Ashleigh's Bookshelf

Babies On Board (Part 2) by Susan Marie Chapman illustrated by Natalia Loseva When Grumpy the Iguana, Green Parrot, Mr. Squirrel and Little Mouse set out for a night at the beach, they never expect to spend the night helping baby sea turtles find their father. Since I have not read the other books in the series, I was not as familiar with the characters as I felt I should have been. I didn't really know much about them or their friendship. However, the story was cute and I enjoyed watching them figure out how to assist their friend with his hatching babies. I did have a little problem with the fonts. I was reading an advanced e-copy, so perhaps this will be fixed in the final publication, but I noticed the author used different font colors to separate the dialogue from the text. While I liked this concept, it was inconsistent. On one page, it looked as if a different font was used in addition to a different color. At one point, one character's d...

Over and Under the Pond by Kate Messner illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal On a paddling journey, a young boy and his mother discover the plants and animals that call the pond their home. My family and I stumbled upon this story when a hike through a local wooded trail turned out to be a neighborhood story walk. This was not our first story walk and my children were excited to read the new (to us) book. My husband was surprised to learn that dragonfly larvae live underwater. My seven-year-old loved this book because "she learned what different animals ate". Overall, the book was a cute way to educate young readers on some of the plant and animal life found in a pond. Many of the organisms were those found near us, so we were familiar with them. However, although the facts were interesting, the pages didn't always feel like they flowed together to create a story. Even two facing pages sometimes felt disjointed. I would have liked to...