How to use this Page

This month’s best selling kids series from The Children’s Book Review’s affiliate store Captain No Beard, by award-winning author Carole P. Roman, is an imaginative picture book series loved by all.

This month's our list of hand-selected series from the nationwide best selling Children's Series list, as noted by The New York Times, features James Dashner's Maze Runner series and Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series.

Kid Athletes: True Tales of Childhood from Sports Legends Series: Kid Legends Written by David Stabler Illustrated by Doogie Horner Quirk Books      11/17/2015 978-1-59474-802-8 208 pages      Ages 8—12 “Forget the gold medals, the championships, and the undefeated seasons. When all-star athletes were growing up, they had regular-kid problems just like you. …

This month's best selling kids series from The Children's Book Review's affiliate store, First 100, is a great series for babies and toddlers ready to absorb information about the world around them.

This month's best selling kids series from The Children's Book Review's affiliate store, Superhero Classics: I Can Read Level 2, is a great series to hook young readers that show an interest in classic superheros.

This month's best selling kids series from The Children's Book Review's affiliate store, Pete the Cat, is great for highlighting a glass-half-full outlook.

Photo Doodles: A Creative Sketchbook

By ViiiZ*
Quirk Books       8/20/2013
978-1-59474-652-9
160 pages       Age 8—12 +
.
“You’ve never seen a doodle book quite like this one!”
”Wait, you can talk?”

“Photo Doodles combines kid-friendly photographs and cool creative challenges into the perfect canvas for anyone capable of wielding a crayon. Young artists and designers can complete dozens of fun and playful pictures of everything from roller coasters and soda cans to book covers and palaces. Perfect for sketching, scribbling, and coloring outside the lines, Photos Doodles will unleash the aspiring artist inside children of all ages.” [front jacket]

Review
Photo Doodles is a fun-filled book for those kids—and adults—who love to doodle, but may not know how to get started. Similar to writing prompts, each spread contains a one sentence prompt to help you with ideas to doodle your way to a fun, satisfying end. Here are two of those prompts:

“Who (or what) is at the other end of the rope?”

“What outfit will the puppy wear today?”

With 160 pages to doodle and color, it seems the options are endless. From decorating a sea of umbrellas to filling in storyboards with your own story. There is even one many students will find hard to resist:

“It’s your turn at the blackboard . . . what will you write?”

How about “No more math problems,” or maybe “School’s out early today: Leave at noon,” or maybe you would use your turn to make tomorrow a teacher conference day—“Students stay home!”

There are plenty of open spaces in Photo Doodles or those kids and adults who can doodle and draw with ease and loads of pages with images to make colorful and expressive, rather than drawing from scratch. A total of 200 pictures await your crayons, colored pencils, markers, or other artistic medium. While marketed for the middle grade set, younger children will enjoy many of the easier prompts in Photo Doodles and adults will love the range of images and prompts.

I enjoyed playing with Photo Doodles. I love to draw, but have a hard time getting started. Photo Doodles made getting started easy and the images and prompts got me thinking of ways to doodle other than the normal doodles in the margin of a page.

Coloring books for adults are in every corner of every bookstore online and off, but doodle books that prompt you to create imaginative scenes and messages, like Photo Doodles, is not as common. I think kids of all ages will enjoy Photo Doodles as much as I have.

PHOTO DOODLES: A CREATIVE SKETCHBOOK. Text and illustrations copyright © 2015 by ViiiZ. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Quirk Books, Philadelphia, PA.

Buy Photo Doodles: A Creative Sketchbook at Amazon—Book Depository—Quirk Books.

Learn more about Photo Doodles: A Creative Sketchbook HERE.
The Sell Sheet can be found HERE.

Meet the authors/illustrators, ViiiZ.
Vahram Muratyan at his website:  http://www.vahrammuratyan.com/
Elodie Chaillous at LinkedIn:  https://fr.linkedin.com/pub/elodie-chaillous/84/79a/462/en
.        . (ViiiZ is the artistic team of Vahram Muratyan and Elodie Chaillous andfounders of ViiiZ, an art    direction and graphic design studio created in 2005 in Paris. They graduated from the acclaimed Parisian design school ESAGPenninghen.)

Find middle grade novels at the Quirk Books website:  http://www.quirkbooks.com/
.

