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This Book Is Not Ready!
This Book Is Not Ready!, written and illustrated by JWoodall.Art, turns the making of a story into a lively children’s book. Its central character is a wide-eyed, scribbly figure who discovers that it’s inside a book and immediately starts worrying about the missing plot, scenery, and supporting cast. What follows is a string of creative experiments, complaints, costume changes, and mishaps, with the reader recruited as a helper. The character’s exaggerated reactions give the book its personality: it’s bossy, easily flustered, and eager to keep things moving. There’s something funny and inviting about watching this little figure try to manage a project that keeps growing beyond its control.
The reader participation is one of the book’s strongest features. Shaking the book sends a jumble of objects tumbling across the page, including a banana, a treasure chest, and a rubber chicken. Pointing out a green crayon helps get the scenery started, while turning the book upside down creates a fresh problem for the character. These prompts make page turns feel like part of the action, and they give an adult reading aloud plenty of chances to pause, invite a response, and play up the surprise. The humor also moves between straightforward silliness and jokes about storytelling, such as a plot hole becoming an actual hole that needs construction work. Some references, including craft services and aviation approval, seem especially likely to amuse the grown-up sharing the book.
The illustrations carry much of the comedy. The main character’s round head, wiry limbs, and dark, crosshatched body keep its expressions easy to follow, from suspicious sideways glances to full-on panic. Against pale, textured backgrounds, bright crayons, yellow sticky notes, green trees, and scattered props stand out clearly. Slanted panel borders add movement, and oversized drawing tools make the act of creating this picture book feel physical. I especially liked the trees that resemble broccoli and the enormous dragon whose size overwhelms its creator. A small squirrel keeps appearing in different roles and situations, giving children an extra detail to track on another reading. As the pages fill with jungle foliage, outer space, and a winding path to a castle, the expanding artwork makes the character’s progress visible.
The book’s pace is busy and episodic, with each attempted solution opening the door to another joke. A search for coffee and a wardrobe inspection stretch out the preparations, so the experience works best when readers enjoy the character’s detours and the running commentary. The final castle doorway gives all that activity a satisfying destination, even as it suggests another adventure is waiting ahead. The closing thanks to the reader fits the book’s shared approach to invention, and the last pages of sticky notes keep the jokes going through squirrel complaints and reminders to buy more crayons. It’s a cheerful choice for children who like talking back to a book, spotting small visual surprises, and imagining how stories get made. Its most appealing idea is that a messy beginning can be enough to get everyone creating together.
Pages: 39 | ASIN : B0DKJRMJSS
My (2D Shape) Family
My 2D Shape Family, by Lisa M. Weckbacher, turns an introductory geometry lesson into a friendly family gathering. Circle serves as the narrator, welcoming readers and introducing relatives that range from Oval and Triangle to less familiar figures such as Heptagon, Nonagon, and Decagon. The family idea gives this children’s book a warm structure while reinforcing its central message: shapes can share important qualities and still look quite different from one another.
The book builds understanding through familiar objects, thoughtful comparisons, and plenty of direct questions. Children identify shapes in a button, pizza slice, checkerboard, soccer ball, and honeycomb before meeting the corresponding character. They’re also invited to trace Circle, measure width, count sides, and consider why some shapes look different when turned or tilted. These prompts make the picture book especially well suited to reading aloud, since an adult can pause for predictions, counting, and conversation.
Katrina Snyder’s illustrations give each shape its own lively personality. The characters have expressive faces, thin arms and legs, and little visual details that help distinguish them without distracting from their geometry. Bright colors, generous white space, and clearly drawn everyday objects keep the pages easy to follow. The illustrations are particularly effective when shapes are rotated, stretched, or placed beside similar family members, allowing readers to see the differences the text is describing.
There’s an impressive amount of material here, from the meaning of two-dimensional to length, width, curves, sides, points, and orientation. Even the nine-sided and ten-sided shapes receive memorable introductions, giving children vocabulary they may not encounter in many early shape books. The closing reference pages gather the whole family in one place, making it easy to review what readers have learned. With its chatty narrator and hands-on questions, My 2D Shape Family offers a playful, substantial introduction to recognizing and comparing geometric shapes.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0H9VR4LBM
Visual Variety
Alex the Circus Clown: Learning Colors is Fun! invites young readers into a vibrant circus where Alex and his clown friends turn learning colors into a playful, rhyming celebration. What inspired you to use a circus setting to teach children about colors?
I chose the circus setting because it naturally brings color, energy, and excitement to the page. When children think of the circus, they usually picture bright balloons, costumes, laughter, and fun, so it felt like the perfect place to introduce colors in a way that would immediately capture their attention. I wanted learning to feel playful, not forced.
