Robot Zombie Frankenstein! by Annette Simon. Candlewick Press, 2012As a child of a certain decade, I remember ColorForms. I see there is a anniversary edition of the toy available. There is even an app for iThing users. I hold the original version of the toy develops a sense of shape and color. Young imaginations were enhanced and fine motor skills are enhanced as the plastic shapes were carefully peeled and applied to the shiny surface.
Annette Simon's mixes that same spirit of creativity with her imaginative use of shapes, vivid color and popular themes. The end papers offer a menu of the shapes that will be deployed in what at first seems a very simple narrative. Robots made up of squares, triangles, rectangles, ovals, circles and crescents morph into zombie robot, then Frankenstein robot then pirate robot. Add in a pie and a fork and there is an opportunity for the two robots to share some delicious pie.
There are so many ways to use this book in a school library or classroom or art class. Shape identification, colors, build your own robot, friendship, sharing, collage are just some of the ways I can envision using this title.
This is going in my Go bag for this new school year. What a deliciously entertaining book.
It appears William Joyce's 
Well, I managed to finish The Likeness by Tana French for my last 4 hours of reading. I've read all three of French's Dublin mysteries now and I understand a fourth is due this year. These are not YA books. Her writing is very compelling.
and the image of the expired Ginger being carted away that is seared into my imagination. No 
for me, thank you very much. To this day, I am ignorant of 
and 
despite having happily handed them over to many passionate horse story loving girls over the years. Even entling no.1's enthusiasm for the entire 
series complete with matching Breyer horses did not move me unil I saw the beautiful 
movie. I did get through 
by Will James one summer because it was on my grandparent's bookshelf and I was out of reading material.
and IT had a horse on the cover. I did not read the jacket blurbs but dove right in. It was not until I was well in to the story, told by the horse James (Jimmy) Pigg himself, that I realized the pony was in the hands of the doomed Robert Falcon Scott and would be part of the race to the South Pole. 
was going to be the last Enola Holmes book, I purposely delayed reading it because I did not want the series to end. Springer's new book is a tightly written thriller.
.) The team must compete in the Math Match Competition against the never defeated private school Willowby Academy kids who sneer at the public school teams. There is something strange about the kids on the Willowby Academy team. Lunch Lady and her trusty assistant Betty investigate and ride to the rescue wielding their high tech lunch room gadgets
This will be a fun blog to follow: 
which is the sequel to her absolutely brilliant 
. These books tell their stories in a scrapbook fashion. What is astonishing is how Holm manages to tell a humorous, poignant and tender story through a collection of post-it notes, texts and the flotsam and jetsam papers of daily life. 
Chronal Engine by Greg Leitch Smith. Clarion Books, March 2012