Copyright © 2015 by Sue Morris/Kid Lit Reviews. All Rights Reserved

Full Disclosure: Photo Doodles: A Creative Sketchbook by ViiiZ, and received from Quirk Books, is in exchange NOT for a positive review, but for an HONEST review. The opinions expressed are my own and no one else’s. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

This month, the award-winning classic Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen, is The Children’s Book Review’s best selling young adult book.

Kid Presidents: True Tales of Childhood from America’s Presidents

Written by David Stabler*
Illustrated by Doogie Horner
Quirk Books    10/28/2014
978-1-59474-731-1
216 pages    Age 8—12
.

EVERY PRESIDENT STARTED OUT AS A KID

“Forget the legends. Ignore the tall tales. The kids who grew up to be president weren’t superheroes. They had regular-kid problems just like you. John F. Kennedy hand hated his big brother. Lyndon Johnson pulled pranks in class. Barack Obama was bothered by bullies. And Bill Clinton was crazy clumsy (he once broke his leg jumping rope). Kid Presidents tells all of their stories and ore with full-color cartoon illustrations on every page. History has never been this much fun!” [book jacket]

Review
Kid Presidents tells the story of sixteen presidents including George Washington—who never chopped down a cherry tree—and Barack Obama—who received a gibbon ape as a gift. Every president had a childhood filled with the same things as kids today. They had friends, though one had none. Some had trouble in school or trouble at home, and at least one was an extremely angry young boy. Some were well-liked, good students, and helpful at home. Despite decades between them, “boys will be boys.”

“Abe and his sister were forced to sleep on a floor covered with corncobs and straw.”

Ulysses Grant, at age eight, made a bad barter for a horse. He told the seller the most he could pay ($25), and, of course, $25 became the seller’s asking price. Word spread fast and kids started calling Ulysses “Useless.” Ulysses did not barter as his father instructed him, but being called Useless was cruel, as kids often are. Teachers could be cruel, as Herbert Hoover found out on his report card comment section:

“A fat little boy, always reading.”

John F Kennedy’s teacher was not thrilled with him,

“Jack studies at the last minute,
keeps appointments late,
has little sense of material values,
and can seldom locate his possessions.”

Kennedy sure doesn’t sound like presidential material, but sure enough, he became president number 35. Kid Presidents will make you laugh more often than not, and when not laughing, you will be grinning. Our past presidents, and our current, had normal childhoods. They schemed and dreamed just like kids today. Some were poor, some rich, but most where in-between. These presidents, as boys, did dumb things, held odd jobs, and had weird nicknames. Here are a few:

Accident-prone:  Jimmy Carter shot his sister and Dwight Eisenhower stabbed his brother in the eye.

Clumsy:  Harry Truman broke his collarbone—while combing his hair and Rutherford B. Hayes fell into hot coals—while putting on his pants.

Pranks (or bad boys?):  Andrew Jackson moved outhouses, so the owner couldn’t find it, and John F. Kennedy stole people’s milk and then sold it back to them.

Nicknames:  Barack Obama was “the Little Duck,” Gerald Ford was “Junie,” and John F. Kennedy was “Rat Face.”

(There is more to each of the above, but those stories are for you to read.)

Kid Presidents has a childhood tale for sixteen presidents, but there are snippets about many more, if not all. Kid Presidents makes for an entertaining, and often hilarious, read. Kids will love reading about the crazy stunts, fights, pranks, and physical problems these boys overcame and then went on to become an American president. If those boys could accomplish this, so can any boy—or girl—who reads this book. Even if becoming president is not their goal, reading Kid Presidents should help kids understand that childhood, good or bad, silly or sad, boring or brilliant, will have less affect on their future as adults than they may believe. “Permanent Records” don’t have the permanency as adults may tell you. If they did, Lyndon Johnson might not have served five years as president. Johnson was class clown, the cut-up who got into so much trouble, his father’s first words upon returning home often were,

“Well, what has Lyndon done today?”

The illustrations in Kid Presidents enhance each of the stories. The images of young boys-soon-to-be-presidents are also funny, often cartoonish, and always entertaining. A second edition of Kid Presidents, with stories covering those presidents missed in this edition, would be a nice follow-up. 

YOU as President!

