(4) K-3 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. Jade, overcoming her initial prejudice, forms a friendship with Hannah, a new neighbor who is in a wheelchair. Having Hannah for a friend makes Jade reconsider her planned birthday celebration at a (non-accessible) water park. The wordy text's moralizing is abundantly clear--"God made everyone, and we are all special in His eyes." Warm-hearted illustrations accompany the story.

Reviewer: Rebecca Reed Whidden

(3) 4-6 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. Promising her dying father that she would help people in need, Irena Sendler joined a Polish underground organization dedicated to assisting Jewish families during the Holocaust. Rich, dark oils add weight and emotion to this story of a woman who risked her own safety to bring thousands of children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. An afterword tells more about Sendler's life.

Reviewer: Tamara DePasquale

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. Informative but dense sidebars and singsongy poems with questionable rhymes (e.g., blessed her with ancestor, braided with made it) make up the text of this alphabet book about Judaism that touches on history, observances, and important figures. Realistic illustrations, many dark and somber, effectively display moments of familial warmth as well as symbolic places and figures important to Judaism.

Reviewer: Elissa Gershowitz

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. "The tall man...yelled, 'Who will fight for his country, brave and true?' Papa shouted, 'I will, sir!'" Mercer tells of a World War II soldier whose childhood experiences prepared him for combat (e.g., jumping from a hayloft parallels jumping from an airplane). The text is overly earnest, but Mazellan's realistic illustrations capture the soldier's experiences.

Reviewer: Luther B. Clegg

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. A dispirited Cal Ripken Jr. is depicted on the cover of his picture book about the Baltimore Orioles's twenty-one-game losing streak. Mazellan's mixed-media illustrations offer perspectives from the dugout, the clubhouse, and the field, but the view grows grimmer with each page turn. The "winning isn't everything" message is almost as hard on readers as it was on the Orioles.

Reviewer: Miriam Lang Budin

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Ron Mazellan. Based on true events, this is a dramatic if sentimental story about the Holocaust. When he is asked to play his harmonica by the commandant of the concentration camp where he is imprisoned, a boy's love of music proves both life-saving and life-affirming. The dark, rather romantic, illustrations match the tone of Johnston's sometimes self-conscious prose.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton