Nick and Tesla's Solar-Powered Showdown by Bob Pflugfelder, Steve Hockensmith

Rating: WARTY!

I enjoyed the first volume that I read in this series which I reviewed back in March 2015, but this one fell flat for me. there were multiple problems with it. One which I am not counting against it is the poor presentation in Kindle's app for Android phones. Kindle has the suckiest app imaginable. Not every novel suffers from its depredations, but disturbingly many do, and this was one of them. The formatting was horrible, with text randomly exhibiting large font in the middle of nowhere, or small font likewise, or random caps in titles, and oddball numbers appearing in the middle of the text, which seemed to be page numbers. The fact that there was an annoying number of frivolous footnotes didn't help, either. Please note that this was an advance review copy, so perhaps the formatting problems will be resolved before the final version emerges. Here's an example of how it appeared:

Uncle Newt’s hairless cat Eureka jumped onto75

76

the dining room table,

Here's an example of the page numbers being mixed up with the footnotes, making a complete mess:

“In the past month, we’ve rescued77 a little girl from kidnappers, 5 defeated an army of robot robbers, 6 captured a ring of spies, 7 and thwarted the sabotage of both a major museum 8 and a big Hollywood movie. 9

The Kindle app on the iPad was just as bad. The Bluefire reader version on the iPad was fine.

That stuff was annoying, but the real problem here was not the formatting; it was the content. The story really wasn't very good, and it had a depressing amount of dumb to it. Parts of it were quite amusing, I grant, but nowhere near enough to carry this. Perhaps children with low expectations might find this entertaining, but I know that my kids would not find it appealing and they are only just outside of the middle grade age-range at which this is evidently aimed. To me it felt far too simplistic for modern sophisticated audiences, even young audiences, and there's not enough going on to keep them occupied. The gadgets the kids can build, which I felt was one of the strong points of this series in the other volume I read, were rather limp here. Two of them for example, consisted of a solar hot dog cooker which to me seemed a bit dubious (it's not wise to risk eating under-cooked meat, for example), and a balloon-powered ping-pong ball "cannon" which might be fun to play with, but which has nothing to do with solar power.

Some of the writing was not very smart, either. For example, consider this exchange:

It was bought for her by someone named Louis Quatorze.”
“Louis Squatorzi? What the heck kind of name is that?” Silas said.

Now we can see how Silas would have possibly mispronounced the name like he did if he had read it, as we are doing, but he didn't, he heard it. It would not have sounded like 'Louis Squatorzi' unless their uncle, who spoke those words, was a complete moron. Perhaps he was; he certinily behaved like it at times, but this felt far more like a case of a writer reading what they wrote instead of imagining it being spoken.

One thing which really bothered me was the lifestyle these children were leading, which seemed completely at odds with the environmental message which was supposedly being sent. The message was be kind to the environment, yet they were still tooling around in gas-guzzling and fume-emitting vehicles. There was no mention of electric or hybrid vehicles here, but the worst thing was these children's diet - they consumed a non-stop conveyor belt of junk food, which was frankly disgusting, and not the kind of thing I want my kids to be reading. If there had been some 'valid' reason for this - like they were captive and starving, and had no access to anything else, then I can see that sliding by, but this seemed to be their routine daily diet and it was highly inappropriate. It also detracted from the environmental message in that these kids evidently didn't know how to take care of themselves and eat healthily, so how on Earth could they take care of the planet? What kind of message does it send that this is supposedly a science-based story, and yet the sciences of biology, biochemistry, and health care are so abysmally neglected?

But based on the overall quality of the story, I honestly can't recommend this novel.

Eye of the Drone by Rebecca Merry Murdock

Rating: WARTY!

I've had mixed results with this author and this is the second of three novels with which I was not very impressed. I didn't like Rocco's Wings (note that this isn't a part of this series), which I reviewed in March of 2015. I did like the first volume in the Wild Cats series, which I also reviewed in March of 2015.

This is the second volume of the series, and is also an advance review copy for which I was grateful for the opportunity to take a look at, but which for me fell short of the glory of its predecessor. I applaud the idea behind this series, which is to educate young readers of the plight of wild cats, many of which are facing extinction, and I do appreciate that a good way to approach this is to tell an adventure story, in this case, one in which two young people get out and explore. For me though, this one took completely the wrong approach and let a serious and important topic devolve into complete fantasy. The wild cats which it was supposed to be about became pretty much an unimportant footnote or afterthought to the children's ever more implausible adventures, which included an encounter with a magical fairy who was disguised as a butterfly! It was too much for me and I think it sent this series along an unfortunately frivolous road from which it won't be able to return. The wild cats deserved better. I cannot in good faith recommend this volume.

The Spider on the Web by Lee Jordan

Rating: WORTHY!