*real name is Robert Schnakenberg

KID PREIDENTS: TRUE TALES OF CHILDHOOS CROM AMERICA’S PRESIDENTS.Text copyright © 2014 by David Stabler. Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Doogie Horner. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Quirk Books, Philadelphia, PA.

Purchase Kid Presidents at Amazon—Book Depository—iTunes—Quirk Books.

Learn more about Kid Presidents HERE.
Book’s website:  http://kidpresidents.com/
Meet the author, David Stabler, at his facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/davidkstabler
Meet the illustrator, Doogie Horner, at his twitter page:  https://twitter.com/DoogieHorner
Find more middle grade books at the Quirk Books website:  http://www.quirkbooks.com/

Read an excerpt  HERE.
Educator’s Guide  HERE.     
Quizzo Event Kit  HERE.
x

Copyright © 2015 by Sue Morris/Kid Lit Reviews. All Rights Reserved

Review section word count = 625

With so many strong novels on this list, a lot remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list.

These books, guides, and cards offer interesting trivia and facts, engaging formats, and lively illustrations; a perfect combination to pique interest for hours of casual reading, followed by days of reciting trivia, and hopefully, years of knowledge about these important people in American history.

With so many strong novels on this list, all but one young adult novel—Gayle Forman's Where She Went—remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list.

With so many strong novels on this list, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy—a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the AAP Tri-State Book Buzz for Children’s and Teen Librarians here in NYC.  This is an event where a whole heaping helpful of publishers gather together to do a kind of massive librarian preview for folks like myself.  It’s a mix of big folks (Macmillan, Random House, etc.) and smaller houses you might not hear from otherwise.  With that in mind, I’ve either already attended or am about to attend some of the big guys, so I’ll leave them off of this particular preview.  Additionally, I had a meeting in the morning of the Book Buzz day so those publishers who just happened to present anything prior to 1 p.m. pretty much fell off of my radar.  Sorry, guys!

Even though I only spent a small portion of my time at the Book Buzz I’m just going to highlight the books that caught my particular attention.  Because honestly there were some truly interesting titles on display.  Here’s just a small sampling of what I happened to see. First up:

Sourcebooks 

 Changes: A Child’s First Poetry Collection by Charlotte Zolotow, ill. Tiphanie Beeke (9781492601685)

This year (2014) I had a great deal of difficulty finding good poetry books.  Honestly, at times it felt like I was pulling teeth to find anything halfway decent.  This shouldn’t be so hard!  So I was keeping a very sharp eye out for anything verse-like.  I was quickly rewarded by this, the first collection of ALL of Zolotow’s seasonal poetry.  You remember Ms. Zolotow, yes?  Worked under Ursula Nordstrom?  Mother of Crescent Dragonwagon?  Yep, well I’ve always been a fan of her book Seasons as illustrated by Erik Blegvad so this is just a natural follow-up.  It’s coming out in the same year when she would have celebrated her 100^th birthday. If the illustrator (Tiphanie Beeke) looks somewhat familiar that may be because she was behind that rather lovely little book Fletcher and the Falling Leaves which came out a couple years ago.

Fairy Tale Reform School: Flunked by Jen Calonita (9781492601562)

On the middle grade side of things we have Fairy Tale Reform School: Flunked by Jen Calonita.  Written by the author of  the YA novel Secrets of my Hollywood Life the premise behind this one is that when a villain is vanquished in a tale it’s time for them to go to reform school.  Our heroine is a normal girl who lives in a shoe with her siblings and is so poor that she’s forced to steal.  One thing leads to another and the next thing she knows she’s in a reform school where all the teachers are former villains.  Kinda writes itself, right?

This Book is Gay by James Dawson (9781492617822)

I don’t cover YA usually but for this book I shall make an exception. It was a little bit difficult to parse but insofar as I could tell this appears to be a handbook for dealing with sexual identity.  It’s a YA nonfiction title with a forward is by David Levithan and it’s full of sketches, illustrations, and jokes.  As they say, it’s for anyone exploring their own identity.

National Geographic Kids

Why’d They Wear That? by Sarah Albee (forward by Tim Gunn) (9781426319204)

Now see, the reason I like National Geographic Kids is that they’re reliable.  Take Why’d They Wear That?, for example.  You know what you’re getting here, even if you don’t know the details.  Mind you, the details are where all the good stuff is.  Chronicling the history of the world through the lens of fashion, the book covers everything from the Syrian warriors who rode into battle in fishnets to an Archbishop of Canterbury who wore a hair shirt so full of bugs that they left his body and flew into the cold when he was assassinated.  From togas to mini skirts, this book talks about clothing and explains why folks wore one thing or another with plenty of historical context.

