Fiction

Gr 2—4—Amusingly framed as a cheesy popularity contest, this parade of personified planets features illustrations in which rotund, recognizably marked caricatures of these heavenly bodies pose and mug, surrounded by an entourage of relevant though unidentified scientists, space probes, satellites both natural and artificial, books, constellations, and astronomical symbols...

Gr 4—6—This is an excellent source for inspiration, with good examples of people following their dreams...

Gr 5—8—These brief books are a bit dated now as Osama Bin Laden is featured prominently in Fundamentalism and Terrorism...

K-Gr 1—This simple yet delightful counting book emphasizes the quirks of the English language, where the plural of a noun is not always formed by merely adding the letter "s...

Gr 7 Up—These well-written titles will be great starting points for students doing research or good sources for teens wanting to learn about these timely topics...

PreS-Gr 2—Each title begins with a contents page and a brief explanation of the origins of Mother Goose and nursery rhymes...

Gr 8 Up—This novel, structured to include the field notes of an aspiring anthropologist reporting on the American adolescent to the editor of Current Anthropology, pleasantly repackages a somewhat predictable teen story arc with wit, solid writing, and able characterization...

Gr 3—6—Martha is an exasperating yet sympathetic nine-year-old whose life is thrown into a tailspin when her adoptive parents announce that they are having a baby...

Gr 1—4—Nervous to ride the bus on the first day of school, Kyle is armed with his older brother's survival rules: never sit in the first row or the last row, never make yourself stand out, never make eye contact, never touch anyone's stuff, never talk to big kids or to girls, never mess with the bully or the bus driver, and never be the last one on the bus...