Staff Picks for Children

Eleven year old Meli Lleshi is living a happy life with her Muslim Albanian family in Kosovo in 1998 when her life is turned upside down by the Kosovo War between the Serbs and the Albanians.  The murder of fellow Albanians and the brief but terrifying disappearance of Meli's 13 year old brother, Mehmet, mark the beginning of this story.  On the run from ethnic cleansing, Meli's family will abandon their home and business on a journey to escape.  This journey will take them to the mountains, Uncle's farm, miles of traveling on foot while pushing Grandma in a wheelbarrow, a terrifying train ride, a crowded refugee camp in Macedonia and eventually to the United States.  When the children are going to school in Vermont and adjusting to U.S. culture, the events of 9/11 lead some American students to misjudge and mistreat Meli and Mehmet. Lessons of prejudice abound in this story. Recommended for age 11 and up.

This is a tragic story of a wild, white Manchurian pony’s capture by men and his forced life of serving cruel owners, and later becoming part of an historic journey--the 1910 Terra Nova polar expedition to the South Pole led by Captain Robert Scott. James Pigg, as he is named after a book character, tells his story from his pony point of view. He finds kindness and friendship in Patrick, one of Scott’s men, and decides to work hard to help men accomplish their goal. Sadness, brutality and hardship follow, as men and animals suffer in the battle against the elements: Extreme bitter cold, shifting snowstorms that distort directions and ice cracks that open and close; killer whales beneath the surface that can rise up through two feet of ice in an attempt to make a meal of a man, pony, or dog; sickness, diminishing food supplies; sled dogs waiting to devour ponies. Captain Scott is determined to persevere, to beat his competition, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, and be the first to arrive at the South Pole. This story is a page-turner, well told, well researched, but not for young readers who are too sensitive to animal suffering and death.

Volume 2 of The Books of Elsewhere

This second Book of Elsewhere is a good follow up to “The Shadows.” It has a mixture of humor, suspense, mystery, and magic. The story takes off right where the first story ended. Olive, the heroine, is right in the thick of things when she tries to solve the mysteries of her creepy Victorian mansion. Her neighbor, Rutherford Dewey, joins her and the cats in the search for the McMartin Book of Spells. She is determined to use the spells of the witches who built the house to uncover the house’s magic. But the spell book is more evil than Olive realizes. She becomes obsessed with the book and won’t let it out of her sight. It has a sinister spell on her. Olive still has not found a way to rescue her friend Morton from being a painting. With the help of the three cats, Harvey, Horatio and Leopold, she unravels the mystery around Morton’s captivity.

The story’s ending reveals the solution to Morton’s existence and leads into a third book with more mysterious events to follow. Readers will watch Olive mature and accept new friendships and learns to trust others around her.

The reading level is for ages 10 and up.

Uh-oh! Little Owl has fallen from the nest and cannot find Mommy! With the help of a dizzy but well-meaning squirrel, Little Owl sees many animals with some of the same traits as Mommy Owl, but that are definitely not her. Whooo--I mean, who-- knows where she is? Originally published in Europe with the title A Bit Lost, this book features gentle humor, charming animal characters and simple landscapes in bright colors with contrasting earth tones. It's great for reading aloud, with enough of a pattern to make it good for beginning readers as well. It’s been storytime-tested and approved, and has become a favorite with some folks!

 Great for ages 3-7.

This review is dedicated to Maisie.

This series, Ballpark Mysteries, is for both baseball fans and mystery fans. In Fenway Foul-Up, a lucky bat is stolen, and Mike and Kate are on the case. Lots of baseball trivia for those who enjoy baseball. A second book in the series was released simultaneously.
For students in 2nd to 4th grade.