Untamed: The Wild Life of Jane Goodall by Anita Silvey (9781426315190)

I think I heard about this book a little while ago and got very excited . . . until I realized that it wasn’t coming out until 2015.  Fortunately that year is breathing down our neck and so tis nigh! Nigh, I say, nigh!  From her childhood in WWII England to the jungles of Gombe this book covers everything Jane related.  Riveting and full of images (including the photography of Michael Neugebauer) this has lots of great content from the field.  It’s the most up-to-date title out there for kids.  At least for an older readership.

Dirtmeister’s Nitty Gritty: Planet Earth by Steve Tomecek (9781426319037)

Steve Tomecek, the Executive Director and founder of Science Plus, Inc., and Digger his prairie dog sidekick talk all about dirt.  Or, put another cuter way, dish the dirt on dirt.  Tomecek had a New York Kids show on WNYC radio in New York City for eight years so he’s old school.  In his book, Fred Harper from Marvel illustrates multiple peppy comic book sections that start off each chapter.  Inside you’ll find DIY experiments, facts, and science bios along with lots of STEM connections.  Happy science stuff.

How to Speak Cat by Aline Alexander Newman and NPR’s Dr. Gary Weitzman (President of the San Diego Animal Humane Society) (9781426318634)

This would be a companion to the previously published How to Speak Dog.  The dog vs. cat voice in my head wonders which of the two books will sell better.  In any case in this tome you get, amongst other things, an explanation of what the 30 different cat poses mean.  Lots of expert cat training advice is in this one as well.

1000 Facts About the Bible (9781426318665)

You don’t have to be a library in a religious community to appreciate what National Geographic is going for here.  Big and small pieces of information give some great background.  Little facts include the tidbit that David was crowned with a 75-pound crown and, elsewhere, that the blue of the robes mentioned in the text came from sea snails.  Easy to understand words are helped in no small part by the Biblical scholars who were consulted.  Naturally this makes me wonder how long it took them to write the darn thing.  My suspicion: quite a while.

Maddeningly they also teased us with Fall 2015 titles as well.  With that in mind look for . . .

Book of Nature Poetry edited by J. Patrick Lewis

Treasury of Norse Mythology by Donna Jo Napoli

Welcome to Mars by Buzz Aldrin

At this point in the proceedings, mention was made of a magazine I’d not heard of before.  It’s not like I’ve been following the periodical trends for teens and pre-teens since I was one myself.  So to hear that there’s a publication out there called Justine that contains “more teen book reviews than any other magazine” . . . well that’s just downright cool it is. Voila:

Quirk Books

Based out of Philly. A quarter of this little publisher’s output consists of books for kids.  I often say that small publishers just need one book to sustain them for life.  Well Quirk produced Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children so I’d say they’re pretty much good to go.  For, like, ever.  Most of their children’s books coming out in 2015 are just sequels, but there was one adult title that actually caught my eye.

Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix (9781322126760)

A classic horror novel set in a Swedish furniture store, written like an IKEA catalog.

Sterling

Next up, Chris Vaccari, a man clever enough to name drop his local library branch (Kips Bay).  Chris thrives in a BookBuzz atmosphere.  He is calm.  He is at ease.  And yet, all at the same time, he is capable of packing in loads of information about the books Sterling is producing soon.  Case in point:

Good Question: History Series: Did Christopher Columbus Really Discover America? by Emma Carlson Berne (9781454912590)

This is a series that dare to question history.  Particularly useful when we’re talking about that ever so controversial Italian Columbus.

Little Traveler series – How Tiger Says Thank You (9781454914976), How Penguin Says Please (9781454914969) by Abigail Samoun, illustrated by Sarah Watts

These are the latest two books in this series to come out.  I should note though that my librarians are BIG fans of these books.  They’re finding them easy to hand sell and really filling a need for those parents that wish to get their small children interested in other languages.

ABC Universe – done in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History (9781454914099)

Just consider it an oversized board book for the budding little astronomers in your life.

