librarianryan's reviews
6364 reviews

 

In this book Olive has feelings. There’s an omniscient narrator, telling the reader what’s going on and olive interrupts them to say you don’t have it exactly right. In theory this book works, but I found it to be long. I feel the book entirely squiggly. I think this concept was way better illustrated by the movie inside out. This book is OK but it’s been done better other places. 

 

It’s that nice bridge between picture book and chapter book. The story is easy to follow, and the illustrations are fun.  Kids will get excited by the antics the characters get into. This is a book number 2, but it can be read in any order. 

 

I can’t read the title of this book without the soundtrack of TikTok. However, I think that makes this book even more fun than it already is. We have a thing that thinks it’s a potato. Animals gather around to convince this thing, they’re not a potato. But if they’re not a potato, what are they. This book is fun. It’s cute. The illustrations are simple, but perfect. The way the artist expresses the joy, the confusion, the wonder, figuring out what something is… it’s masterful. Kids will like this book and want to read it again and again and again. 

 

This book was adorable. It makes one want to hug a porcupine. A porcupine has lost their fuzzy sweater made for them by their grandparent. They’re very cautious of what should they do. Should they try to make their own? Should they borrow somebody else’s or should they just tell grandma. This book does have some call and respond aspects that be fun during story time. The illustrations are lovely. As a whole this book just works, and I’d be proud to have it on my shelves. 

 

Ben Clayton has moved a little away from early graphic nobles into a picture book. This picture book revolves around a cloud that wants to learn to paint but he hast to learn the rainbow first. This is a fantastic successor to Press Here and books like it. It does a good job of being active and being unique at the same time. Plus if you’re smart, you just might find a narwhal. Clayton writes it and I will read it. 

 

This is a book of poetry. It called itself an autobiography, and I do think it fits. You have the poetry, but then you also have information about sometimes true events or names of the wind or things that happen because of the wind. This was very well done and the illustrations are really eye-catching. 

 

I really wanted to like this story. Honestly, the story is pretty good. It has rhyme, it has a rhythm, and the book follows it well. However, it is overly long. The other thing is the illustrations. Illustrations are great, however towards the back of the book and particular ones set of pages. Pages are so colorful and detailed that there was no place to put the words. So they outlined black letters in white. This makes it readable, but also doesn’t look good and doesn’t match the flow of the rest of the book. 

 

This was interesting. I can honestly say I enjoyed the illustrations more than the story. It starts by asking if anybody remembers this video game let alone the strange console. How at one time everybody was playing it, but nobody remembers it. The story constantly asks am I real is this environment? Is this book amongst the gameplay that is both wordless and you also have the players recollections of life. How he was with his mom or remembrances of his dad etc. There is this whole idea of what is real, am I real. I’m not going to say this was an easy read but I like the artwork enough that I want to see what this artist does next. 

 

I am not the right person for this book. The Shmuel family that lives in Clemm seem imbecilic. But that’s because this is the type of pass down traditional storytelling that works better vocally than on paper. The multiple Yiddish words are nice to see but needing to refer to a glossary or something else frequently makes it a bit harder to read. I also think this is overly long, which is why I think it would work better in a spoken tradition rather than a written one. 

 

This story is a tad bit nonsensical. It starts with Tali being afraid of everything. Too afraid of falling to join gymnastics or taekwondo. She dreams she can do more but is frightened in her dreams. Halfway through the book a toucan breaks through the window, and Tali learns she can do things. There is no flow to this book, and I wish the story was better. However, the illustrations are amazing. the illustrator took what little they were given and made this comparison of being scared to being broken or shattered. It plays into the chicken, shattering the window and becoming a toucan in the end, but it just works so well. The illustrators are giving a master class, why the author is still in grade school.