My Name is Celia by Monica Brown

This book starts out with "Sugar!" and then goes on to talk about someone or something in the first person. That part confused me a lot. I'm not sure if sugar is being described or if Celia the main character is. But if thats the case, why would they put "sugar" in bold letters at the beginning of the paragraph. The illustrations are very interesting and bold. On some pages they take up all of both pages, but on some, they fill one page, and the one next to it is white with words. I wonder if there is a reason it differs for each page? Another thing that I cannot figure out the reasoning to is that the book doesn't start to tell us about Celia until the third page. So who is being described in the first 2 pages? The illustrations also are not proportional at all and make little sense. But they do enough to support the words. There was an overarching point that music can make people feel at home and feel comfortable which I really liked. It also addressed race in a subtle and tasteful way. Over all I really enjoyed this book.

Bananas in my Ears by Michael Rosen

This is a book of nonsensical poems. I really like this collection because it's silly and in my opinion for pure entertainment. There were four different sections or topics, and in each section there were some of the same kinds of poems; the same characters in each poem, and the same title maybe, but just the topic was changed. I thought that that was a great technique because I was able then to get an idea of what kind of character each one was and it made the poems even funnier to me. Even the titles of the sections though had names that didn't make sense. My favorite section was "Hard Boiled Legs". I liked it because it had the most ridiculous poems in it. Most of these poems end in a way that leaves the reader confused. Many of them have very abrupt endings that don't make much sense, but I guess thats the point of the poems.

Before John was a Jazz Giant by Carole Boston Weatherford Illustrated by Sean Qualls

I really enjoyed this book. As I read it it was almost as though I could hear the music in all of the things that were talked about. On the last page he said that before he was a jazz giant he was all ears. I thought that that was a great ending to the book because it gave me the idea that it is important to not only be able to do something but to take the time and listen and watch and take things in. The illustrations were very interesting as well. They were detailed but at the same time a little obscure in that some pictures were overlapping others and not in any particular order. I enjoyed that because it took a little while for me to look at the picture and see what was happening. I also liked that the pictures were showing the different aspects of the texts. It caused me to really think about what the words were saying and seeing them in drawing helped with the picturing of how they could make music. 

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Because of Winn-Dixie had many things in it that caught my attention. One was the sweetness of Opal. She is a ten year old girl and thinks about the world very honestly; many things she says are very matter of fact. The innocents of how she sees the world and how her father treats her at times shows the Romantic Model of childhood. An example of this is when her father was reluctant to tell her anything about her mother who left them when Opal was a baby. Her father is trying to protect her from being hurt buy the fact that her mother decided to not stay around; he doesn't want her to feel the pain of hearing good things about someone that had hurt you. However, once he does finally did tell her ten things, instead of being sad about them and mad at her mother, instead she held tight to them as pieces of a person she may never meet and pieces of herself. This lack of realization of the reality of what happened shows the Romantic Model in her. One of the things that Opals father told her about her mother was that she drank a lot, and sometimes she couldn’t stop. This is an example of the developmental model of childhood. The preacher thought that it was a good idea to be honest about who Opal’s mother was even if it was hard for her to hear because some day she will learn about those things. Another example is when Otis told her about him being in jail. Also when Gloria showed Opal the bottles hanging from her tree and she said that she drank all of those and they are keeping the ghosts of her past away. This taught Opal about the world and some of the harder things in it which is what the developmental model means. How Opal responded to all of those situations though goes back to the Romantic Model of childhood. Instead of allowing those facts to change how she saw her friends, she accepted them as their past and focused more on who she knew them to be. Most adults who have experienced the world would probably have let those things change their view of the person, but Opal did not. Maybe this was because of her age and maybe it was just because of who she was; but it was something that I found very endearing and interesting and one of the things that I liked most about Opal. One final thing I noticed about the book was how often Opal was without her father and how often he seamed to have no idea where she was. I don’t know why this happened or what it had to do with the story, but it was interesting to me.

The Snow Day by Ezra Jack Keats

This book's illustrations were absolutely beautiful. They were very plain with a lot of white but I thought it was brilliant. It was about snow so that makes sense why there was so much white, but the illustrators use of color was intriguing. First of all he did use a lot of white, but the boy character (Peter I think) was black and he wore a bright red coat the whole time he was outside. This contrast was very cool looking and something that I have not seen a lot. I liked how Peter was able to experience different things about snow that are different from other objects. One of my favorite parts was when he put the snowball in his pocket to keep but later that night it was gone. It didn't say much about that it just mentioned it which I thought was interesting. However, then he knew that the warmth might melt the snow man he made, so I'm not sure why he knew one but not the other. Over all though, I really did enjoy this book.

One by Kathryn Otoshi

I thought that the way that author used circles and numbers instead of characters was a very good idea. I also was impressed by how well the "characters" were able to have such distinct personalities only based on color and the shape of the images. The illustrator was able to show whether or not a color was mean or shy and when they were sad or angry just by how she drew a circle. The message of this story was about emotion and differences. It also talked about the hardships of life in a very subtle and tasteful way. The kindness that blue showed red after how mean red was was a great touch to the book. It was a nice way to end it. Also I loved the last page when it said everyone counts. I thought it was funny because they were talking about how everyone matters and is important, but also about how they are all numbers and you can count them. I thought that was cute.

A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka

This book is a picture book, but it has no words. I thought that it was very interesting how the author was able to portray so many feelings of the dog through fairly simple drawings and no words. One particular place that I thought was very artistically clever was right after Daisy’s ball got popped and she was sleeping on the couch. The illustrator drew four pictures on the same page and in each picture the only difference really was that Daisy was sinking lower and lower into the couch. This seamed to portay that the longer Daisy didn’t have her ball, the sadder and sadder she got. Another thing that was artistically very interesting was how the subtle background changed based on what Daisy was feeling. When she had her ball and was happy, the colors were purple and yellow. However, once her ball got popped, the color scheme changed to brown and other darker colors. I believe the moral of this story is that if you do something even on accident to hurt someone, it is always nice to do what you can to apologize and fix it if you can.