Authors & Illustrators, A-Z Books - Page 23

A Christmas Carol

List Price: $19.95 By: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 15 new & used starting at $5.00

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 162 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nice Story 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Cute book to add to my table of Christmas Stories. Will make a cute addition this Christmas.

" God bless us everyone!" 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, forever old as well as new, arrived in a timely manner and in factory new condition. Thank you. I give you a five star rating.
Earl Woodham

Another great review! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is one of the best performances of A Christmas Carol I've ever heard....highly recommended.

A Christmas Carol 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I loved reliving this story from my youth. Over the years there have been so many film adaptations of this story and it was nice to see it in its original form.

The best 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My family and I have loved this beloved Christmas story for years. When we first heard Patrick Stewart perform this one man show we were hooked. He does a fabulous job with each character, making the story come to life for us. We love it so much that we have been giving it out as Christmas gifts to friends and family.

Editorial Review:

A miser learns the true meaning of Christmas when three ghostly visitors review his past and foretell his future.

Charlotte's Web

E. B. White

Amazon Price: $8.99 List Price: $8.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 63 new & used starting at $2.55

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 427 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good Story 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Having a dual form of dyslexia I did not learn to read until later in life. Thus I never read children's books while a child. Maybe that is why I read so many still today. I read this as part of a children's literature course in university.

It is an interesting book, about friendship, commitment, compassion, change and death. As such it deals with a lot of the big questions of life in ways a child can grasp.

For me the most moving part was when Wilber confessed to Charlotte that he did not like the thought of her as a blood sucker, towards the end of her life. Only true friends can be that open and honest.

The book is a powerful tale of true friendship and how our close friends can transform not only us but those around us.

Editorial Review:

Beloved by generations, Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little are two of the most cherished stories of all time. Now, for the first time ever, these treasured classics are available in lavish new collectors' editions. In addition to a larger trim size, the original black-and-white art by Garth Williams has been lovingly colorized by renowned illustrator Rosemary Wells, adding another dimension to these two perfect books for young and old alike.

The Cricket in Times Square (Chester Cricket and His Friends)

George Selden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 122 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Tucker is a streetwise city mouse. He thought he’d seen it all. But he’s never met a cricket before, which really isn’t surprising, because, along with his friend Harry Cat, Tucker lives in the very heart of New York City—the Times Square subway station. Chester Cricket never intended to leave his Connecticut meadow. He’d be there still if he hadn’t followed the entrancing aroma of liverwurst right into someone’s picnic basket. Now, like any tourist in the city, he wants to look around. And he could not have found two better guides—and friends—than Tucker and Harry. The trio have many adventures—from taking in the sights and sounds of Broadway to escaping a smoky fire.
     Chester makes a third friend, too. It is a boy, Mario, who rescues Chester from a dusty corner of the subway station and brings him to live in the safety of his parents’ newsstand. He hopes at first to keep Chester as a pet, but Mario soon understands that the cricket is more than that. Because Chester has a hidden talent and no one—not even Chester himself—realizes that the little country cricket may just be able to teach even the toughest New Yorkers a thing or two.

The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too!

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Hyperion Book CH Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $2.25

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Pigeon Strikes Again 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

There is just something about that Pigeon! THE PIGEON HAS FEELINGS, TOO! is another installment in the Pigeon series by Mo Willems. A board book geared toward toddlers, THE PIGEON HAS FEELINGS, TOO! is part of the "A Smidgeon of Pigeon" subset of the Pigeon books which allows very young children to share in the enjoyment of the adventures and antics of Pigeon.

Don't get me wrong, though, this book is still classic Pigeon. In THE PIGEON HAS FEELINGS, TOO! the characteristic line drawings, simple and colorful, introduce toddlers to the concept of feelings, expressed in typical Pigeon fashion. Pigeon stomps when he is angry, mopes when he is sad, and dances when he is happy. The pictures elicit grins and giggles as this short story unfolds. The Pigeon is a unique and distinctive character, and his voice is perfect for young children to relate to. He pouts, he shouts, he gets very stubborn. Even the youngest readers/listeners know he sounds just like they do. He speaks directly to them, too, which just adds to the fun.

