Ari Berk

This is a delightfully fun toy book for fans of the bard. McDermot and Berk have compiled a fictionalized scrapbook imagining it to be a gift of mementos collected by Shakespeare as a present to his daughter Judith about his life in London as an actor and playwright. Alongside the fictional notes from William himself explaining life and manner in the big city are their own 21st century commentary on the playwright’s life and family connections in and around Stratford-upon-Avon: his education and departure to the become an actor, the Globe Theater, his contemporary playwrights, actors, and friends, life at court and among the lowlifes of the city. It also includes information on 16th and early 17th century English beliefs about the supernatural and ways of waging war and throwing big parties. As the cover promises it is “an interactive journey packed with booklets, fold-outs and flaps,” many facsimile documents, and tiny book-like summaries of some of his plays.… (mere)

"Sense is the song you sing out into the world, and the song the world sings back to you. Sing, and the world will answer. That is how you'll see."

A young bat is worried about their first solo trip out into the dark, to the pond to catch bugs for breakfast, and their mother consoles them and gives them the courage to make the journey.

The illustrations are appropriately dark, but the bat's powers of echolocation make a bright cone ahead of them, illuminating trees, geese, power lines, the pond, and more. The little bat is adorable, shown in a range of poses, sometimes small on the page and sometimes large. Rather surprised this did not get any Caldecott attention.… (mere)

I got this book at a scholastic book fair in middle school. Now, I'm in my junior-coming-on-senior year of high school and I've finally managed to make time for it. It, uh, wow it sucked.

Now, I'm not dragging the book for being children's literature (I wouldn't be pleasant company if I made the habit of that), but even as children's literature, it fails to engage and just doesn't understand the age group it's going for.

For example, there are some pretty wordy passages here, like "legate, boughs, clitter," and "espied"; words that no child would ever know. And, by the time you do learn those words, the book starts to sound patronizing. Like, do you seriously have to sell that giants are real? Everybody knows by now that they are, who are they trying to convince?

In short, I wish that the book could've been better. I'm sad, mad, but worst of all, disappointed (◕︵◕)… (mere)