Professor Astro Cat's Frontiers of SPACE

 By Dominic Newman
Illustrated by Ben Newman

Look at this book!  It's so 1950's!  But modern, too!  The cover has a lovely fabric texture with silver bits.  Some of the printed colours look like they dyed the fabric whereas others look like they're decals.  It's delightfully tactile and visually pleasing.

The facts inside are wonderfully up-to-date and thorough!  It's a real textbook laid out so that a kid could read and understand it.  It's so accessible that I read it to my 3 year old (but skip as many details as possible)

 This is one of our favourite graphics.  There's a full solar system on this page, plus a representation of the planets using round food items.  Every page relays the information in such a clear and accessible way.  My daughter often stands up on the couch and excitedly yells the facts back at us as we read it with her.  She really has a limited understanding of the information, but it'll come.  In the meantime, she still love, love, loves this book.

The pictures I've supplied do not do the book justice.  The graphic design throughout the book is astounding.  It's so well organized, especially considering the amount of information they cram in here.

The only problematic thing is that they really do include all facts, like animals sacrificed for science and the fact that the sun will explode one day and how if you get sucked into a black hole you'll turn into spaghetti.

I'm glad that they didn't skirt around these subjects, but it means that this might not be a good book for a very young, very anxious child.  Or you can just skip pages; that's what we do.

Four on the Shore

 By Edward Marshall

Sometimes these books are under James Marshall.  Because they are both the same person.

Lolly Sam and Spider make up stories on the lake to scare Willy.  They are terrible stories.  None of them are scary in the least.

 Each story is tacked onto the last to try and up the anti.  They're poorly written with simplistic explanations for things.  They're written exactly the way a story would be if it was told off the cuff by an 8 year old.

And it's hilarious, of course.  These books are just as good as anything else.  They're engaging for anyone over the age of four, but they're laugh out loud funny for anyone over 6.

Tim and Charlotte

 By Edward Ardizzone

This book is epic.  My daughter makes me read it repeatedly and is on the edge of her seat every time.  A girl washes up on shore unconscious.  She awakes to find her memory lost.  When she finally remembers who she is, she must leave her newfound friends forever to return to her former life.

It's a real fairy tale, with the main character, Charlotte, an orphaned heiress, and Tim a rough and tumble lower class boy who lives on the seaside.

 A lot of the story is predictable, but still a thrilling read.  There is very real danger, something very rarely found in children's books.

There is a fight.  Tim fights for his and Charlotte's honour and is nearly beaten.  They describe him as being very noble.

It's an old book, and this kind of passage wouldn't fly these days.  But I don't mind.  It's not like I can't talk to my kids about these passages after we've read the book.

Where is Baby's Belly Button

 By Karen Katz

This one is also very popular.  It's a lift-the-flap book.  Plus it's all about body parts.  This is one of the very few books that my youngest will ask to read.

There is one African-American baby and there is one East-Asian baby and the rest are white.  Equal numbers of girls and boys.

So that's something.

I Said Bed!

 By Bruce Degen

You can totally tell that this is the illustrator behind the Magic Schoolbus series.  But he isn't the same writer.

No matter, this book is fantastic.

 The interactions between the mum and boy are pretty bland, and then the crazy imaginary adventure is full of colours and lines and patterns.  It's really visually appealing.

My daughter can read this book.  It's got tons of repetition and very simple sentences.  Sometimes the characters only say one word each.

The Miracles of Jesus

 By Tomie DePaola

This is a fantastic book.  The pictures are done in the style of Medieval religious paintings.  The stories are written so that a three year old can understand them.  Mostly.

 But the miracles of Jesus are all pretty great stories and reasonably entertaining for children of any age.

I've sifted through a lot of terrible Christian books and I haven't seen anything better than this.  My daughter was intrigued.  Confused, but intrigued.

We don't do a lot of religion right now because it all goes over her head.

Pinkalicious Soccer Star

By Victoria Kann

Oh wow I hate this book.  Guess who picked it out.

Dad gets the main character a pink soccer ball, and they play soccer against the mean angry girls who only wear black.  They say "Pink stinks!" because they are bullies.

