Skit-Scat Raggedy Cat is a children’s non-fiction book about Ella Fitzgerald. Great photos. Nice storytelling. Ella as a homeless teen is kind of dark, if you have really young kids – but I liked that her difficult early years weren’t glossed over. Nicely done.
Mirror Mirror is a children’s poetry book and it was pretty good. Each duo of poems is based on a fairy tale. The poem is told top to bottom and then bottom to top. Smartly done.
A Sick Day for Amos McGee was not my kind of story. Amos gets up everyday and takes the bus to work at the zoo. He does things with the animals like play chess with the elephant and tell bedtime stories to the owl, who is afraid of the dark. One morning Amos wakes up with a cold and doesn’t go to work – so the animals take the bus to his house and do all of the things for him that he always does for them. It was nice enough and I’m betting my kids would have asked for it to be read to them over and over again while I yawned a lot.