We picked a full bag of mostly new picture books from the library as we don't visit it as often as during the school year. Several new publications were examined by my review team – our children. Some were bold, creative, large and colorful. Fiction, informational, biographies: we read many different books over a number of days. In my mind as I hear their comments and listen or watch their reading enjoyment I run my own elimination process.

A simple, quiet, gentle book was the clear winner this time, beating all of its "louder" competitors: What Bluebirds Do, by Pamela Kirby. It won all of our hearts with the true photographic story of a pair of bluebirds in the backyard of the author's house. Beautiful photography, a list of resources, and a careful description of the bluebirds' life are combined into the most delightful nature-book we have come across in a while!

This book focuses on elephant's care for and interaction with each other with a significant emphasis on elephants being killed by poachers.

Unlike the interesting scientific information designed to impart facts and help children develop an interest in science (as I've come to expect from the Let's Read-and-Find-Out Science Series) this book gets lost in the mediocrity of environmentalism by giving children a sort of emotional attachment to elephants (by over-emphasizing their slight similarities with people) and shocking them with details about how and why people kill elephants and a somewhat gruesome (relative to the age-level) picture of a truck filled with blood-stained elephant tusks. Rather disappointing altogether.

A very simple, charming book that explains to young children what seeds are and takes them through the development of some bean seeds. The growth present each day is illustrated in the book and the child is invited to try grow the beans themselves and watch the progress in real life. The book also introduces children to different kinds of seeds (for trees, flowers, vegetables, etc.), and how each seed will grow into the same kind of plant that it came from, and the basic things necessary to make a plant grow.

This is a very interesting book (with excellent illustrations) that introduces young children to various falcons living in the United States, some of their remarkable abilities and the story of how some scientists were successful in re-introducing the peregrine falcon in the Eastern United States after they nearly became extinct because of an insect spray called DDT which was overused earlier in the twentieth century. The story focuses on Scarlett, a peregrine falcon who was born in captivity, released, and discovered building a nest thirty-three stories up on the ledge of a skyscraper in Baltimore. This location made observation ideal and we learn that she managed to find a wild falcon for a mate and that their offspring have helped significantly in restoring the falcon population.