Billy the Kid by: Theodore Taylor

Billy the Kid is kind of a tall tale but still considered a non-fiction book. This is definitely a more advanced novel for older elementary school children and even up into junior high or possibly even high school. It is a long and challenging read but most certainly a good one. There are little known "facts" about Billy the Kid but hearing his story is entertaining and interesting even for the most advanced readers. It tells the tale of a young cowboy who terrified everyone he came into contact with and even though he was so young was the most feared cowboy in town. The legend of Billy the Kid is a fascinating one that young kids will be interested in. This is a good read but is not for readers who have trouble holding attention or need pictures to help them along. Due to the length of the book which is well over 150 pages it will likely be a book you could assign to children to read over a good length of time and maybe do responses chapter by chapter. A challenging book but a great story, check it out.

Trains by: Anne Rockwell

I chose this book because I know that Anne Rockwell has written hundreds of children's books and I hadn't blogged about one yet. Trains is a really simple book about trains that is intended for small children. I really enjoyed reading it because it is easy and fun. The illustrations go right along with the pictures which would make it really easy for a child to follow along and relate what they are reading to what they see. I think that is a good skill for young children to learn and it will help them in the development of reading and moving on to more advanced picture books. I really enjoy Anne Rockwell's literature and this one is something I could see myself reading to my nephew because he is two and is obsessed with trains. I think she does a good job of writing about things she knows children are interested in and that fascinate them.

All Bout Sharks by: Jim Arnosky

I chose this book because I read an older non-fictional book about sharks this week as well and I wanted to see how they differed. All About Sharks was a great book full of lots of information and pictures. As important as the information was the way the information is portrayed is even more important. The layout of the book was great with all the pictures and statistics being intertwined. It gives the reader a chance to stray away from informational books that are just in long paragraph form and throw a lot of information at you at once. It gives the information species by species and gives pictures and side notes about each one. This type of informational book gives readers a great chance to learn about something and also have fun doing it. I am fascinated with sharks and wildlife and I think that stemmed from enjoying reading about them as a child and I hope that children would read this book and maybe pick up an interest. I feel like anything this book talked about, due to the way it was laid out, would give a children some kind of spark or interest in the subject. The author did a great job and I am interested if he has written any other books similar to this on different animals or subjects.

How Many Teeth? by: Paul Showers

I really really really enjoyed this book. It was perfect to explain the process of growing and losing your teeth to young children. It starts off with a baby and says she has no teeth, then moves to a toddler who has 6 teeth, then to a boy who has 20 teeth, then to grown ups who have 32 teeth. It is a really interesting way to go about giving information about this. It has great language and even has a rhyming scheme that makes it more fun to read. This would work great for children to read or even as a read aloud by a parent or teacher. It has great illustrations that are eye-catching and even show the actual process of losing and growing teeth. I really recommend this book and think it is a lot of fun. It is interesting that the other informational books I have read this week were more geared towards an older elementary school student and this one is definitely directed at children of younger ages. This showed me that informational books do not only have to be for older children and can be as simple as how many teeth have have. 2 thumbs up.

Australian Dinosaurs by: Marilyn Pride

Australian Dinosaurs was definitely not the type of book I thought it would be when I looked at the cover. I expected it to go through the dinosaurs and give pictures and brief descriptions and characteristics. Instead it was extremely in depth and gave a wealth of information about each dinosaur to the point where it was overwhelming. To be perfectly honest after I read about half of the book I had to put it away because the amount of information they gave was just too much, and if it was too much for me I can imagine it would be too much for the 7-11 recommended age group the book was intended for. Also the language used was hard to understand and some of the words were hard for me to pronounce or comprehend so I doubt a seven year old would be able to get through much of the book. It would perhaps work as a read along but I still feel that the amount of information given is too vast for a child to understand fully. The pictures are nice but the font is so small that it makes the length of it overwhelming. If you want to go strictly on volume of information I guess it is good but other than that this is not a book I would read to a child or have them attempt to read on their own.

The Great White Shark by: Carl Green & William Sanford

This is an older book and clearly is intended for a slightly older elementary school student. It starts out with a short story about an encounter with a great white shark, then as the book goes on it turns into an informational book. It gives facts and statistics about great white sharks and also shows actual photographs of the sharks. I think this would be an interesting book for children to read that were interested in wildlife and in particular sharks. I think that sharks are such an unknown creature to us because of the area we live in that most people have little information about them. A common theme among people is being afraid of sharks because of their lack of knowledge. I think that books like this for children can be very helpful because they give children useful information about subjects they otherwise wouldn't learn about except from television. This type of informational book can be very beneficial to a young child and also may start a hobby or interest they will carry throughout their lives.

