Team Moon

Team moon tells about how 400,000 people landed Apollo 11 on the moon. Not only did the astronauts land on the moon, but it took the help of 400,00 others who worked in the control rooms and in the engineering departments to help this mission be a success. The book tells about all of the different difficulties the team faced when trying to land the Apollo 11 on the moon. In the text it includes details and facts from this amazing adventure, but also different things the astronauts in the spacecraft thought and said to eachother. I really liked reading this book becasue I had never really studied or learned about the Apollo 11 mission. I knew we had landed on the moon, but that is all I really knew about the situation. Reading this book really opened my mind to what really went on.

The most amazing part of the whole book are the pictures. I looked through the book numerous times admiring them. The picures are real photos from the mission. There were pictures on the astronauts, the beautiful moon, the earth at different distances, and

Move!

Move! is a really fun way to learn about all the different ways in which animals move. The books is filled with different animls and shows how some move in the same way and some move in different. Some of the different ways include waddle, slide, float, dance, run, and fly. I thought the illustrations were a big part of the book. Each animals was drawn in a very eye catching way. I read the book twice and the second time I just looked at the pictures. I also liked the ways the words were written on the pages. Sometimes they curved around the animals or climed up the page. I think this is something that attracts kids because it is not just straight accross and it is something different for them. At the end of the book there is a small paragraph about each of the different animals that the book talked about. I really enjoyed reading these especially when the paragraph contained a really fun or interesting fact about the animal. I would definately recommend this book. The excellent pictures along with the interesting way the text was written and the fun facts at the end made it a very appealing book.

Oh, Rats!

Oh Rats! is a book that definately caught my eye. I, like many other people would scream as lound as I could and jump to the highest spot in the room the instant I saw a rat. They are definately an animal with an extremely bad stereotype. After reading this book I definately have a much softer side for the animal.

The book begins by telling about a young boy who was deathly afraid of rats and his father told him they are not a bad animal and he should learn about them...so he did. The book has many interesting facts about the animal. The facts are told in a way that they are intersting to read. They were very easy to understand. The book seemed a little lengthy because there was a lot of text, but there were little boxes on every other page that told about a specific species of rat or interesting rat detail that I always looked forward to. For example, one box told about a rat that lived long ago that was the size of a small rhinoceros! The pictures in the book were simple, but definately needed to keep my interest. If your one of those people who would let out a high pitched yell if you saw this rodent...read Oh Rats! and give rats a chance.

Gone Wild

In this book David Mclimans shows an interesting way to learn your ABC's. Each page gives a letter, and next to the letter there is the name of an animal that is an endangered species. A big letter is shown on each page and the letter is shaped in the shape of the animal it is representing. This was really fun for me to look at. It was interesting to look at the drawings because they were all drawn simply in black and white yet they were so detailed and unique. I found myself looking at the letter and trying to guess what animal it was going to stand for before I read the actual name of the animal above.

The book also told a little bit about endangered species before it started with the alphabet and I thought this was a good choice because it really got me focused on what the book was going to be about. On each page the book told the animals class, habitat, range, threats, and status. Since the pictures were in black and white I used my imagination to picture what the animals would look like in color and also in it's habitat. It was a fun way to use my imagination and also learn more about endangered animals I had never heard about. I think this book is especially cool because it can be used for all different ages. If your looking for a fun way to learn your ABC's....Gone Wild is an excellent choice.

George's Marvelous Medicine

George's Marvelous Medicine is an amazing book by one of my favorite authors, Roald Dahl. George has to stay home with his grouchy grandma who is not very nice to him. Instead of giving her her normal medicine at 11:00 he concocts his own medicine. This new medicine does some crazy things to grandma and the farm animals George gives it to.

Roald Dahl is a very talented author. I think this book would be perfect for children who are just getting to the age to read chapter books. It is a pretty easy read for children and I think they would find it quite funny. I actually found the book quite interesting. It is the kind of book that you don't want to put down because you just want to see what is going to happen next. Along with the text the author also adds pictures to the story. The pictures are very simple, but also detailed at the same time. I think this is a really cool part of the book because not all chapter books include pictures and they style of the pictures was really different and unique. Also, the pictures are very humerous as they show all of the different things things that happen when George gives out his medicine. This book was really fun to read and brought back a lot of childhood memories of reading it.

The Hello, Goodbye Window

The Hello Goodbye Window, is a book filled with amazing pictures that give you a very heartwarming feeling. Norton Juster wrote about a special window this little girls likes at her grandparents house. The story talks about all of the fun things that she likes to do when she spends time with her grandma and grandpa. The window, I feel, is symbolic for being able to look in on the time the child spends with her grandparents. They are very special to her and she talks about all of the fun memories she has with them. The book reminded me of all of the fun things I used to do when I would spend a week at my grandparents in the summers. It brought back lots of fun memories.
Chris Raschka does such a wonderful job with the illustrations in this book. They actually look like they could have been watercolored on by a child. They really brought out the concept of childhood and the memories that the young girl had. I read the book and then went back just to look at the pictures. They are so very beautiful and quite unique.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

I read this book a few times and was blown away. It is an absolutely beatifully written lyrical book with illistrations that truly touched me. Phileppe Petit performed juggling and tightrope walking in a New York City park. One day he looked up at the twin towers and On August 7, 1974, with the help of a few of his friends, he secured a tightrope between the towers, a quarter of a mile high in the sky. When the sun rose in the morning, the young man walked out onto the rope and performed for hours.
This book truly touched me in many ways. Mordicai Gerstein is the author and illustrator of the story and just does an amazing job. His book has many different features that make it unique. It is written in a beautiful lyrical form. I feel that sometimes the author uses some symbolic phrases about being free and believing. On some of the pages there are a few different pictures on the page. I loved how some of the pages folded out into a few pages put together to show how high he was up on the tower. The pictures were drawn so well I actually felt like I was high in the air with Phileppe. I had never heard of this before so I was shocked when I read the book. I can not believe someone would do such a thing. A part in the book that really touched me was a page at the end of the book that simply read, "Now the towers are gone." I read that page over and over. I thought this book was just wonderful and I recommend it to everyone! It's definately one of my new favorites and I can't wait to read more stories by this author.