THE PIGEON HAS FEELINGS, TOO! is a great addition to any Pigeon collection. Cute, silly, and fun, your kids will have a great time with this book.

Editorial Review:

A Smidgeon of Pigeon by Mo Willems How does it feel to be a Pigeon? Well, the bus driver is trying to get him to act happy, but as we all know, this is one bird that is not going to be told what to do! Throughout this hilarious board book, Pigeon runs through his signature gamut of emotions while attempting to thwart his old nemesis.

Gingerbread Baby

Jan Brett

Amazon Price: $11.55 List Price: $16.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Putnam Juvenile Amazon Marketplace: 70 new & used starting at $4.93

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A little ackward 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I really feel like the odd one out, but I wasn't too impressed with this book. Sure, the illustrations are gorgeous...By no means am I knocking Ms. Brett's skill here, but I just find the text a little long winded and ackward. Maybe it's the way I'm reading it...? It just doesn't seem too terribly well-written to me.

Editorial Review:

Remember how the Gingerbread Boy is eaten by the fox? Well, not this Gingerbread Baby in a delicious twist to a favorite old tale.

It all begins when Matti opens the oven too soon and out jumps a cheeky little Gingerbread Baby. He leads Matti's mother and father, the dog and the cat, and a whole colorful cast of characters on a rollicking chase through the village and into the forest, staying just out of reach, daring them to catch him all along the way.

But Matti's not with them. He's at home in the borders making what turns out to be a gingerbread house into which the Gingerbread Baby runs. Only Matti knows he is safely inside. And readers will too when they look under the lift-the-flap gingerbread house at the end of the story, and there he is!

Stink and the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers (Book #3)

Megan Mcdonald

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( M ) -> McDonald, Megan

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Stink is as happy as a pig in slop. 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Stink is as happy as a pig in slop. He and his friends, Webster and Sophie, are on a class field trip at the science museum --- and the exhibit is called "Gross-Me-Out: The Wonderful World of Smelly Stuff." Stink starts with the giant nose, where he gets to gawk at enormous nose hairs and learn how boogers are made. He loves it!

But when Stink's teacher, Mrs. D., dares him to experience the "Everybody Stinks" exhibit, he has to summon up his courage. After all, no one else will even go near it. One whiff of the B.O. scent almost does him in, but he recovers long enough to sniff more smelly odors, including dirt, rotten eggs, skunk scent and perfume. It appears that Stink has a real talent for smelling. He can smell better than anyone else in his class. In addition, he learns tons of smelly facts.

At lunch, the kids read flyers about a stinky sneaker contest the museum is putting on. Naturally, Stink must enter. Others are interested as well, so he'll have plenty of competition.

At home, Stink demonstrates The Nose and even impresses his big sister, Judy Moody. Stink is confident that his Nose will make him famous someday. When he researches the science of smelling, he finds information about the corpse flower, the world's stinkiest blossom, rumored to smell worse than outhouses, dead elephants and rotten fish.

Stink is inspired to create some terribly stinky perfume and sets up a Franken-stink lab. He and Sophie work up a recipe (including toilet water, dead-flower water, pickle juice and more), but he's distracted when Sophie tells him she's planning to compete in the stinky sneaker contest. Stink is determined to win.

He's positive that his reeking old sneakers have a great chance to win the competition. But his plan is foiled when Judy deodorizes them with sweetly fragrant powder. What is he going to do? He can't pour anything (like his stinky perfume) in them since the rules say the shoes must stink from being worn. Can his entry be saved?

In a startling turn of events, Stink saves the day when misfortune strikes the contest. He also gets to meet a professional smeller who has actually sniffed a corpse flower. It all makes for a happy (or at least smelly) ending.

This is another enjoyable book in the Stink series, sure to appeal to young readers (especially to boys who are enthralled with the grosser aspects of life). As always, author Megan McDonald manages to tickle readers' funny bones, slip in a little subtle education and tell a good story.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

Editorial Review:

"Stink is a delightful protagonist, and McDonald cleverly imparts information on smells. . . . A funny book for almost any collection." — SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

When Stink Moody’s second-grade class goes on a field trip to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum, he learns that his very own nose has amazing sniffing abilities — and that some people have real jobs sniffing stuff for NASA! Soon Stink is engrossed in toilet water, corpse flowers, and all things smelly. But is his fetid footwear foul enough to win a Golden Clothespin Award? Loyal fans will be holding their breath for Stink’s latest outrageous solo adventure.

Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, Book 1)

Eoin Colfer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 862 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A villain to root for 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I first saw this on a shelf a couple years back and was intrigued by it but hadn't picked it up to read it until my 8 year old insisted that it was an awesome story and that I'd love it. So, with him continually asking how I liked it, I read Artemis Fowl.

When asked by my wife about the plot, my best quick answer was that it is sort of an "evil Richie Rich carrying out a dastardly scheme against the world of fairies." (For those unfamiliar with Richie Rich, he's the super rich kid with tons of fun gadgets and crazy adventures to save his family/friends/world). In this case, the rich kid is 12-year-old Artemis Fowl, and his motives are less altruistic.

Style
The writing was well done. It was written very simply and straightforward which was good considering the audience. It was something that a young reader could pick up and push through without getting bogged down by the language. The writing and dialog was natural and flowed well. Overall, very nice.

I have only 2 gripes about the writing itself:
1. Numerical consistency. Specifically, the phrasing "[something happened:] in as many [amount of time:]." You've likely heard this phrase before...along the lines of "He fell on his butt three times in as many seconds." Which means he fell on his butt 3 times in 3 seconds. Colfer uses this phrasing enough that it got distracting to me, especially the times when he used it without a good frame of reference or without numbers. I don't have the text with me to provide an exact example...but the memory I have is something like "he passed out again in as many minutes." The numerical reference "again" isn't really concrete (can be alluded to as it being 2 since it's the second time) and the timeframe mentioned didn't fit based on everything that happened in between.
2. Swearing. This is a book presumably for an audience of young kids. Through the first ~2/3 of the book, the author introduced a fairy swear word and used it a handful of times. The word itself is meaningless and the reference to it as a swear word was subtle and probably lost on young children. However, as the book reaches its climax and the bodyguard Butler is having a big fight with a troll (sorry, possible spoiler there), we end up with (to use my first gripe) a handful of swear words in as many pages. I didn't count the words, but there were enough that I took notice. I acknowledge that many young kids will at least hear these words from television, possibly the radio, and possibly from their parents. However, as a parent who doesn't condone swearing, it wasn't something I appreciated.

Characters
Many of the characters in this book were fairly static and/or stereotypical representations. Being a children's book, that's probably for the best since it makes it easier for kids to picture the characters and not have to deal with too much psychology as the characters change and struggle.

Artemis Fowl himself was surprising flat for a title character. Through most of the book he was a little too rigid and uniform. He was too "textbook supervillain." Which made one of his actions at the end of the book very unpredictable and unnatural. I thought it was a good addition, but it didn't fit with the lack of growth and development he had through the rest of the book. I also felt a little cheated that his only real goal in this plot was that of greed. He tried to make himself out to be a 'higher class of villain', but in the end, he was really a petty crook/kidnapper just with a bigger scale scheme.

The rest of the characters were interesting, but fairly flat. Captain Short was the character I felt had the most depth. We get depths into her psyche throughout the book and get to see her struggling with decisions and with deeper questions. Butler gains a little depth late in the story when he ignores Artemis for a minute to help his sister first. Root, Foaly and the other fairy creatures have interesting banter going on, but are largely a faceless police force trying to save the day.

Plot/Pacing
The plot was a lot of fun. There were a lot of great details and exploration of the interaction between the fairy and human worlds. Fowl's plot was thin in motive but fun in execution. The details of the fairy recon team and the various technologies and magic made for a lot of entertainment.

The pacing was well done. The writing style provoked a little time confusion when interweaving the same instance from different points of view without really announcing the change other than via a double space on the paragraph break. Still, the writing generally allowed for quick reorientation as the reader encountered deja vu on reading about the same thing happening again.

Overall
Overall, I enjoyed Colfer's unimaginative tale and found it a fun and enjoyable read. One of the violent fight scenes (the main one) and a handful of (human) swear words, make me a little uneasy about letting my kids read the rest of the series unsupervised (historically, series books tend to get grittier as they go on), but I'm definitely willing, and in fact intrigued enough, to pick up book two and read it myself and then possibly hand it on to my kids.