Alex the Circus Clown gave me the opportunity to create a world that feels joyful and inviting for young children. The circus is full of movement, imagination, and visual variety, which made it a great fit for teaching something as basic but important as color recognition. It also allowed me to use rhythm and rhyme in a way that feels lighthearted and entertaining.
More than anything, I wanted children to connect learning with happiness. If a child can smile, laugh, and enjoy the experience while also learning their colors, then the book has done what I hoped it would do.
How did you decide which colors to include, especially more specific shades like maroon, copper, aqua, and olive?
I wanted the book to go beyond just the basic colors children usually learn first. Of course, those foundation colors matter, but I also wanted to introduce them to a wider range of shades in a fun and natural way. Children notice more than we sometimes give them credit for, and books can be a simple way to expand their vocabulary early.
Colors like maroon, copper, aqua, and olive were included because they add variety and make the book feel richer and more interesting. The circus gave me the freedom to do that. It is such a colorful world that it did not feel out of place to include shades that are a little more unique. Balloons, costumes, props, and decorations all gave me room to bring in those colors in a playful way.
I also liked the idea of giving parents and teachers something extra to work with. A child may not remember every shade right away, but hearing those words early helps build familiarity. It opens the door for conversation, repetition, and curiosity, which are a big part of learning at that age.
For me, it was really about making the book more engaging while also giving children a broader and more colorful learning experience.
The illustrations are full of motion, pattern, and personality; how did you envision the visual style of Alex and his clown friends?
I wanted the visual style to feel lively, warm, and full of joy. Since this book is for young children, I pictured Alex and his clown friends as friendly, playful, and inviting rather than exaggerated or overwhelming. I did not want anything harsh or distracting. I wanted children to look at the characters and immediately feel comfortable, curious, and ready to turn the page.
The movement was important to me because the circus is never still. In my mind, everything in that world has energy—balloons floating, costumes bouncing, clowns performing, and color everywhere. I wanted the illustrations to reflect that sense of motion and excitement so the book would feel alive from page to page.
The patterns and bright details were also intentional. Since the book is about colors, I wanted the artwork to do more than just support the words. I wanted it to help carry the learning. The costumes, props, and backgrounds gave me the chance to fill the pages with visual variety in a way that keeps children engaged while reinforcing the colors they are seeing and hearing.
As for Alex and his friends, I envisioned them each having their own personality while still fitting together as part of the same cheerful circus world. I wanted them to feel expressive, fun, and memorable. My goal was for children to connect with them, not just as characters in a lesson, but as friends leading them through a colorful adventure.
What do you hope parents, teachers, and caregivers take away from reading this book with children?
I hope they take away that learning can be simple, joyful, and shared. For me, this book is not just about teaching colors. It is about creating a moment where a child can learn, smile, and feel encouraged at the same time.
I hope parents, teachers, and caregivers see that early learning does not have to feel like pressure. It can be fun, lighthearted, and full of imagination. Sometimes the best learning happens when a child is relaxed, engaged, and enjoying the experience.
I also hope the book gives adults a chance to interact with children in a meaningful way. Whether they are reading aloud, pointing out colors, or talking about their favorite pages, those small moments matter. They help build vocabulary, attention, confidence, and connection.
More than anything, I hope this book leaves them with the reminder that children learn best when learning feels like joy.
Author Links: Facebook | Website
Chef Quiche’s Shapes and Colors
Chef Quiche’s Shapes and Colors follows Quiche Junior and his parents on a rainy Saturday trip to the Giggle and Grow Museum, where a cheerful treasure hunt turns into a playful lesson in shapes and colors. Guided by Mr. Orange and an ancient-looking parchment, Quiche Junior searches the museum for circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, ovals, rhombuses, stars, and hearts hidden inside colorful artwork. By the end, the real treasure isn’t gold or jewels, but a rainbow outside the window, a sweet reminder that beauty and hope can appear after even the grayest afternoon.
I found the book charming in a very earnest and homemade-feeling way. The writing has a lively read-aloud rhythm, especially when the shape clues slip into rhyme, and I could easily imagine a preschooler joining in with the repeated pattern of “checked” after each discovery. There’s something endearing about how much the book wants to give children: vocabulary, observation skills, color recognition, shape facts, and a soft emotional message all at once.
The artwork is bright, quirky, and full of visual activity, which suits the museum treasure hunt nicely. I liked the mix of cartoon characters with childlike framed “artworks,” because it gives the book a handmade classroom energy that feels warm rather than polished to perfection. The quiche characters are silly in a memorable way, and the rainy-to-rainbow arc gives the illustrations a satisfying emotional lift. My favorite idea in the book is that learning comes through noticing, not lecturing. Children are invited to look closely, search the pictures, and feel the pleasure of finding something for themselves.
