Joan Sweeney

When a pregnant mama kitten seeks shelter, she happens upon a theater where a ballet troupe practices and performs, the same theater that artist Edgar Degas frequents for inspiration. Everyone loves her and her kittens, except the grumpy stage manager. When the kittens interrupt the opening night performance, he demands they leave. But the next day, all Paris is buzzing with excitement about the dancing kittens. The stage manager has no choice but to accept the kittens into the theater show more family.

The illustrations are fabulous, as is fitting for a book that features a famous artist. Delicate pastels capture the grace and beauty of the ballerinas, and imitate Degas's own style. A reproduction of one of his paintings is included at the end of the book, along with a small amount of biographical information. The story is simple, and references to Degas are subtle; in fact, the author often just refers to him as the artist. Her intent seems to be to capture the atmosphere of Degas's artwork while positing a playful invention in the kittens. This story draws a child's interest with the cute tale, and could lead them to be more curious about Degas and fine art work. show less

Me and the Measure of Things is a story about measurement. We see in the book how a little girl does several things that need to be measured in order to do them correctly such as making pancakes. I really like the book because it gives clear examples of measurement throughout the story. One thing I dislike about the book is that it's only based on the customary system and children from other countries would not be able to relate since the rest of the world uses the metric system.

I honestly really liked this book and think its a good informational book about families. To begin with, I liked that this book could be fun for children to read, and still be informational. I know that when I was a child I wasn't that big of a fan of informational books, but reading this I hadn't even known I was reading one until going through it. Another reason why I liked this book was because it was coming from the perspective of a child. The child was almost "teaching" the readers how show more her family is made up and how they are all related. She does this using her own child-like drawings and diagrams to explain how they are all related. Lastly, I like this book because after the reader learns about the generations of a family, there is an empty family tree at the end of the book for the reader to fill in about their own family. I think this is something engaging that the reader can complete once they are finished reading. Overall, the main idea of this book is to teach students about the different generations of families, and what a family can consist of. show less

Me Counting Time is one of the best math books I have ever read . This would be a really good book to introduce time in a simplistic form such as seconds all the way to millennium I really enjoyed how the book is describing time in a real life point of view such as “A YEAR ago, my family moved to our brand new house. Now it’s twelve months old.” This book would be great for children struggling with math concepts.