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 89% of sexual solicitations were made in either chat rooms or instant messages and 1 in 5 youth (ages 10-17 years) has been sexually solicited online (JAMA, 2001)

I liked the way this was presented (and note the wording of the title - 'on' the web, not 'in' it) - a poetic warning to young children that the world wide web does indeed have spiders of the most monstrous kind - the people who crawl along the threads looking for easy prey.

Predatory behavior towards children on the Internet is a serious problem, and sharing this nicely illustrated and safely scary story takes children though some of the ways these people can get to know children sufficiently to perhaps tempt them to meet irl (in real life)rather than simply in the virtual world. It's told in rhyming lines, grouped with amusing illustrations in bright colors, which describe the tricks that are used and the people who try to safeguard internet users from these people. Even witches aren't safe.

This represents a fun way to approach teaching your child(ren) how to think smartly when using the web, and how to be careful, because people are not always who they say they are. I liked this and I recommend it as a worthy read.

Resources:
Internet Safety
Risk Factors for and Impact of Sexula Solicitaitons Online
Childhood Abuse, Avatar Choices, and Other Risk Factors Associated With Internet-Initiated Victimization of Adolescent Girls

Brady Needs a Nightlight by Brian Barlics, Gregory Burgess Jones

Rating: WORTHY!

This story, part of the 'Fundamentales' written in poetic quatrains by Brian Barlics, and illustrated quaintly by Gregory Burgess Jones

This is scary tale to tell 'e, of Brady Bat, a nervous nellie. It matters not if dark or light, Brady is shut down with fright! What can he do, he has no clue! Then one dark and scary night, young Brady Bat, he sees the light! Renewed now is his constitution, because of Brady's bright solution! There. That's done me in for a week or two!

I really liked this story, although I would have liked it better if Brady had first approached someone else with his fears. I don't think it's a good idea to send any kind of message to a child that she is on her own, and that friends, parents, relatives, guardians, older siblings, teachers, and so on aren't really of any help. The story still could have had these people fail to come up with a remedy, and Brady could have gone on to find his own amusing solution. Here's a spoiler, to clue you in: luciferase, luciferin!

One thing about this that I thought was great fun was that the bats are often shown hanging upside down (of course! what self-respecting bat doesn't enjoy a good diurnal inversion?), so if you read this to your child and have the kids it opposite you, they will see the bats standing up. I don't know why, but for some reason that amuses the heck out of me!

One caveat is that the text is way small. I can't speak for a print version of this, but it was only just legible on an iPad, and completely useless on a phone. I don't recommend asking an older person to read this to your kids unless the have great eyesight or a really good pair of eyeglasses! Why so many writers make their text so small in children's books, I cannot fathom.

On the iPad the pages are less than four inches square, and yes, you can enlarge them, but that's a pain to have to keep dicking around with the page size to read small text and then view the whole image. Part of the problem was that the pages in the iPad were laid out end to end like a film strip rather than as pages, and sometimes they became "sticky" and wouldn't swipe. When I tried enlarging them to fit the screen size, they tended to scoot to one edge of the screen instead of staying centered. I don't know what's up with that. I do know that Amazon has created a really crappy ebook reader with its Kindle app, so I wouldn't blame the author or (for once!) the publisher for this snafu. I can say that if I were going to buy this for some kid, I'd get the print version, not the ebook - except not the one Amazon is asking almost eight hundred dollars for!

Despite these issues, I did like this little book, and I consider it a worthy read.

Lily and the Paper Man by Rebecca Upjohn

Rating: WORTHY!

Illustrated very nicely by Renné Benoit, this young children's picture book (with lots of text!) is the story of Lily and her haunting encounter with a down-and-out guy who is selling newspapers. I read this in Adobe Digital Editions on a desk-top computer, which made for an odd read since the book isn't really set up for electronic format. It shows both pages side-by-side which, unless you switch it to full screen, makes for very small images and smaller text. It definitely wouldn't work on a smart phone!

That said, the layout was wonderful, and the text readable, and the images delightfully colored and drawn to appeal to young eyes. I loved the self-righteous pigeon sheltering under the newspaper as the story began, and the almost Santa-like beaming face of the paper man at the end of it. Lily is walking home with her mom in the rain, and this is how she happens to encounter this guy - old, slightly menacing-looking, grizzled. She literally bumps into him, and decides she wants to take the bus home the next day so she doesn't run into him again. He definitely made an impression on her!

The problem arises when it snows, and Lily can't stand the thought of riding the bus with fresh snow on the ground. Of course, she encounters the same man, selling his papers, and looking like he's freezing with his thin jacket, holes in his shoes, and no socks. He doesn't seem threatening any more, and he may even have winked at her. Suddenly her mind is preoccupied with thoughts of the paper man, his clothes as thin as paper. She develops a plan.

This is not a Christmas story as such, but it's heart-warming enough to be one, and it's really well told. It's actually better that it's not a Christmas story because charity shouldn't be confined to one season. I consider this book a very worthy read.

