The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White

I really enjoyed the world-building in this book, where orphans can't become adventurers if they have no last name (like Anvil, "Anne") or if their families are notorious (like her friend Penelope Shatterblade). But that doesn't stop Anne from applying to as many adventurer schools as possible. She's pretty much given up hope that she'll be taken before she's kicked out of the orphanage on her thirteenth birthday. Or will she? At the last moment, Anne is informed that the train will be leaving before midnight on the day before Anne's birthday rather than 10 minutes into it, which means that Anne has to stay at the orphanage for another year. But Anne has different plans. And the world has different plans for her as, while she is walking the matron's fire lizard "Dog," a woman appears and tells Anne she has been accepted into a school.
This book is all sorts of crazy sauce -- in the very best way. Just when you think you've figured out the zigs, the book zags. For instance, the headmistress of the Death Mountain Quest Academy is Her Royal Highness Princess Fluffington Whiskers of the Mousetrapper Clan. In short, a cat. There are dragons whose fireballs help aid travel, a book that becomes whatever it needs to be, and a main character who is not only female, she has dark brown skin. A fact that is only mentioned once and then briefly.

Do NOT Bring Your Dragon to the Library by Julie Gassman

I've grabbed quite a few children's books from NetGalley and Edelweiss lately. Almost all of them (including this one) have had double-page illustrations that would make infinitely more sense if we could see both pages at once. An almost every page, the dragon is split between two pages that means that we have to knit them together.
The rhymes in this book mostly flow very nicely and this is definitely a very fun (and incredibly inclusive) story.

I highly recommend this book with the caveat that it should be read in a hard copy.

This book comes out August 1
Four stars

King Garnet Stories by Marianne Parry

Based on the cover and length, I thought this was a picture book. And I probably would have given this book another star if the cover's illustrator had been invited to make such a book out of the first story only. Otherwise, the adventures of King Garnet are just fine. and will probably be amusing to young readers with his strangely growing legs, Queen Amanda's bossiness (which seems a little sexist), and the misunderstanding between he and King Grundle though the latter two are nowhere near as good as the first.
There are some relatively harder vocabulary words like "mused" that seem somewhat out of place. And there's a lot of editing that needs to be done. 

Three stars
This book came out May 9

Who Broke the Teapot by Bill Slavin

A nice, rhyming story with a lovely rhythm. A little difficult to follow the flow of the dialogue sometimes because the pictures are so bright. Another thing about the pictures, some of them are dual-paged, which makes reading this as an ebook odd.
Overall, a nice story and one that I think will make younger readers chuckle as they get the joke.
This book came out April 26.

The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires

I requested this book from Edelweiss and was surprised to see it a little later featured on the Mighty Girl Facebook page. And this is definitely a story about a mighty girl. One who is a regular (unnamed) girl who likes to hang out with her dog doing the normal things (racing, eating, exploring, relaxing) and also creating. Until the day that she thinks of the *Most Magnificent Thing.* But this time creation doesn't go so smooth. "It was not her finest moment." I can just see two- and three-year-olds parroting that and being absolutely adorable. The language is not too difficult but it wasn't dumbed down either.
I loved the lessons about learning from your mistakes and adored that the little girl was an inventor. The illustrations were fabulous as well and fit the story perfectly.

This book comes out April 1, 2016

Friday Barnes, Girl Detective by R.A. Spratt

This reminded me very much of the Encyclopedia Brown series. Possibly because it's a children's mystery series, but more the writing. It's a great start to a very cute series. I do wish that Spratt hadn't had every, single, character tell Friday that Ian was treating her like crap because he liked her. Oh yeah, that's a good thing to start teaching little girls.
But the rest of it was a good read that I definitely would have enjoyed during my E.B. reading days. It's fairly clued with just enough bite for a parent to enjoy as well.
I really, really liked the illustrations.
Comes out Jan. 19, 2016
Four stars

The Door by the Staircase by Katherine Marsh

Mary's life is like a fairy tale. Unfortunately, it's the first part of the tale. She's been orphaned and left to one of the less desirable places to live. There's no hope that she's going to be adopted so she tries to escape instead. She's thwarted by a strange wind which turns out to be a good thing since a strange woman, Madame Z, shows up the next day and wants to adopt Mary. From then on, Mary learns the ins and outs of living with Madame Z and in the strange new town of Iris which seems to be full of tricksters and magicians. But are some of them using real magic? That's not possible. Is it?
I very much enjoyed this story, especially the way some of the usual fairy tale tropes are subverted to make a truly charming tale.
This book comes out January 5, 2016
Four stars