Honk

Author: Pamela Duncan Edwards

Illustrator: Henry Cole

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A swan becomes an expert ballet dancer and sneaks into a Parisian ballet performance and steals the show.

Edwards does an excellent job creating a main character that you really root for, and a villain that you hate. The swan, Mimi, goes to outrageous lengths to try to get past the angry stage manager into the ballet performance. There is a moment when it appears that all is lost, and then an unexpected door opens, literally. The dialogue is powerful and fun to read.

This story is very imaginative and creative. The pictures are excellent and funny.

Rating: 4 stars

Young Larry

Author: Daniel Pinkwater

Illustrator: Jill Pinkwater

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A polar bear mistakenly floats down to New Jersey where he gets a job as a lifeguard and saves the life of a wealthy man.

Pinkwater has a very unique style that is hilarious at times and bizarre at others. This book is a mixture of both.

The best part of this book is the dialogue. Larry has interesting exchanges with his mother, his brother, and the various humans he encounters on his journey. The plot is not really driven by a conflict, unless you count the conflict of a large polar bear trying to blend in to a human world.

The author is very imaginative, and the plot is anything but predictable. The humans are not terrified of Larry, and they do no question how he learned to speak English or ended up in New Jersey. But he eventually loses his job, when the head lifeguard says, "I have been informed, polar bears eat people."

Larry's response: "I prefer to eat muffins. Besides, I was told that humans taste funny."

The pictures are very basic. This is a book driven by the narrative, not the visuals.

Rating: 4 stars

Eliot Jones, Midnight Superhero

Author: Anne Cottringer

Illustrator: Alex T. Smith

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A quiet little boy lives a double-life as a superhero at night, solving various crimes and saving the world.

This book is brief and powerful. It is well worth your time.

The challenges that Eliot faces as a superhero are unusual, and he comes up with equally-interesting solutions. Each situation creates a unique conflict for Eliot to overcome, each one more challenging than the last.

The pictures are simple but very expressive.

Rating: 5 stars

Worth Getting from the Library: Yes

Worth Buying: Yes

Big Bouffant

Author: Kate Hosford

Illustrator: Holly Clifton-Brown

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A little girl wants to be different from her classmates, so she comes to school in a bouffant hairdo and convinces all her classmates to do the same.

This story is creative and fun to read. Annabelle has a lot of character. Her mission to be different drives the story forward.

The author shows some great creativity with how Annabelle accomplishes her goal of having a huge bouffant hairdo. The pictures are excellent. Very expressive.

Rating: 5 stars

Worth Getting from the library: Yes

Worth Buying: Yes

Dumpy and the Big Storm

Authors: Julie Andrews Edwards & Emma Walton Hamilton

Illustrator: Tony Walton

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A dump truck goes to the rescue during a terrible storm and saves other trucks, and stops a ship from slamming into the rocks.

Yes, the author is that Julie Andrews, and this book reads like a full-length movie, instead of a children's book.

This book was exhausting to get through. The story had way too many subplots. It was tough to tell whether the hero of the story was the little girl, her dad, or the dump truck itself. I think it took about 25 minutes to read it, and the payoff was not worth it.

The authors missed opportunities to make the trucks more interesting. They are drawn as though they are beings that can speak and act independently, but there's no proof in the story that they are anything other than normal trucks.

The pictures were just decent.

In the end, there is a nugget of an interesting story tucked into this voluminous book, but the authors buried it under far too many details and uninteresting, unimportant asides. This book needed one fewer author and one more editor.

Rating: 2 stars

Worth Getting from the Library: No

Worth Buying: No

A Place for Zero

Author: Angeline Sparagna LoPresti

Illustrator: Phyllis Hornung

One-Sentence Plot Summary: The number zero feels alone and worthless, but discovers that he may be the most valuable number of all.

I automatically dislike kids' books that are blatantly educational, especially ones that are as long as this one. When I read the subtitle, "A Math Adventure," I lowered my expectations.

However, the author succeeds in delivering a story that is interesting and imaginative, albeit about 10 pages too long. The land of Digiteria has colorful characters, like King Multiplus and Count Infinity, and unique machines, like the Numberator. The pictures are just average.

The author creates a fun way for kids to think about addition and multiplication. However, I think this author's talents would be better served writing stories for their own merit, not as a backwards attempt to teach math. I think she missed a chance to really create a memorable story, and instead tried to jam it into an educational premise that likely hindered her creative genius.

Rating: 3 stars

Worth Getting from the Library: Yes

Worth Buying: No

Sloop John B: A Pirate's Tale

Author: Alan Jardine

Illustrator: Jimmy Pickering

One-Sentence Plot Summary: A boy and his grandpa encounter pirates and overcome them while sailing on the sea.

The defining characteristic of this book is that it is a re-write of the famous Beach Boys song of the same name. In fact, the author is Alan Jardine, one of the original Beach Boys. He tweaked the words to the song quite a bit, to take out all the references to being drunk, and instead made it an adventure story with a happy ending.

The plot suffers at times because it is, after all, a poem. But the story is easy enough to follow and has a nice, although brief, conflict with the pirates.

The amount of creativity and imagination in this book is mostly found by listening to the accompanying CD that Jardine recorded of the song. The kids loved dancing and jumping around, and turning the pages to follow along.

The pictures are very good, especially the pirate and his ever-changing hat. The closing picture of the boat on the sea with the sun rising is excellent.

Rating: 4 stars

Worth Getting from the Library: Yes

Worth Buying: No