The Class Trip from the Black Lagoon by: Mike Thaler

This was a very entertaining novel by Mike Thaler. It was all about a class trip that a little boy was going to take. For almost half the book it just builds the trip up and talks about how much fun the trip is going to be even though he doesn't know where they are going or what they are going to do. Then when finally find out where they are going the story gets really wild. They go on quite a voyage in an airplane and then they parachute then they trudge through the jungle. The author does a really good job of giving the reader a visual image of what's going on and what everything looks like. He also uses word play throughout the book that is very original and makes it more interesting to read. He plays on things like Pizza Mutt instead of Pizza Hut and when talking about watching for animal droppings he says hippo-potty-mess. These kinds of things can help keep children interested in reading the book and makes it more fun for them. I really do think children in elementary school would enjoy this book because I know I enjoyed reading it and thought it was entertaining. The best part is the creativity and imaginativeness involved with the book. First of all because of the child in the book's imagination and more importantly because it gives good cues and prompts to get the reader to imagine what it would be like. I really enjoyed the book and would definitely recommend it!

Black Cat by: Christopher Myers

Black Cat was an interesting book that basically just tells the travels of a stray black cat. It goes through and repeats the phrase "Black cat, black cat, we want to know where's your home, where do you go?" periodically throughout the book and then shows where he goes during the day and night. The pictures are absolutely amazing, they look so much like photographs in some spots and then clearly painted in others which creates an interesting balance and is very eye catching. The main reason I chose this book is because as I was first looking through it I noticed that it seems to be in poem form which is interesting. It has miniature stanza type things on each page and for some reason to me reads like a poem. It would be a good book for children to see if they made that connection between the layout of the book and if it was a poem or not. I plan on taking this to my reading buddy and seeing if she enjoys it as much as I do.

The Magic Rabbit by: Annette LeBlanc Cate

This was a really interesting book. It was about a magician and his best friend/assistant bunny. They played a show and after an accident they became separated from each other. All the bunny wanted to do was to get home and finally he followed a trail that lead him back to his magician and it had a really nice ending. The illustrations and format of the book were very interesting and not something I have encountered much in reading children's literature. The book was in all black and white with shading except for the stars used by the magician, they were a bright yellow. The color scheme was nice too with the title on the cover being yellow and the pages on the inside front and back both being yellow. It had a nice touch, but I'm not convinced that a child would really enjoy the illustrations. The story was also a little sad and kind of slow, but I think it does show a good message about friendship and how important it can be to people.

T-Rex Trick or Treats by: Lois G. Grambling

I wasn't very intrigued by this book. It was a story of Halloween and how T-Rex wanted to be something scary but he realized all of his friends were wearing what he wanted to so he just walked around with a big frown on his face all night. No one thought he was scary with the frown on his face, but as the night went on and he got candy he started to smile. Then at the end his friends and other trick or treaters tell him how scary he looks when he smiles because his big sharp teeth are sticking out. I thought it was kind of a boring read and didn't bring out much in me as a reader. I don't think children would really enjoy this story or be able to relate to it very well. The only thing they could get out of it is that it's better to be happy than walk around with a frown on your face all day but that is such an elementary concept I don't think it would do the children any good.

Out of the Ballpark by: Alex Rodriguez

This was a fascinating book written by professional baseball player Alex Rodriguez. It is a fictional story about winning his little league team a championship by hitting a game winning grand slam. It is interesting to see such a huge superstar writing a children’s book but also very cool. The illustrations are amazing and really kind to the eye. The best thing about the book was a note that Alex wrote to the readers at the end of the book. He talks about his commitment to baseball and also his hard work in school. He gives good advice like studying hard, staying away from drugs, and showing respect for his friends and elders. It is cool that he would mention those things instead of just talking about working hard on the baseball diamond. Another cool part of the book is the actual photographs of him and his family and friends at the end of the book. That kind of thing gives the reader a real sense of who the author is and makes the story seem more important and the author more concrete and realistic.

