Reviews written by Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer

A father and child are on their way to a birthday party, and the child has some inquisitive questions. How would we get to the party if we were cats? The father replies that they would climb a tree and try to highjack an owl to fly them there. The...

Sheep and Cow are very invested in their busy, hardworking farm, but latelyl things have not been optimal; their rooster has been sleeping in, so all of the other animals are not waking up on time and getting work done. Cow sets off to find a new rooster, and interviews...

Paula Levy is being raised in 1956 in a middle-class family in Queens. Her mother was fourteen during the Great Depression, and her father had to flee Nazi Germany, so they are not very sympathetic to what utter DRAGS they are. They make her wear pleated skirts and sweater sets,...

Everyone has secrets, and privileged girls from wealthy families seem to have more than most. When Giselle, the daughter of a senator and stepdaughter of a celebrity influencer, decides to take the family yacht from Key West to the Grand Cayman islands with her best friends from school, several of...

It's 1969, and Charlie and Ralph's mother is very excited that she will get to vote for the first time since the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965. Before, Black people were made to provide documentation they didn't have in order to be abel to vote, or to pay a...

In this wordless picture book, a woodland picnic is interrupted by an eagle who manages to gather up a picnic cloth that is filled with all manner of possessions that the picnic attendees have brought. He flies off with it, but doesn't get very far before dropping it. The animals...

In this beautifully illustrated book, the spare text reminds young readers that there is a lot to observe and experience right outside their back door. From forests to hike to mountains to climb (that are really clumps of trees and piles of dirt), the outside holds all sorts of wonders....

Bell lives in a town where nearly everyone plays a musical instrument, but she has never found one that lets her express herself the way she would really like. While everyone else is tootling around town on clarinets and marimbas, Bell contents herself to singing along with the ambient noises...

Deja lives in Springtown Harbor, Jamaica with her young brother and sister, Donovan and Kaleisha. Their father is working in Costa Rica but never contacts them, and their mother is living in Brooklyn, trying to earn money and sending home barrels of supplies. Being "barrel kids" is hard on the...

Two little girls are best friends... the kind of friends who will always let you be the knight while they are the dragon, will put up with your bad singing, and even name their guppies after you. The two have an excellent time until one girl blows out the other's...

The illustrations on this are absolutely exquisite. There's subtle layering that adds a feeling of depth and movement, and this is highlighted even more on the cover, where there are some glittery foil branches. Rayner has a distinctive style, and I'm not surprised that she has her own line of...

Polly Milton travels from the country to the city in 1869 to spend several weeks with the Shaw family. Fanny is slightly older than she is, and quite the young lady. Tom is also fourteen, and not taken seriously by anyone but his grandmother. Maud is very young, and is...

Izzy loves living in Pearl Beach, and working at the Surf Sisters shop with her best friends, Nicole and Sylvie. When geeky Ben comes in to the shop, asking them to hang a poster for his employer, Parks and Rec, she is intrigued, even if he is wearing coaching shorts...

There are so many facets to understanding the world of dogs, and this beautifully illustrated book does a great job at mentioning many of them. It's a large format picture book, but each page is packed with so much information that it's a good choice for older students who want...

Avery and her family are spending two weeks in a house in the country. At first, she thought this would be boring, but when she sees her room under the thatched roof and realizes that a river is just at the bottom of the garden, she's thrilled to be there....