book is devoted to teaching colors, so in each case the color of the animal is recounted (and illustrated with colored text). We get a veritable rainbow of color as well as no color (black) and all colors (white).

The art work is rather well done. I particularly liked the rather impressionistic view of a sunset over the ocean, and the expression on the sea horse's face, while not realistic (they do not have binocular vision!) was highly entertaining. Of course the sea horse is actually a bizarre fish, but calling it a sea fish is far too vague and just doesn't get it done, don't you think?!

The story is educational, too - beyond the colors. At the back there is a section giving brief details of the animals featured in the illustrations. It was a wee bit small for that particular text to be read on a smart phone however, so I'd recommend this for a mini pad or larger, or the print version, but I do recommend it.

The Adventures of Blue Ocean Bob - A Challenging Job by Brooks Olbrys

Title: The Adventures of Blue Ocean Bob - A Challenging Job
Author: Brooks Olbrys
Publisher: Children's Success Unlimited
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a great little novel and picture book which tells - in poetry yet - of Ocean Bob's adventures on the sea front where he does his darnedest to keep the coast clear (of junk) and help ocean wildlife.

With his best friend Xena the hummingbird always ready to give advice, Bob proves he's a guy who's not afraid to ask for direction (and other forms of help) from his ocean of pals, including Mary Marine (his mentor), Al the dolphin, Doc the turtle, Earl the clam, and Wallace the walrus.

Bob's adventures include lending a helping hand, a pelican's plight, offering safe passage, heeding a simple reminder, and diving deep!

Beautifully drawn and colored, this book is aimed at 6 to 8 year-olds (hey, I'm an honorary eight-year-old! No, I am! That's my story and I'm sticking to it like a limpet to rock...), I was impressed by the warmth, heart, and art.

The Great Race by Stacey Hirata

Title: The Great Race
Author: Stacey Hirata & Charles Huang (no website found)
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!

This is a pictorial retelling, for young children, of an Asian legend explaining the zodiac. In the west we have a zodiac which is fairy-tale interpretation of certain constellations which lie along the apparent path of the Sun across the sky, and which is comprised of (from the start of the year to the end): Aquarius, Pisces, Ares, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, and Capricorn.

In other parts of the world, other names are ascribed to these apparent patterns of stars. The Chinese zodiac consists of Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig, Rat, and Ox, but their system is much more complex than ever it became in the west, assigning birth years to the signs, and also yin and yang, and the antiquated "elements" such as earth fire, metal, water, and wood, so the whole thing forms a sixty-year cycle. This is how you get a zodiacal sign assigned to your birth year.

This story doesn't go into anywhere near that much detail, and instead retells the legend of how the signs came to be in the order to which all Asians are accustomed. It all began with a foot race declared by the Jade Emperor in celebration of his birthday. All of his favorite animals were to compete, and the first twelve to cross the line would be immortalized in the stars.

Each of the animals uses whatever talents it has peculiar to its species to try and get ahead, and slowly, as we turn the pages, we discover some of the little animals faring better than others.

I'm not Asian, and I certainly don't believe in horoscopes or zodiacal powers, but that's not the point here! The point is whether you're interested in fun fairy tales and legends, and in how different peoples of the world think about their surroundings and their place in nature. This story is beautifully and simply told, and it's elegantly illustrated, offering some educational material as to what lies behind the fictional story. I liked it.

Harry and the Hot Lava by Chris Robertson

Title: Harry and the Hot Lava
Author: Chris Robertson
Publisher: Xist Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!

Errata:
The pages are not numbered, but there is one where "it's" is used in place of the correct form for the context: its.
There's also a page prior to this where lava is described as "most dangerous liquid known to man". I had a couple of issues wioth this, but the important one is the use of 'man'. Is it necessary to exclude woman so rigidly? Could it not be (hoever inaccurate it might be) "most dangerous liquid known to life", or "to humans" or somethign less exclusive? There are almsot four billion women on this planet. Can we not remember them a bit mroe often?

This is a very short children's picture book, so there isn’t a lot to review. It’s about a kid with a delightfully wild imagination (he reminds me of my own kids whose imaginations, thankfully, have never deserted them even though they're now way too old for a book like this), who appears to be stranded amidst hot lava which is invading his home from all quarters. Can he leap to freedom? Where will he land? (You might be surprised!)

The drawings are rudimentary but very colorful, and really evocative. The book is as full of excitement and danger as Harry is full of ideas and wild descriptions, but he never panics, and is always planning his escape. This is definitely something your kids will want to play - perhaps after exploring what real lava looks like - not in person of course - but from the safety of a TV documentary or something on the web.

Who knows, perhaps you have a budding vulcanologist in your family? I recommend this book for a fun read alone, but it’s also a great starting point for a chance to stir your child's imagination about the wonders of planet Earth and it's geology and inner structure.