I’m Not Reading by Jonathan Allen(978-1910126240)

Man. Way back at the beginning of my blogging career, around 2006 I reviewed the Jonathan Allen baby owl book I’m Not Cute.  It’s nice to see the series not only still kicking around but upgrading to a whole new board book form.

Ally-Saurus by Richard Torrey (9781454911791)

Who says only boys get to love dinosaurs?  Yet when Ally starts school she finds she’s the only girl there who’s into dinosaurs.  She is subsequently snubbed by princess lovers (and on this, the 10^th anniversary of Mean Girls).  I know I’ll be looking forward to this.

A Dozen Cousins by Lori Houran, ill. Sam Usher (9781454910626)

The plot is simple: one girl has a dozen boy cousins.  She loves them but they sure do bug the heck out of her.  Nice and multicultural, this is utterly pleasant (and more interesting than a lot of the other “big family” tales out there).

North/South

The Birthday Cake: The Adventures of Pettson and Findus by Sven Nordquist (978-0735842038)

I believe this is a reprint of an older title.  In it, Pettson is a forgetful farmer and his neighbor gives him a kitten named Findus.  So he reads the kitten so much that the cat starts to talk.  In this book it’s Findus’s birthday (which somehow happens more than once in a year).  The dilemma?  Our intrepid heroes need flour for a cake.  To get the flour they need a bike, to fix a tower they need to get into the shed, to get into the shed they need a ladder to get to the sunroof, and so on and such.  Phil Pullman did the blurb for the books and said that it has a folktale feel.  Noted.

Mr. Squirrel and the Moon by Sebastian Meschenmoser (978-0735841567)

If you buy nothing else I mention to you today, buy this.  Show some of the art.  On the endpages you see a boy with his father and one of the man’s wheels of cheese is rolling down the hill and flies into the sky.  Later, a squirrel wonders how the moon got into his tree.  Worried that someone will think he’s the thief he tries to roll it off the tree.  The cheese next gets stuck on a hedgehog and a goat gets stuck in it.  The art is the real lure here.  A-maze-ing.

The Bernadette Watts Collection: Stories and Fairy Tales by Bernadette Watts (978-0735842120)

Turns out, Ms. Watts is beloved in Europe.  They just call her Bernadette there.  In this book you will find thirty-eight timeless tales with an Eric Carle forward.  The result is a book containing pitch perfect, sumptuous backgrounds.

Perseus Books Groups (Running Press Kids)

Go, Pea, Go! by Joe Moshier and Chris Sonnenburg (978-0762456789)

I’ll give ‘em this.  I have never seen a potty book that used peas in some manner.  This book features one such rhyming pea.  He is told by his family to go.  See the world.  A potty chart and stickers are part of the ensemble.

Butterfly Park by Elly Mackay (978-0762453399)

A paper cut artist takes it to the next level.  In this story a girl moves next to a butterfly park and then goes and sees that there aren’t any there.  She then gets the community together to plant the plants that attract butterflies.

My Life in Dioramas by Tara Altebrando (978-0762456819)

In this tale a 12-year-old girl’s family is selling their red barn home.  She’s against this move so she creates dioramas of each room to best preserve her memories.  She also tries to throw a wrench in the works to prevent the sales.  One color illustrated dioramas for each chapter.  Essentially, it’s all about moving forward.

And that was that.  Phew!  I can’t imagine how tricky it would be to organize such a thing.  Many thanks to the folks who presented.  I’ve high hopes for these books.

This month, everything remains the same on our hand-picked list from the Best Selling Young Adult list—including The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy.

This month, The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy—a classic must-read for all Greek mythology fans.

If you're looking for a novel that will linger with you for days, The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book is Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira. Our hand selected titles from the nationwide best selling young adult books, as listed by The New York Times, features titles by super-talents John Green, Ransom Riggs, and Markus Zusak.

The latest book from non-fiction queen Candace Fleming is The Children's Book Review's number one best selling young adult book.

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart has been added to our best selling young adult books for this month. The rest of the titles have remained the same, proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too).

If I stay by Gayle Forman has been added to our best selling young adult books for this month. The rest of the titles have remained the same, proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too).

Everything has remained the same with our best selling young adult books for this month—proving just how these titles truly are popular books for teens (and many adults, too). With the March movie release of Divergent, it's no wonder that our best selling young adult book list features the popular book for teens, Divergent, by Veronica Roth.