With so many similar books flooding the market lately, I don't see this necessarily becoming a classic to endure for decades or beyond. But it's worth picking up and taking a glance at for a bit of escapism and it's a fun adventure that kids will enjoy as well.

***
3 stars

Editorial Review:

At last, one of the most talked-about novels of last year is now available in an accessible mass-market edition. Twelve-year-old Artemis is a millionaire, a genius-and above all, a criminal mastermind. But Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories-they're dangerous!

How Do Dinosaurs Clean Their Rooms?

Jane Yolen

Amazon Price: $6.99 List Price: $6.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Blue Sky Press Amazon Marketplace: 84 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

great book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

My son loves dinosaurs this book really helps me to teach him how to properly clean his room.

we love the dinosaurs! :D 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I bought all of the Jane Yolen books I could find in here and had them shipped to my daughter for my grandchildren. She said that they are helping a lot and that the kids love them...and the kids told me they LOVE dinosaurs over the phone! :D The three year old is autistic and had a meltdown if anyone cleaned her room or moved anything...now, with the help of this book...she cleans it up with the dinosaurs ideas and she has no problem with the dinosaurs telling her what to do LOL. I do remember when my own daughter was a child, having Bert and Ernie puppets talk to her and tell her what they would like done and how well it worked. Well, this is the same theory and really helping with an autistic child especially.

Editorial Review:

Come along for some BIG fun as your favorite dinosaurs learn to pick up and put away their toys. How do dinosaurs clean their rooms? With trash cans and dusters and brooms! Now Jane Yolen's playful, read-aloud text and Mark Teague's hilarious illustrations show your own little dinosaurs just how fun and easy it can be. Brimming with the same infectious humor as the other HOW DO DINOSAURS tales, this new board book is a perfect companion to the immensely popular picture books and a great baby gift as well.

Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Soso 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 4 people found this review helpful.

My first impressions of this book were that it was like reading C.S. Lewis on cheap drugs. The events are complete non sequiturs and the changes in plot are worse.

It appears to be a spoiled child wandering in a world she does not understand, nor is willing to learn about - unlike Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe who seeks to understand the local customs and circumstances.

The book is very easy to read but it leaves distaste in my literary mouth. I know it is considered a classic but I just do not see it, and if I did not have to read it for school I would not have bothered to finish it.

(First written as Journal Reading Notes in 1999.)

Editorial Review:

This is a beautifully-designed edition of Lewis Carroll's masterpiece, Alice in Wonderland. Includes all of the original illustrations by John Tenniel. Large format (6"x9"), printed on high-quality paper.

The 12 Days of Christmas Anniversary Edition: A Pop-up Celebration

Amazon Price: $16.32 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Little Simon Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $8.97

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Subjects -> Children's Books -> Authors & Illustrators, A-Z -> ( S ) -> Sabuda, Robert

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Beautiful book, but.... 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The song is inaccurate. I bought this because this is my favorite Christmas song and was wowed by the art work, yet disappointed that the song was botched! Twelve drummers drumming, Eleven Pipers Piping, Ten Lords a Leaping, and Nine Ladies Dancing were all mixed up in this edition. Very disappointing.

A Wonderful Family Reading Experience! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I've wanted this book for years, but thought my children were too young to take care of it. I got it this year for my 4 & 8 yr. old. Reading this book together will be a part of our goodnight routine now through Christmas. They love the pop ups! And the anniversary edition's last page includes a battery-lit Christmas tree pop up. My little boy (who's scared of the dark) waits by the light switch so he can turn out all the lights and shut the door to see the tree light up. This is a beautiful book!

Editorial Review:

A true holiday classic literally comes to life in this stunning pop-up edition of a seasonal favorite. With a partridge popping, snow scattering, and lords a-leaping off the page, this lavish book is a gift for readers of all ages. For this special anniversary edition legendary paper engineer Robert Sabuda encloses his own gifts to the reader: extra pages with a pop-up Christmas tree with real lights aglow, and a beautiful pop-up ornament of two turtledoves. The ornament is packaged with the book and is perfect for adding a celebratory touch to your tree. This beautiful anniversary package is one to treasure!