Nina Crews seems to have based her style from her father, Donald Crews, writing with short sentences and illustrating with simple photographs that lead the reader to use their imagination to engage the reader. Nina Crews seems to have a good relationship with the Rader family, using the two children as the characters in her books and always thanking the Rader family and Amy Crews for their encouragement and participation. I could not find the relationship that amy crews shares with either Donald Crews or Nina Crews, but Nina Crews seems to receive a lot of encouragement from Amy Crews and Todd Rader, an architecture firm from the area where Nina Crews lives in New York. ( )

Nina Crew's Below follows a young boy named Jack who loses his favorite action figure, Guy, when he falls down a hole in the stairs. I loved the idea for this book, as I remember having a couple of action figures when I was a kid that meant the world to me and that I would also go on all sorts of imaginative adventures with. I would have to believe that any kid could relate to the story being told here. I think that it's important to find books for young readers that they can relate too, and I think that Crews has found a great topic for this. ( )

A cute story about a boy named Jack and his action figure he calls Guy. One day, Guy falls down a small hole in the stairs and Jack must find a way to rescue his best friend.

There is a cute picture of Jack and his toy, Guy, at the beginning and then Guy accidentally falls into the hole in the stairs. Through the story, there are pages where there seems to be an overlapped faded photograph, to enhance the imaginary scenery that Jack comes up with. Whatever Jack thinks might be going on with Guy in the hole is drawn in with white marker and it really depicts a great imaginary setting.

This was a little different approach. It took real life pictures of a boy playing with his toys. He lost his toy, and due to a little ingenuity, he got his toy back after it fell down a deep mysterious hole. It really teaches the basics of critical thinking in my opinion. Great functional book to have around. ( )