School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 1-These three offerings vary in quality. In Cori, a girl needs braces-"Her teeth were not very crooked,/but they were not very straight." She is apprehensive at first, but everyone loves her braces in the end and the story is wrapped up quickly. The art is unattractive, with the characters looking distorted. Also, the audience for this book is generally too young for braces. Lara is the most engaging of the titles. Collage illustrations in bright colors feature a wide-eyed ladybug searching for her spots. "Lara Ladybug lost her spots./Where can they be?/Did she leave them in her garden?/Let's see." Eventually she finds them, "One Two Three." Work is average in quality with pale cartoon illustrations of people doing various jobs. The text reads like a rhyming list: "People work in inside places./People work in outside spaces." At the end a girl wonders, "Are things I do at school and play.../like work that I may do someday?"-Melinda Piehler, Sawgrass Elementary School, Sunrise, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.