I thought this was a sweet and good-hearted picture book with a clear sense of purpose and a lot of affection behind it. It’s an interactive learning adventure, the kind I’d pull out when my child was alert, curious, and ready to point at the page. I’d recommend it for preschool and early kindergarten readers who enjoy scavenger hunts, bright colors, playful food characters, and books that turn basic concepts into a shared little game.
Pages: 56 | ASIN : B0GPXF7NX3
In Search of the Optimal Human Diet: A Layperson’s Guide to Nutritional Science
Jonathan Spitz’s In Search of the Optimal Human Diet is an ambitious and deeply researched layperson’s guide to nutritional science, built around one central conviction: that a whole-food, plant-based diet is not a fringe preference but the clearest answer emerging from centuries of nutritional inquiry. Spitz begins with a personal wound, his father’s fatal heart attack at fifty-one, then widens the lens into a sweeping history of discovery, from James Lind’s citrus experiment with scurvy-stricken sailors to the work of Lavoisier, Liebig, Krebs, Ornish, Esselstyn, and Greger. The book moves from deficiency diseases to diseases of excess, from vitamins and macronutrients to the microbiome, ending with a firm argument for fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and a conscious avoidance of animal and heavily processed foods.
What I found most compelling is the book’s insistence that nutrition is a story of hard-won knowledge, not casual advice. Spitz has a gift for making scientific history feel alive, especially when he slows down over moments of intellectual trial and error. Lind’s oranges and lemons, Lavoisier’s calorimeter, Magendie’s unsettling dog experiments, and Krebs’s painstaking mapping of metabolic cycles all become part of a larger human drama: the body gradually yielding its secrets to measurement, curiosity, and revision. I admired the humility embedded in that structure. Even when the author writes with absolute confidence about plant-based eating, the historical chapters remind us that science advances by correcting itself. That gives the book a sturdy moral rhythm, as if every mistaken theory still carries value because it helped clear the path.
Spitz’s passion is unmistakable and often moving. The sections on observational and interventional studies, especially the discussions of wartime Norway, The China Study, Ornish, Esselstyn, and plant-based diabetes interventions, make a persuasive cumulative case. Phrases that cast opposing voices as unserious or contaminated by industry influence may satisfy readers already inclined to agree. I appreciated the author’s practical honesty in places like the appendix on vitamin B12, where he acknowledges that a plant-based diet requires supplementation in the modern world. That kind of candor strengthens the argument because it admits that an ideal diet still has real-world obligations.
The book is at its best when it braids biography, chemistry, and public health into one flowing narrative. It can be dense, sometimes almost encyclopedic. Yet I rarely felt that the detail was merely decorative. Spitz writes like someone who has lived with these ideas for decades, and his conviction gives the material warmth. The conclusion returns to that personal beginning with satisfying emotional force: the son who lost his father to heart disease becomes the older man who sees food as empowerment rather than deprivation. I’d recommend In Search of the Optimal Human Diet to thoughtful general readers, plant-curious eaters, health professionals open to nutrition-centered prevention, and anyone who wants a serious, historically grounded case for whole-food, plant-based living.
Pages: 337 | ISBN : 9781662973574
Robbie, The Grumpy Bumpy Rooster: Part 1 of the Rooster Series
In Robbie, the Grumpy Bumpy Rooster, little Lucy, a delicate blue pysanka chicken with a painful foot and a gentle spirit, is learning how to find her voice in a busy Ukrainian chookyard when Robbie, a vain and angry rooster, storms in and frightens the smallest chickens. The flock rallies around her, especially Sofia, Hapka, Boris, and the Babas, and the story becomes less about one rooster’s tantrum than about safety, courage, and the deep comfort of being protected by your people.
I found the heart of this children’s book tender and surprisingly intense. As a parent, I really responded to the way Lucy’s vulnerability is handled. She isn’t written as fragile in a way that evokes pity, but as a childlike creature who needs extra care, gets tired, plays tricks, struggles, and still belongs completely. The writing has a slightly old-fashioned storytelling feel, with repetition, big sounds, and emotional directness that would work well read aloud. It feels like the author is making room for a child’s fear to be taken seriously.
The ideas in the book are what stayed with me most. Robbie’s anger is frightening, but the story doesn’t pretend children can simply out-brave a bully on their own. Instead, it shows help arriving from all sides: a mother, an elder, a protector, and trusted adults. I appreciated that. The artwork adds a lot of personality, especially Robbie’s colors and expressions, Lucy’s soft yellow-blue sweetness, and the warm domestic details of the Babas, the lemon tree, the tea, and the poppyseed cake.
This is a heartfelt and emotionally honest picture book with a strong protective instinct at its center. It’s an educational story, and Robbie’s bullying has real bite. The story opens the door to meaningful conversations about fear, anger, difference, and asking for help. I’d recommend it for families with young children who are learning how to name big feelings, especially kids who’ve felt picked on, overwhelmed, or in need of reassurance that someone will come when they call.
Pages: 31 | ASIN : B0FL7KH4DG
So You Want To Be An Astronomer & Exoplanet Hunter
So You Want To Be An Astronomer & Exoplanet Hunter is a fascinating and beautifully presented nonfiction book for young readers who are curious about space, science, and what it really means to study the universe. Written for ages 10 to 14, this book goes beyond simple stargazing facts and gives readers an honest, exciting look at the real work astronomers do, especially those who search for planets beyond our solar system.
One of the book’s greatest strengths (as it is in the entire So You Want To Be… series) is the way it explains complex science in a clear and engaging way. Readers learn how astronomers detect exoplanets by studying tiny dips in starlight, measuring the wobble of distant stars, and using spectroscopy to understand the chemical makeup of alien atmospheres. These are big scientific ideas, but Soules presents them in a way that feels approachable without talking down to kids. The book trusts young readers with real vocabulary and real science, which makes the subject even more exciting.
The career-focused sections are especially strong. The book does an excellent job of showing that astronomy is not just about looking through telescopes. It involves math, physics, coding, patience, careful observation, data analysis, and problem-solving. And above all, it takes patience, as Linda puts it, “the timescales are humbling. An exoplanet… is found only by observing its star for at least one full orbit – which means years of patiently waiting.” The day-in-the-life section gives readers a realistic look at an astronomer’s work, from opening an observatory dome at sunset to dealing with weather problems and reviewing data the next morning. This realistic approach makes the career feel both challenging and inspiring.
The illustrations are another highlight. They are colorful and detailed, adding visual interest while also helping explain the science. The book also includes fun facts, a helpful glossary, historical profiles of important astronomers, and practical suggestions for kids who want to start learning more right away. Tips such as learning constellations, visiting a planetarium, trying a small telescope, exploring real datasets, and participating in citizen-science projects make the book feel empowering.
I also appreciated the strong representation of women in science. By highlighting female astronomers who made major contributions despite facing barriers, the book shows young readers, especially girls, that they belong in science too. This adds an important and inspiring layer to an already excellent educational book.
So You Want To Be An Astronomer & Exoplanet Hunter is an informative, engaging, and visually appealing guide for children interested in space or science careers. It’s short and accessible, but still packed with meaningful information. Young readers who dream of studying stars, galaxies, telescopes, or distant planets will find this book both exciting and useful. It’s a wonderful choice for upper elementary and middle-grade readers, classrooms, libraries, and families with kids who look up at the night sky and wonder what else might be out there.
Pages: 38 | ISBN : 978-1972766408
Alphabet Albcell!
Alphabet Albcell!, by Gazmend Ceno, is a children’s activity book built around the Albcell system, a puzzle format that blends letter recognition, number patterns, and coloring into one routine. The opening section walks young readers through the rules with a large sample puzzle, showing how even numbers appear in circles, odd numbers appear in diamonds, and each zone follows a one-time-only number rule. That setup gives the book a clear identity right away: it’s not just a workbook page here and there, but a full method for solving and coloring alphabet-themed puzzles.
Once the instructions are over, the pages move into a steady rhythm of puzzle spreads that alternate between simpler even-number pages, odd-number pages, and fuller mixed-number designs. The shapes inside the squares shift from page to page to form large block letters and other bold paths, so the child is always working inside a strong visual structure. That repetition feels intentional. It gives children a pattern they can settle into while still keeping the pages visually fresh.
The book also has a nice classroom-to-kitchen-table feel. It explains the puzzle logic in a friendly voice that’s easy to follow. I liked that the coloring isn’t treated as an extra decoration tossed on top. It’s part of how the activity unfolds, first around the circles, then around the diamonds, then across the full finished shape.
Visually, the book is straightforward and easy to read. The pages are clean, the number placement is large enough for young children, and the black and white layouts leave plenty of room for coloring and marking with a pencil.
Alphabet Albcell! is a structured alphabet and number puzzle book with a specific game at its center. It’s made for children who like patterns, filling things in, and turning a page of shapes and numbers into something they’ve completed with both logic and color. If you want a book that gives readers a repeatable puzzle routine with an educational slant and plenty of room for coloring, this book is easily recommended.
Pages: 109 | ASIN : B0F281BZTD
