Awards: 2007 Mildred L. Batchelder Award Winner, 2007 ALA Notable Children's Book

This book is based on Charles Perrault's "Tom Thumb.” The story is about seven brothers and their adventure. The youngest one is named Yann. He is ten years old, but too small like a two year old. He is the cleverest among his brothers. One night Yann overhears his parents talking; the father Louis tells his wife Marthe that he wants to kill all of the seven boys in the morning. Yann wakes his brothers up on a stormy night and convinces them to leave the farm. Al l the brothers followed him without any question and their journey begins.
The book is well written and the story is well-paced. The characters are enchanting and dynamic. The relationship between brothers is heartwarming, and they protect each other from danger and support one another. It is a first person narrative story and appealing for the age 9-12. It is an open-ended story though and leaves the reader vague and unsatisfied.

Ana is graduating from eighth grade. Ana’s mother is African-American and his father is Chines-American. Ana’s family and grandparents come to her graduation ceremony. Meanwhile, a water pipe breaks and the salon and dance floor flooded. She wanted to take the dancing opportunity to talk to Jamie, her crush classmate, but the pip break ruined everything. However, she then thought to invite Jamie to the family dinner. Her grandparents are not happy with this as they do not get along with cross cultural communication. The grandmothers usually try to race with each other with gifts and stories. Now, they try to do the same to prepare the perfect dishes for Ana's graduation dinner with different foods. Finally, their different cultures and tastes mix together and complement each other and satisfy Ana.
This book is good for middle school students, growing up multi-cultural and bi-racial, which encourages the respect and appreciation of different cultures. It is a story that highlights a multi-cultural family and their struggles and issues and everyone can relate to that. However, it could have developed the characters better.

In this story, Elie learns about dinosaurs from his brother who brought a book from school. He then wonders what to do if a dinosaur comes into his room every night. He does not sleep in his room and his brother and sister do not help. He constantly imagines a dinosaur in his room and cries and goes to his sister and brother`s room. He scared to sleep in his room. His mother tells him that dinosaurs do not like water, and they come up with a plan that seems easy, but it is not. Finally, one night that he thinks he saw a dinosaur, his father sprays the room with water pretending that dinosaur is gone. Since then, he keeps a bottle of water near his bed just in case the dinosaur comes back.
This story is good for as a bedtime read for kids who have just had one of those nights. The plot presents childhood problems and nightmares, and how to solve them. The illustration, however, could have been more attractive.

Rapunzel has lived in a tower with a witch named Mother Gothel and her pet, Pascal, since she was a child. She is not able to come out the tower as Mother Gothel always tells her it is too dangerous to go outside the tower, and she never let her leave. She turns eighteen and decides to sneak away and experience the outside world. A thief named Flynn climbs the tower and promises Rapunzel to take her to the village. Rapunzel gets pretty excited and does not know what to expect. Then she meets a painter, and he offers her an art lesson. Rapunzel then paints Flynn first, so Pascal gets mad and runs away. Rapunzel and Flynn look everywhere, and they finally find Pascal. She sets out with Flynn to see the lanterns that she has always dreamed of seeing light up the sky.
This story is description of a day of Rapunzel fairy tale. Like most of fairy tales, the story characters are the poor people, witch, prince, and happy ending. The book is well illustrated and appealing to children.

The book “Dirt on my shirt” is a collection of poems for children age 4 to 8. It contains hilarious poems with simple vocabulary and clever humor. In addition, the rhymes are easy to read and remember. The illustrations are stunning and funny, and colored illustrations make this book more attractive. It presents poems about childhood experiences about friends, families, cousins. The poems have warm tone. For example, grandma that puts on lipstick, that she cannot see well, and it ends up on her nose. It explains children`s feeling about sitting in grandpa`s lap in a small fishing boat and having a nap. These poems reflect the love we feel for our grandpas and grandmas and capture the spirit of a child.

Marjane satrapi, in the novel Persepolis, describes Iran’s revolution from a girl point of view. She writes with the innocence of a child and the knowledge of a grown woman. Firs chapter is called “The Veil” in which Marjane is forced to wear a scarf to cover her hair in school. She was not strictly religious, and Marjane and her peers ignore the religious garments. She grows up in a political, religious, and intellectual period of time. She explains the effects of cultural changes and harshness of reactions, during the revolution, in words and illustrations. Instead of enjoying her childhood, she is full of wonder and sadness. She defines different types of rebels in the society. She has lots of curiosity. She asks herself why their neighbours are missing. Why is the veil mandatory? What is wrong with wearing denim jeans and jacket with Michael Jackson picture on it? They have different culture at home. They drink wine at home, and she collects the posters of Kim Wilde and Iron Maiden. Finally, because of the Iran-Iraq war, her parents decide to send her to Europe for safety.
Persepolis is an appealing autobiographic written in graphic novel format which has simple, but meaningful black and white illustrations. Marjane pictures the story very well with a conversational style of a girl`s thought. The Persepolis graphic novel adapted into an animated movie in 2007, and it received the Oscar prize for Best Animated Feature and also won the Jury Prize at the 2007 show more Cannes Film Festival. show less

It is the story of yooks, who eat bread with butter up side, and Zooks, who eat bread with butter down side. A grandfather, who dedicates his life to the yook philosophy that bread should be spread with butter on its top side, and he frightens the Zooks with snick-berry switch as he cannot stand the way Zooks eat butter down side. There is a big wall between Yooks’ and Zook’s land and grandfather takes the boy to this wall. One day, one of the Zooks slingshotted the snick- berry switch and war began between Yooks and Zooks. The grandfather develops his weapon and changes the snick-berry switch to a fancier sling shoot named triple-sling jigger. Triple-sling jigger becomes a kick-a-poo kid, then becomes an utterly sputter and by the time weapons of both sides becomes bigger and advanced until it becomes to Boomeroo, a bomb. Every one cheers “Fight for the butter side up! Do or die!” The grandfather was ordered to drop the bomb on the Zooks while all Yooks stay underground to protect themselves, but Zooks also had one Boomeroo and the boy follows the grandfather to see what is going to happen.
I think this is a good story and every one would have different perception of this book. If reader thinks deeply, not just the surface, then there are messages behind the story that shows the way governments, politics, and beliefs work.