You know, I've got this thing against asking kids what their favourite colour is.  They just say stuff because they hate saying, "I don't know".  And when they say, "I don't like green", like my daughter does, it doesn't mean anything, because there are so many shades of green.  I showed my daughter my new neon-lime-green sweatshirt and she was amazed and loved it, because, actually, she doesn't hate all shades of green.

 This shade of pink, however, is the same shade as Pepto-bismal.  And it's the only shade they use in the entire book.  Colours are exciting and this book about one specific ugly shade of pink that is already heavily marketed to girls is so dumb.

And kind of racist.

The message of the book is, I guess, to believe in yourself, but it gets lost on this weird trip across the world on a unicorn  seeing other girls who like pink.  Because the other message is that it's okay to like pink (like anyone is questioning that).




Look, I like pink.  I wear pink.  Heck, I even dress my son up in pink.  (pink on boys looks so rad.)

But look at that colour.

Of course my daughter loves this book.

All Around the Town

This is a book from my husband's childhood in Britain.  It's nice to have a book of British vocabulary, and it's also nice to have a super large picture book to pour over, but content wise, this is pretty sub-par compared to anything by Richard Scarry.

First off, the printing is cheap.  Some of the colours aren't printed in the lines.  The colour pallet is pretty bland and unappealing. 

The names of the characters are annoying, and only some of them have names.  The others are just "bunny" or "cat".  Though I guess that's a pretty minor complaint.

Some of the pictures have weirdly drawn perspective problems.  I'm not quite sure what's happening with this fence.  There are worse pages.  You can still tell what's going on, at least.

Scarry employs a lot of slapstick, and this book does not.  Some of the buildings featured are based on the same building frame, which is kind of boring.  My kids don't like reading the story, which is REALLY boring, but they do like looking at all of the objects and animals.

Overall, it's worth picking up if you can find it at a second hand store, but I wouldn't spend a whole bunch of money on it.

The Real Mother Goose

Illustrated by Blanche Fisher Wright

Hey, hey, hey!  It's the full book!  And it's widely available and constantly being reprinted.

This is a great compilation of all the essential nursery rhymes with tons of early 20th century Classical revival style illustrations.  Very Ars Nouveau, I think.

I'm no art historian, and I recognize that that description is kind of terrible.

 Look at this Robin Hood.  So effeminate.  Tall and lean with a baby face.  Pale blended watercolours with a fine outline.  I love it.

There are many, many full page illustrations, and most pages have smaller illustrations intertwined with the text.

The text is a little old fashioned.  A lot of death and gore and stuff, just the way it's always been.  But you can always pick and choose which rhymes you read aloud.  It's a big thick hardcover.

And It Was So

 Published by the Westminster Press Philadelphia
Illustrated by Tasha Tudor

This book is not bad at all.  Totally Presbyterian, but the parts they pull from the bible are heavily edited to be understood by kids, so whatever.

 The only problem I have with it is that it pulls from way to many sections.  It starts with Genesis, which is great.  And then it moves on to a whole bunch of psalms.

It sneaks something in there about the son of God being born and how he loved children and stuff, which is nice.

The pictures are really nice.  But it's all blonde white kids, and there's this one page about spreading the news throughout the world that has bunch of kids in traditional outfits from foreign countries.  It's a bit white-savior/racist.  But it's an old book, too.  Maybe there's a new edition?

I Will Never Not Ever Eat a Tomato

 By Lauren Child

I was underwhelmed by this one.  It's won awards and has its own show and everything.  It's one of those 'teach your kids to eat' books.  I guess it's better than most.

 The art is a mixture of simple line drawings and collage.  It's okay, but it's a pretty dated look.

The premise is an older brother making up names and origins for ordinary food items in order to make them interesting and appealing to his younger sister.  The ideas are okay.  The behaviour is mostly plausible.

Of course the little girl eats every single thing.

I'm just really bored by this type of book at this point.  There are so many of these.

I don't think I'll bother with any of the other books in the series.