Of course, you don't want to load them up with learning, learning, learning and nothing else, so it occurs to me that a whole day could be themed around this as they're encouraged to explore the idea, starting with the book, then a video, then perhaps go looking for rocks in the yard or at the park (assuming your park isn't buried under snow at this point!), and imagine how hot things would have to be to melt an actual rock! You can have them practice their motor skills emulating Harry's escapes (with due safety precautions, of course!), have them develop confidence and cool-thinking skills, and also have them appreciate a little more the wonderful and complex planet on which we're all privileged to live.

Silver Bunny and the Secret Fort Chop by Eileen Wacker

Title: Silver Bunny and the Secret Fort Chop (I was unable to find this book at B&N, not available at Amazon)
Author: Eileen Wacker
Publisher: Once Kids
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Illustrated by Curt Spurging.

Erratum:
P4 "moive" should be "movie"

This is another in a growing series of which I reviewed one edition in July last year: Rainbow Panda and the Firecracker Fiasco, so I was pleased to have this chance to revisit that world and see how things are going. This story is from the same stable and by the same author as the earlier one, but it's about a different character.

I don't know what the marketing plan is for this book but I was unable to find it anywhere. I could find no useful references to it online. It wasn't on B&N nor was it available at Amazon although they did list it, and I couldn't even find a cover image out there! Normally I take the cover image for a blog illustration directly from the ebook if I can, but in this case, the one on my blog is from Net Galley.

In this edition, we follow the antics of Silver Bunny, who is bored in Orange Bunny's taekwondo class. I used to date someone who pursued taekwondo, so this was interesting to me. Silver already knows the moves, but she isn't disciplined enough to understand that you not only have to know the moves, you also have to live them - to be able to put your heart and soul into them to make them real and worthy.

Silver would far rather be off surfing, and isn't even remotely deterred by the fact that last time she went surfing she was almost swallowed by a whale - that was just an accident, she protests! Eventually she and her friends come up with a plan to sneak off and do their own thing.

This book is illustrated, but none of the illustrations were visible in my Adobe Digital Editions reader - it was all text and white space, so I can't show any samples as I normally do. I saw the illustrations in the Kindle edition, but they were grey scale, which effectively prevents me from saying anything useful about them, except that I recall them being really quite good and very colorful in the earlier volume I read. I can only assume that the illustrations in this volume will be along the same lines. This doesn't mean the illustrations won't be as good, but do note that the illustrator here is not the same one who illustrated Rainbow Panda.

Teaming up with a couple of hamsters (you know what hamsters can be like, I'm sure - they're almost as bad as rats for mischief and exploration), Silver Bunny goes surfing; then they look up Rainbow Panda to get help building a secret fort where they can make a movie about taekwondo. There may be a dragon involved here, too.... The problem is that things don't turn out too well, and they discover a valuable lesson about the importance of proper learning and sound preparedness.

As in the previous volume I read in this series, this one also features quite an extensive glossary explaining aspects of Far Eastern culture, including the things depicted in this story. I recommend this young children's book.

Is A Worry Worrying You? by Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz

Title: Is A Worry Worrying You?
Author: Ferida Wolff and Harriet May Savitz
Publisher: Tanglewood Press
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!

Illustrated adroitly by Marie Letourneau.

This came to me in the form of a recommendation from a dear friend, and I thought, "Good call! I have to read that!" It's very much in the mold of an earlier volume I reviewed When the Anger Ogre Visits which is another reason I wanted to review this one. I was not disappointed! Note that the two books are not connected: they have different publishers, different writers, and different illustrators, although they do seem to have some aims in common, and the illustrations do share a certain style.

The story sets up realistic sources of worry, but frames them in rather absurdist and amusing scenarios which I think is a better approach than simply playing it straight. I mean who hasn't had a herd of elephants show up for tea? I know I have, and I didn't even have any lemonade on hand, so I made a peel for lemons and that worked out quite well....

A host of different sources of worry are explored and suggestions made, although I'm not sure that attempting to bribe your new teacher with an apple (or in this case bribing the new bear of a teacher with honey) is the wisest choice. I would have suggested a nice home-made welcome card. That's actually one of the joys of this book: it's so ebullient that you can't help but ponder the scenarios and try to come up with your own ideas. It's part of the fun, and an important skill to master.

I worry a lot about all sorts of things (the price of being a parent, and of working a demanding job), and I know it would have made a difference to my childhood had I been given excellent coping skills at an early age, so this is an inspired idea for a children's book - engrossing, amusing and practical to boot. Yes, I worry about that boot, too!

Marie Le Tourneau's illustrations are detailed and colorful. I adored the one where Uncle Herman comes to visit. The expression on the little girl's face is priceless and made me laugh out loud, for which I heartily thank the artist. The illustrations might be a bit scary at times, but overcoming the fear your worry induces is another important step towards conquering it. This illustrator has an image from this book on the opening page to her website. Her bio is well worth reading.