Webster's Friend by Hannah Whaley

Rating: WORTHY!

I've had some success with the Hannah Whaley Webster books. They're simple, fun, and educational, and instructive, particularly this one which, in a sweet and non-threatening way discusses online misrepresentation. Webster, being a spider, likes to hang out on the world-wide web.... You know I cannot hear that phrase now without hearing it in the voice of Peter Cullen as he sounds when portraying Optimus Prime.

Webster loves to dress up, of course, so when he goes online he thinks it's the same kind of thing, and disguised by his computer, 'wearing' it like a costume, he can be whatever he wants. This gets him into trouble, and one exaggeration leads to another, as he puffs himself up to his new online friend, until his friend decides he wants to meet him! Fortunately, it all turns out fine in the end - and in a surprising way. I liked this, I appreciated how a potentially difficult topic was represented in a very cool way, and a valuable lesson was learned.

Beautiful, Amazing Magical Ballet by Mary Lee

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of a really fluffy set of children's books written, I suspect, by a mom about her daughter. The books are available in a set of three which is how I got them. The drawings - presumably by the author herself, since no artist us credited, are completely charming. The book was very readable and charmed even a curmudgeon like me, so I don't doubt it will delight children. Note that this is very much a girl's book however (there's a lot of pink here, too!), and as such it's unlikely to interest many boys, especially older ones, unless they're particularly interested in what girls get up to when boys aren't around.

The pictures were colorful and sharp, and the drawing was perfect for the intended age range. The text was simple without being dumbed-down, and there was a real story going on. I read the book on my cell phone and it was perfectly clear and legible, but one thing I missed out on is that you cannot get the double-page spread when you read the book in electronic format. You get each half of the double page on a separate screen which ruins the effect. I've encountered this same problem with graphic novels when reading them on a tablet. I think publishers and writers really need to understand that you can't write a half-way book like this - it needs to be written either for e-format or for print. It can't straddle both unless you create two separate editions, one dedicated to each format.

Keeping in mind the intense discipline, pain, broken toe nails and even broken toes that are in store for anyone who truly wants to take up ballet seriously, I recommend this for a fun read. It entertained me, as Mia goes off to her first ballet lesson and makes quite an impact - literally. This story is very imaginative, taking us inside Mia's thoughts and illustrating them for us. It bothered me that there were quite literally no boys in the ballet class. Even though this is clearly aimed at girls I think it's important not to stereotype in this manner. Boys can and do enjoy dance and ballet and it seems a bit exclusive to not even depict them. We're never going to have real gender equality as long as children are routinely subjected to this kind of subtle "brain-washing" and passive exclusion/inclusion.

Other than that I found the book as charming as the first and I recommend it, with these issues in mind.

Not Just a Princess by Mary Lee

Rating: WORTHY!

This is one of a really fluffy set of children's books written, I suspect, by a mom about her daughter. The drawings - presumably by the author herself, since no artist us credited, are completely charming. I read this book on my cell phone and it was perfectly clear and legible, but one thing I missed out on is that you cannot get the double-page spread when you read the book in electronic format. You get each half of the double page on a separate screen which ruins the effect. I've encountered this same problem with graphic novels when reading them on a tablet. I think publishers and writers really need to understand that you can't write a half-way book like this - it needs to be written either for e-format or for print. It can't straddle both unless you create two separate editions, one dedicated to each format.

That said, the book was eminently readable and charmed even me, so I imagine it will delight children. This is very much a girl's book however, so while very young children will enjoy it regardless of their gender, as your boy grows older, he may not find this as engrossing. The pictures were colorful and sharp, and the drawing was perfect for the intended age range. The text was simple without being dumbed-down, and there was a real story being told here.

Mia is a feisty and self-possessed little girl who has a very active imagination. She's not in a princess mood today however - anything but. She's a lioness at breakfast, snarfing down her cereal. Note that 'lioness' is the author's term, not mine. This is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. While lioness is a technically accurate appellation for the female of the lion species, note that it's only the lion, really, that gets this distinction. Yes, there is tigress, but it's rarely used. There isn't cheetah-ess or leopard-ess, or a cat-ess (you have to go to Tom and Queen - or maybe even quean for a feisty cat) . I wonder why? For animals, it doesn't bother me so much, but when human females are subject to the same treatment, it smacks of genderism to me. I'm very much against adding 'ess' to a word and declaring that the confine of the female of the human species. Why actress? Why not just actor? Why authoress? Shephardess? Progress? Am I kidding with that last one?). It's worth a thought.

Moving along now, I recommend this story overall, because although she was typecast with lioness and cowgirl, Mia steadfastly refused to be otherwise constrained, taking on a variety of personas through her day, and even in her dreams. I didn't doubt that she would live her dreams as she grew up. This book is also available in a trio of Mia books.

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