Butterfly Fever

June 1, 2004
Gr 1-3-In the first title, Ellie and her mother temporarily move from Oregon to a California town that celebrates the migration of the monarch butterflies during the winter months. The students in her fourth-grade class contact relatives and acquaintances who live farther north to track the insects' progress and Ellie e-mails a friend in Oregon to help out. The cheery narrative culminates with the town's Monarch Festival and the arrival of the beautiful creatures. Lots of facts are presented in small sidebars. Information gathering, e-mail, and map usage are the methods of learning stressed in the narrative. Hocus Focus tells the story of a boy who resists wearing glasses. Unfamiliar words are defined in boxed insets and diagrams of lenses and the eye are included. Children will have fun with the small eye chart that is appended. Both titles are illustrated with bright, appealing artwork that features characters from different ethnic backgrounds and adds detail to both the plot and the information. Solid combinations of story and science.-Erlene Bishop Killeen, Fox Prairie Elementary School, Stoughton, WI

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2004
Reviewed with Dussling's " Picky Peggy.\i0

Gr. 1-3. These titles from the Science Solves It series tell entertaining tales and include scientific information both in sidebars and within the stories themselves. " Picky Peggy" features a girl who not only refuses to eat a variety of food but also prides herself on being a picky eater. Sympathetic to her pet duckling Fluff's preference for bread crumbs, she feeds him nothing else. Only when she compares Fluff with the other, healthier ducklings does she realize the importance of a balanced diet. An engaging character, Peggy is a strong-willed child who makes her own decisions, a quality that will resonate with other picky eaters. In " Butterfly " Fever, Ellie discovers that her new town, Melville, California, is a migratory destination for monarch butterflies. As her fourth-grade class tracks the monarchs' migration, Ellie (along with the reader) learns about the butterflies' bodies, habits, and life cycle. Both books feature attractive watercolors and each ends with a page called "Think Like a Scientist," suggesting ideas and activities that are abbreviated and sometimes only loosely related to the texts. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)