As a writer I always advocate that names mean something (or they ought to! You can't just pull a character name out of your aspirations and hope it works - they require some thought), but Marie Letourneau's name left me baffled. I had thought that Le Tourneau was French for something like "the tournament" or "the turn" (as in 'the rotation'), but when I ran it through a translator, it returned, "the runsat". I'm like "What?" I'm sorry but WHAT?

I ran that through that same website's dictionary, and it couldn't find the word! What's the point in giving a translation rendering a word that doesn't even appear in your own dictionary, pray tell?! Now there's an interesting name. The curious thing is that if you run it in reverse - and translate 'the runsat' from English to French - it gives 'Le tourneau', so at least it has consistency going for it if nothing else! Runsat is actually an app for Windows (Ian spits discreetly to one side) computers, but that's nothing to do with this.

Having hit that brick wall solidly, I was too dazed to chase after the writer's names, and I didn't need to because, playfully, they immediately suggested a 'meaning': Free the Wolf and Harriet May Save It! How charming is that? Thus delighted and mollified, I moved on, only to discover that Harriet May Savitz is no longer with us, which was disturbing to say the least. Her daughter evidently runs her website. Ferida Wolff has a site at the University of Southern Mississippi celebrating her work for goodness sakes! This whole name searching thing proved humbling, I can tell you! Maybe, sometimes, it's better not to ask? No, not really!

This is an entertaining and useful book, well-written, and nicely drawn and colored, and incorporating interesting ideas and good suggestions about how to cope with worries, and more importantly how to side-step a particular worry by adopting an improvised solution. These are all important methods to help children ease away woes and get them thinking about how to invent their own fixes, which is crucial. I can see this being of most use if parents discuss each scenario with their children - perhaps by exploring solutions to each problem before the book's own solution is revealed, and then discussing who came up with the best idea. No worries, mate!

The Mouse's House by Susan Quayle

Title: The Mouse's House
Author/Editor: Susan Quayle
Publisher: Singing Dragon
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

Illustrated by Melissa Muldoon.

According to wikipedia:

A 2009 systematic review of randomized controlled trials concludes: "The best evidence available to date does not demonstrate convincingly that reflexology is an effective treatment for any medical condition."

Having got that out of the way, who doesn’t like a good foot massage?! As long as you do no harm, it certainly can’t hurt, and if it works for your child, then go for it! I know I would have welcomed pretty much anything that worked whilst trying to calm down two baby boys in succession!

This foot-massage is couched within a story designed specifically for children, about a rather persnickety mouse who is having a hard time finding a cozy place to settle down for the winter. I'm not convinced that a locale that's baldly out in the open is the best place, but it’s her choice, and the mouse is determined to make her new home work, so off she goes to various animal friends (and it's nice for once to see a snake not represented as evil incarnate!) to seek their advice. There's nothing wrong with that. Smart mouse! No wonder they're everywhere!

The pages have colorful pictures illustrating moments in mouse life, and alternate pages have sing-song rhymes to read to your child as you massage their feet. Heck, I’d take this treatment now, let alone when I was a kid!

One of the most important things you can do with a child is to make frequent physical contact and to communicate often (and in the friendliest manner you can muster for your mood!). At first it doesn’t even matter what you say, only that you say it lovingly, warmly, and softly, even if it’s nonsense. As the child matures, these poems offer a chance for non-nonsense communication, and are quite charming. They will certainly help to maintain contact and communication in support of the foot rubs.

There are copious instructions on how to conduct the massage, gently, with thumbs and fingers, applying light pressure. And let’s face it, if you do it right, then there's every chance the child might return the favor when you are the one who needs care! That would be my dream, anyway!

Despite my reservations about eastern "alternative medicine", I would still recommend this book as a great way to start out right with your new baby by fostering the perfect kind of parent-child intimacy, which will encourage your child to grow to be warm, socialized, and loving, and that's all any parent needs to hope for.

When the Anger Ogre Visits by Andrée Salom

Title: When the Anger Ogre Visits
Author/Editor: Andrée Salom
Publisher: Wisdom
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!

Illustrated by Ivette Salom.

Here's a real charmer - the book, that is, not the anger ogre! The colored drawings are powerful, especially the one of the ogre, and I love the way it shrinks and becomes more pleasant as the 'disarmament steps' are followed.

Anger is so perfectly natural that it’s often not even noticed when it rears its ugly head, so it’s not so much that it arises that's the problem, as it is how you greet it when it gets here! This book is designed to offer solutions that are fun and easy to practice, and can really make the difference between situation I'm managing, and Man, I'm raging!

This book smartly offers simple things to think - when it’s hard to think coherently. It suggests simple things to do when you think you know exactly what you should do. It's told sweetly in verse, which is hard to get angry about, even at the worst of times!

Every child needs a good system in place for coping, whether it’s with anger or any other kind of strong emotion, and this is a really good place to start.