Snake Alley Band by: Elizabeth Nygaard

This was a nice book about a snake and his snake band. They really loved to be an all snake band but when he found himself without his fellow snakes and hearing noises from all different animals he didn’t think they sounded like a band. He rejected it because it didn’t sound like he was used to. But he was soon to realize that the noises the other animals made helped them sound different than everyone else and that different was good. The moral is that there can be many parts to make something different and unique and that can be a good thing. The illustrations were entertaining and also the noises that the animals make would be fun to sound out for a child. They would also be fun for an adult reading to a child to be able to be interactive with the child and also entertain them. This would be a great book to read to children when teaching about diversity and other issues that would go along with that.

Widdermaker by: Pattie Schnetzler

Widdermaker is a fantastic story about a dominant bull that is ridden in rodeos. The title of the book is very interesting because it is clearly a play on the word widowmaker, which could be a little graphic for young children to understand. I was also intrigued by the fact that it says the book is for kindergarten through fourth graders because that seems like such a huge range for a single book. But after reading it I understood how this book would be enjoyable for younger children and at the same time a good read for children up to fourth grade. The pictures were incredible and loud and eye catching and any other good words you could use to describe them. They had great attention to detail and really told a story behind the story. This was a great story because it starts with him being big and bad and ends with him being nice just like everyone else. I would definitely want to read this to a child because it would be entertaining and fun for both of us.

Mother Hen by: Lilian McCrea

Following a similar theme for what I chose to read this week I chose this classic book by Lilian McCrea. This is a fantastic read along for young children. It isn't for children to read but there is real educational value as you're teaching children about different animals and the relationships those animals had with each other. It tells such a nice story that you really can't go wrong with this book. I also appreciated the illustrations in the book because they were very large and simple which make it easier for small children to understand. It also emphasizes friendship and relationship among different creatures which can teach life lessons to children and instill good values in them. A good read, worth your while.

I love You, Stinky Face by: Lisa McCourt

I chose this book because of how young the children were that you were supposed to read this to. It is ages 2 to 5 and definitely a read aloud book. I really enjoyed it because I could hear my mom's voice as I read it and got a good visual of me sitting in bed before I went to sleep. The illustrations were absolutely amazing and the consistency of the book was great for little children too. It was repetitive but not in the sense that it would be boring for children to hear. It is funny because as I mentioned when I was reading it I could picture my mom reading it to me when I was little and then the very last picture is a Mom tucking her child into bed. It is very imaginative and gives lots of opportunities to teach for whoever is reading to the child. This would be a great book to read to a small child because not only would they enjoy it, you would as well.

Thanks, Mom by: Ed Emberly

This book was definitely intended for very young children. It doesn't even seem like a book children would read, more of a book you would read to a child. It has a lot of repetition and the pictures are the main focus of the book. It says ages 3 to 6 so I checked it out to see how much different it was than one for ages 4 to 8, and the differences are vast. This book was weird because there is no way a 3 to 6 year old could read it. It used the word delicious several times which clearly a young child like that would not be able to read. It seems very basic and does not really have any educational value. Overall, I would maybe recommend it for a very young children just to give them a little entertainment. The pictures are really good and they use both pages as one image which was kind of cool but that's about it.

Uncle Lester's Hat by: Howie Schneider

This was a really enjoyable book about a little boy's Uncle Wilfred who sat around all day and watched TV because he said he didn't need to go anywhere because he could see it all without leaving his chair. Then they started to tell about Uncle Wilfred's Uncle Lester and how he didn't have TV so he had to see everything for himself. Eventually Uncle Wilfred goes out and sees the world and comes back to tell the little boy his stories. The moral of the book promotes going out and seeing things for yourself and experiencing things first hand instead of just through the eyes of others. The illustrations were very entertaining especially because they covered most of the page. The pictures did a really good job of illustrating what was going on in the book and helped tell the story. I enjoyed this book and plan on reading it for a little girl for my other class. It was funny and entertaining, check it out.

The Legend of Red Horse Cavern by: Gary Paulsen

Gary Paulsen delivered again with another great children's novel. This book was very intriguing and tells a tail of Will and Sarah's journey into an eerie cave and their adventures while inside. His word usage and sentence structure are great and will definitely challenge kids while still holding their attention. His novels usually follow a similar format with lots of relatively short paragraphs which holds true in this short novel. This can be an effective method because I remember being in elementary school and being proud that I just read a book with 10 or more chapters. It keeps the child interested because they feel a sense of accomplishment every time they finish a chapter. I recommend this book to older elementary school students and think this and other Gary Paulsen classics are great to teach children how to analyze books and do reports on them. A good read with steady flow and enough mystery to keep even the most advanced children interested.