Hank and Fergus

 By Susin Nielsen-Fernlund nd Louise-Andrée Laliberté

Brutal.  Absolutely brutally bad.

Hank is a kid with a birthmark on his face who has an imaginary dog friend named Fergus.  It's made obvious in the beginning that he has this dog friend because he can't make real friends.  Probably because he gets teased about his birthmark and is embarrassed and then acts out.

 So a new kid moves in next door and tries to be friends with him and Hank gets all defensive and is horrible and mean to him.  So they're both horrible and mean to each other.  Which is usually how these things go down.

Then they make up and give each other presents in the most formulaic and artificial turnaround you could imagine.  See, making friends isn't that hard.  You just aren't trying!
No, I get it.  The moral of the story, that they explain in the last few sentences, is that having a birthmark on your face isn't so bad.  In fact, everyone has something weird going on.  Look at this kid; he's got a scar on his stomach!

This book won the Mr. Christie book award.

100 Things that Make Me Happy

 By Amy Schwartz

This book is great.  The art is cute, the happy things are well chosen, and it's easy enough for a beginner reader to fumble through.

 No sentences!  My daughter is trying to read, but more than two words in a row is way too much work.  This book was great to open at random and read together.

The rhymes work, the rhythm doesn't.  But it isn't supposed to be rhythmic in the least and doesn't have any kind of pattern, so that's refreshing.

Where Does Electricity Come From?

 By Angelo Gangemi

Published by GS science

This book wasn't so good.  Electricity is complicated, and the target audience here is too young.  I don't really feel like I understand electricity, and this book really highlights the things that I don't understand.

 Spin a magnet and get electricity on the wires!  First of all, I don't really understand magnetism.  I understand THAT it works and HOW it works, but why?  It may as well be magic.

On a side note, I learned about magnets entirely in French, and we just called the iron filings "fer", which meant nothing to me at the time.  It was all very mysterious.

The book has a section on generators and batteries and all the basics, but each paragraph has about three to five simple sentences.  It just leaves so many questions.  And I end up having to try to answer them off the top of my head.

I was hoping this book would talk about the dangers of electricity, or how it works in the house, but it really did neither.

And then I thought about how I have a serious phobia of being electrocuted that I developed after years of sitting through the hydro presentations for kids that included slideshows of serious burns on young children.  So maybe my kids don't need to know about these things until they're much older.

Scat Cat

 By Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Illustrated by Paul Meisel

This is a great early reader.  It's full of tons of easy words.  I read it with my daughter and point to the words that she should be able to read on her own.

In particular, she can read "Cat", so she can figure out "Scat".

Basically every animal and person tells the cat to scat except for the cat's owner because he loves the cat so much.


 It has lots of repetition.  The problem I usually find with repetition, though, is that my daughter is smart enough that she doesn't need to look at the words once she's heard the pattern.  She also has excellent memory and it is rare that we can read a book a second time without her already knowing how it goes.

This book had enough material that I can randomly ask her different words every time we read it. 

Jack

 By Tomie DePaola

I love this author.  I wasn't expecting much from this book.  And there wasn't much to it.

 I guess it's a book about animal noises?  And some people love them and some people hate them? 
Jack and all of his animal friends go to the city to live in a big apartment building together.  And that's the plot.

They just ask the king for an apartment, and the king gives them the key for one in the city.  The end.

But, you know, the pictures are nice.

The Kingfisher Playtime Treasury

 Selected by Pie Corbett
Illustrated by Moira and Colin Maclean

This is a pretty good collection of children's rhymes, skipping rhymes, schoolyard games and the like.  They're appropriate for children a minimum of three years old.  There's lots of variety and they're organized by category.  A lot of heavily gendered rhymes about kissing boys and getting married, but that's because they're traditional. Some of the wording is not what I'm used to.

I'm planning on using it for upcoming birthday parties.

 The art looks like it's stolen from Janet Ahlberg.  They included Each Peach Pear Plum, though they use different lines.

And they seem to have a Jolly Postman, too.

Really weird.  But I guess Janet is dead now, so it's fair game?