Read & Explore
the World Like a True Adventure
by Selene Vasquez
Picture Book: Ages 4--8
What Do You Do With A Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. (Houghton Mifflin,
32 pp., $15.00). Strikingly exceptional cut-paper animal
science book with intriguing facts. A 2004 Caldecott
Honor Book replete with visual surprises.
Crepes by Suzette by
Monica Wellington. (Dutton, 32 pp., $15.99). Francophiles
will delight in this charming rendition of Parisian
historic buildings, quaint gardens and parks, and city
strollers eating Suzette's crepes as she sells them
from her colorful pushcart. Mixed-media collages of
photographs, stamps and postcards. Poetry: Ages 6--10
Riddle-iculous Math by
Joan Holub. Illustrated by Regan Dunnick. (Albert Whitman,
32 pp., $14.95). Hilariously campy and often challenging
riddles and rhymes based on math, from simple addition
to increasingly harder subtraction functions. Quick
brainteasers just for fun displayed in simple colorful
cartoon format. Math Fables: Lessons That
Count by Greg Tang.
Illustrated by Heather Cahoon. (Scholastic, unpaged,
$16.95). Brief fables told in rhyme with catchy titles
such as “Trying Times,” “Midnight
Snack,” and “Gone With the Wind” and
ending in common sense moral. Perky computer-generated
cartoons compliment the enriching experience of seeing
numbers in different combinations or groupings.#
Selene S. Vasquez is a media specialist
at Orange Brook Elementary in Hollywood, Florida. She
is formerly a children's librarian for the New York
Public Library.