Elementary school | Daddy Mojo

SquirrelLock Holmes: The Pet Rock Mystery, pun, silly fun for elementary

Elementary school-age children may not know Sherlock Holmes. They certainly haven’t read the original stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Those young ages might’ve seen A Hard Day’s Knight, Season 1, Episode 10 of Phineas and Ferb that paid homage to The Hound of Baskervilles, but they probably didn’t catch the reference. Slightly older audiences will know Enola Holmes, which will hopefully lead them to the BBC series Sherlock, among others. But I digress…SquirrelLock Holmes: The Pet Rock Mystery is an early reader graphic novel that’s firmly locked into its core audience.

SquirrelLock Holmes: The Pet Rock Mystery is a chapter book with graphic novel sensibilities, or vice versa, and provides the silly stamina to keep up with early elementary school boys.

Look what you first and second-grade readers found…

The Spider Strikes will make young readers become book lovers

There’s an almost impossible point of believability to accomplish between Scooby-Doo, The Hardy Boys, the authentic enthusiasm of teens and realistic fiction. But wait, you want to successfully thread that needle through an opening further complicated by setting the book in 1930’s Germany? Somehow, The Spider Strikes, the third book in The Web of the Spider book series, navigates that 1%. It deftly tells an age-appropriate story about teenagers in 1931 Germany. I was skeptical too. However, during the book I was enthralled at the way it balanced everything. I was also bummed that the first two books in the series had slipped past my radar.

The Spider Strikes is realistic fiction with adventure that makes the story plausible and enjoyable, without being too real.

Young readers unite in their love of this book series

Unfunny Bunny is about a kid finding his personality and his ‘true’ self

I had to re-read The Unfunny Bunny to see if my adult brain missed something. Ah, I did miss a small nuance. It happens on the first two pages. That fact was certainly comforting, to an extent. I was expecting great things from Unfunny Bunny. It’s from Kenan Thompson and Bryan Tucker, two SNL veterans. Thompson has been a face on SNL for decades, in addition to dozens of voice-over and movie roles, whereas Tucker is a 16-time Emmy-nominated writer for the show. Adults have seen Thompson in something that they’ve liked, and that fact will bring a large amount of goodwill towards the book.

Unfunny Bunny will produce laughs from the kids, but needs a little adult help to get the point of the book across.

Star power. cute-ish book. what’s not to like?

How a Bear Became a Book, a perfect book on partners, production and Pooh

A book doesn’t have arms. It can’t hug you. How a Bear Became a Book: The Collaborations That Created Winnie-the-Pooh does have the aura of a comforting hug. It’s the smell of a kitchen after Snickerdoodles have just been made. The very subtle off-kilter letters in the book’s title evoke a playful nature. This aspect is magnified by the translucent bear running across the pages of a book, whose words are jumbled, incomplete, and utterly Pooh-esque.

How This Was Made meets classic children’s literature in How a Bear Became a Book: The Collaboration That Created Winnie-the-Pooh that’s as entertaining as it is educational, without trying to be the latter.

You won’t say “oh bother” while reading this book

Winnie-the-Pooh: 100th Anniversary Edition, a bit aged, still as awesome

I thought it was a velvet cover. But no, the cover to Winnie-the-Pooh: 100^th Anniversary (Winnie-the-Pooh; The House at Pooh Corner) (The Winnie-the-Pooh Collection) is a flocked cover. Flocking is a process where short fibers are glued to a surface and feels like velvet, but it is much cheaper. If the question was, how do make reading Winnie-the-Pooh more adorable, the answer would certainly be to provide it with a flocked cover.

Winnie-the-Pooh: 100th Anniversary Edition brims with life, energy, fun and doesn’t look a day over 100.

Pooh sticks at dawn!

Maysoon Zayid: The Girl Who Can Can, well-meaning, but flawed

Muslim Mavericks is a new series of books by Salaam Reads. They’re non-fiction books that highlight inspirational Muslim figures. Maysoon Zayid: The Girl Who Can Can is an early chapter book. Zayid has Cerebral Palsy, a condition that impacts 10,000 people in the United States. The chapters in The Girl Who Can Can tell a story that’s inspirational, but its length and organization will impact who can enjoy the book and to what degree.

Read on for more 411

Piece Out uses action, perspective and imagination to make it awesome

Homophones make for great elementary school comedy, in addition to dad jokes. Piece Out takes that homophone madness, adds a splash of early 90s slang, some Toy Story, and everyday things that kids will understand and laugh at. The frustration of a missing puzzle piece or someone’s favorite piece or character for family game night will provide a lifetime of memories. “You always had to be the car” or “I wanted to be red for the longest time” are just a couple of things people will remember from their youth.

Piece Out is so much better than I expected-and I expected it to be good. It’s a funny, action-based illustrated book that uses scale and perspective to its benefit.

Toy story meets die hard, kind of…, but it’s still awesome

Quentin Blake’s Fantastic Journey, a beautiful trip to imagination via art

I know Quentin Blake’s illustrations; they were in Mad Magazine. No, they were in some other, more trendy and mature magazine that I can’t remember. Blake’s drawings resonate with audiences for those reasons and more. They have the friendly and affable demeanor of something whimsical and appealing to children, yet operating at a higher, more complex level too. Quentin Blake’s Fantastic Journeys lives somewhere between the world of wordless book, cartoon book, sketches for a Redbull commercial, Sergio Aragones compilation and illustrations from a Roald Dahl book that you forgot the name of.

Quentin Blake’s Fantastic Journey features new art from the classic illustrator that’s not burdened by the small space of a book cover.

Wordless art that tells a limitless story