(4) K-3 Ready-to-Read series. Bitsy Bee searches for a Christmas gift for friend Busy Bug; Bitsy and Busy have their first day of school. Short sentences in large font support emergent readers, but they may stumble over these thin stories' clunky meters: "Skating Bugs dance on ice. Snowball Bugs zoom around. / The Bugs are excited for the holidays. Christmas cheer abounds!" The illustrations are bright and cartoony. Review covers these Ready-to-Read titles: Bitsy Bee Goes to School and Merry Christmas, Bugs!.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen

(2) PS That friendly cube (The Happy Little Yellow Box) is back in this concept pop-up book introducing upper- and lowercase letters. The box demonstrates an action for one letter on every spread, usually in conjunction with that page's interactive feature. Bold color contrasts and carefully engineered surprises make for a high-energy alphabet book; the tabs require manual dexterity and may easily incur damage.

Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2014

(4) K-3 Ready-to-Read series. Bitsy Bee searches for a Christmas gift for friend Busy Bug; Bitsy and Busy have their first day of school. Short sentences in large font support emergent readers, but they may stumble over these thin stories' clunky meters: "Skating Bugs dance on ice. Snowball Bugs zoom around. / The Bugs are excited for the holidays. Christmas cheer abounds!" The illustrations are bright and cartoony. Review covers these Ready-to-Read titles: Bitsy Bee Goes to School and Merry Christmas, Bugs!.

Reviewer: Katrina Hedeen

(2) PS A small square book with board pages introduces a smiley-faced yellow box. Cleverly engineered tabs and pop-ups bring outside and inside, up and down, and near and far to life. Text is on the left-hand pages, while on the right chalk-drawn scenes on black backgrounds set the stage for the box to be maneuvered into various opposites. This volume's life will be short but its appeal irresistible.

Reviewer: Julie Roach | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2012

(4) K-3 Ready-to-Read series. Bitsy Bee enjoys her "very first snow day!" Short sentences, large type, and many sight words support emergent readers, but the thin story suffers from a clunky meter ("The Thermometer Bug is shivering in the chilly breeze. / The Icicle Bugs are hanging out, enjoying the big freeze"). The illustrations are bright and cartoony.

Reviewer: Carolyn Shute

(4) PS As he did in One Red Dot and Yellow Square, Carter creates a visual feast through elaborate, abstract pop-ups. Here an aural layer is added, as each pop-up also makes a noise, as described in impressionistic text ("Rainbow bubble blast / and crackly white noise"). Some of the sound effects (and, for that matter, the pop-ups) work better than others.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz

(3) PS The newest in Carter's series of pop-up bug books focuses on life in school. "Spelling Bees" (A bee, B bee, etc.) inhabit a lift-the-flap "reading box," and "Curious Bugs" live inside the "science box." This simple small-format lift-the-flap pop-up book may catch the interest of children entering school. The paper engineering is clever, and concepts suit the audience and format.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) K-3 As he did in One Red Dot, Carter hides a shape, this time a yellow square, in each of his elaborate, creative pop-up sculptures. The book is less a search-and-find for young readers than an elegant gift for collectors--the paper engineering is as fragile as it is intriguing.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) PS Fans of Carter's bug-themed pop-up books will recognize many of the critters that show up in this compilation of previous material loosely tied together with new rhyming text. Pages include Easter egg bugs, love bugs hidden in Valentines, and scary/funny Halloween bugs. Though it's not Carter's most original work, readers will still enjoy the pop-ups and lift-the-flaps.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) K-3 Carter (One Red Dot) again amazes and impresses with his paper prowess. The concept is too complex for a very young audience (anyone care to count to 600?), and some pages are so delicate that young children could easily damage the engineering. An older audience of middle schoolers through adults would be the most appreciative.

Reviewer: Lolly Robinson

(4) PS A question mark faces a page of die-cut holes. Turn the page and the cut-out pieces have been rearranged and glued down to form a lamb, a frog, and other animals; the final page includes all the animals from previous pages. The presentation is inventive, but, frustratingly, the die-cuts don't give readers clues about the animals they reveal.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(4) K-3 Imagine a Calder mobile folded up in a pop-up book. Add an alphabet theme and a hidden picture game (find the blue number two). Although the paper engineering is intriguing, some of the pages don't unfold well, the paper is so fragile that children will have trouble manipulating it, and the text adds little. This one is for collectors only.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(3) PS Dark illustrations and a sparse text move from a dark, dark wood into a house in which a dark, dark box holds a spooky surprise: a cleverly constructed, pop-up specter. Though the ghost is not likely to hold up well in eager young hands, it provides a satisfying three-dimensional conclusion to a familiar tale. Ideal for Halloween storytelling.

Reviewer: The Horn Book, Inc.

(1) 4-6 The genius of this book is the way it shows samples of nearly forty different folds, tabs, boxes, and wheels--all engineered so that the normally hidden mechanics can be seen. More than a how-to manual, this ambitious book also explains the geometry and physics of paper engineering. Suggesting a host of curricular tie-ins, the book will be devoured by those mechanically minded children (and adults) who have been bitten by the pop-up bug.

Reviewer: Lolly Robinson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2000