Tony Sarg (1880 – 1942) was the master puppeteer who invented the first huge animal puppets that floated in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. This is the story of a creative little boy who wondered at how things moved and worked, and who grew up to become the puppeteer of Macy’s parade. At age six he devised a way of remotely opening the chicken coop door with a pulley and rope, so that he could put feed on the ground the night before and pull the rope to open the door the next morning to let the chickens out to eat and quickly jump back into bed to sleep longer.  Sarg played with artistic ideas and mechanisms of marionettes all his life so that when he came to New York from Europe, he was an accomplished artist and puppeteer. Macy’s department store hired him to do moving window displays for which he designed storybook character marionettes that fascinated passersby. When asked to help Macy’s plan a large parade, Sarg recreated a carnival type parade that would remind European immigrants of home. Live animals were included, but the lions and tigers frightened children. The solution was for Tony Sarg to create balloon puppets on a grand scale. He commissioned a company in Ohio that made blimps from rubber to produce giant puppets from rubberized silk. Helium and air would keep the puppets rising high and puppeteers would control them from the ground with ropes. The giant puppets were so successful that the ideas are still used today in the annual Macy’s parade. An apprentice of Tony Sarg, Bil Baird, later became famous for his marionettes in the “Lonely Goatherd” in The Sound of Music. Jim Henson, an apprentice of Bil Baird, invented the Muppets. Children will enjoy learning the story behind the Macy’s parade puppets. This special book received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus, Horn Book and Booklist. It is a Junior Library Guild Selection.

Volume 1 of The Books of Elsewhere

The story begins with a family of three, eleven-year-old Olive and her parents, moving into an old Victorian mansion. Olive notices something odd about the house, especially the mysterious paintings. She is unable to take the paintings off the wall. She sees things moving in them. When she discovers an old-fashioned pair of glasses and puts them on she realizes she is able to travel inside the paintings to a place called Elsewhere. Here she is able to talk to the people in the paintings. In one of the paintings Olive meets a boy named Morton, who was forced into the painting. The house is also guarded by three talking cats. Horatio, one of the cats, warns Olive not to spend too much time in the paintings or to lose the glasses. But the suspense and mystery doesn’t stop with one painting. Olive visits other paintings and is left with some eerie feelings. She is warned that the family is not welcomed in the house. The relatives of the previous owners, the McMartins, have some sinister plans. In one of the paintings she sees a white shadow among the trees. Olive is determined to piece the clues together in order to find out more about the house. But she is not sure who to trust, the neighbors, the cats, or the people in the paintings.

Readers will not be disappointed with this book. The commentaries of the cats keep the story moving and add some light humor to this spooky, exciting, mysterious adventure. By the end of the book, Olive has discovered some of the mysteries of her new home, but there are more things to solve and she is left with other adventures to follow.

I would recommend this story to both boys and girls in Grades 4-6.

Tommy is not one of the cool kids in his school, but of all of his classmates, the weirdest has to be Dwight. When Dwight comes to school with a folded paper finger puppet resembling Yoda from “Star Wars,” it’s strange enough; but when he starts giving his classmates advice, tidbits of insight and wisdom--or correctly predicts happenings like pop quizzes--in screechy Yoda-speak, while holding the origami puppet, Tommy takes notice. Does Origami Yoda have mystical powers, or is he just a “paper wad” as his friend Harvey says? Is Dwight not as dorky as he appears to be? As Tommy watches kids come to Dwight/Origami Yoda with their questions and problems, he has his own to ponder: does the girl he likes like him back? He’s afraid to find out on his own, but can he trust Origami Yoda to guide him? To help him decide, he collects accounts from friends and classmates of their experience with Origami Yoda’s “powers,” and puts them in a “casebook”, complete with comments from himself and his friends and plenty of doodle-type illustrations.  It’s “Wimpy Kid” meets “Star Wars!” Can it get better than that? Yes, it can! Included are instructions for folding a simple version of Origami Yoda. (I made my own, as you can see!) With that, plus the more complex paper Yoda pictured on the cover, the kid-friendly fonts and the doodles, it’s sure to attract younger readers. But middle graders will better understand the humor and references in the plot, and relate to the situations Tommy and his classmates describe in their encounters with Origami Yoda, their teachers, and each other. For fans of the book, there is a sequel, Darth Paper Strikes Back. This review is dedicated to Ronan.