Reviews
Booklist Review of How to Build Our World
“This cheerful How to Build Our World series helps young readers understand environments, layer by layer. Each title builds a particular setting by adding elements one at a time: foundation, surface details, inhabitants, photographs, captions highlighted in bright blocks of color,… View →
Booklist Review of Whole Wide World
These new books in the Whole Wide World series present exciting destinations around the world to young readers. Each book focuses on one large, famous structure, describing its parts, its construction, and what visitors can see there… Angkor Wat explains how the world’s View →
SLJ Review of Eye-mazing Illusions
The exciting optical illusions throughout this series explore not only the science of optics, but also interconnected STEAM topics like neurology. Covering both two-dimensional and three-dimensional illusions, there are mathematical, health, and artist… View →
SLJ Review of Life Works!
Using stylized monster characters, these books guide readers through activities to help build empathy and understanding, while developing critical skills like time management and building trust with others. Bright colors and silly monsters keep the serious topics layered with some levity View →
SLJ Review of Science Behind the Colors
Photographs in this series showcase the colors of various animals in beautiful detail. Easily understood text explains the causes of and reasons for the colors, such as camouflage, mating display, or even as a warning to enemies. Nonfiction features include labels on the photos, “Did You View →
SLJ Review of Seasons of Fun: Spring
Young readers will learn all about spring in this series. Brightly colored pages featuring simple text and large images describe the season’s weather, holidays, sports, and plants. Bolded vocabulary words can be found in the glossary. Each book ends with a one-page exploration of a topic View →
SLJ Review of Let's Look at Body Systems!
Take a look under human skin and explore the fun world of anatomy and physiology with this early chapter series about how systems work in the body. The step-by-step processes take readers through each part of the body and talk about the interconnected aspect of how systems work. The… View →
Booklist Advance Review of Checks and Balances
This basic civics book presents a defining element of the U.S. federal government’s structure: the balance of power through checks and balances. Giving a nod to ancient Rome’s tripartite government as a model for the Founders, Kenney explains that they created the executive, the… View →
SLJ Review of Meet the Community Helpers
Early readers will love to learn about how veterinarians, bus drivers, construction workers, and garbage collectors work hard to serve people and animals in their communities. Each book features common situations associated with each job: Dr. Jenny has a busy day treating animals at her… View →
Booklist Review of Thanksgiving
Starting with a quick version of the traditional story of the origins of Thanksgiving (with a glancing nod to contemporary Indigenous people’s alternate gathering to “remember those who died after colonists arrived”), this Holiday History series (7 titles) volume still… View →
SLJ Review of X-Treme Facts: Space
An irreverent series that uses humor to engage readers. Each spread has an interesting chapter title, a paragraph of informational text, colorful boxes with facts, photographs, and comic-book style speech bubbles. There are many pictures of children or stereotypical aliens layered over… View →
Booklist Advance Review of Don't Sweat It: How to Navigate Big Emotions
Cute, colorful monsters help kids manage big feelings in this selection from the Life Works! series (4 titles). Adopting a reassuring tone, the conversational text asks readers to think about instances when they’ve experienced strong emotions, and then offers tips for shrinking those… View →