Rainbow Spider
Terri L. Sanders
Crossroads
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 5 STARS

Little Spider loves all colors. Pretty purple and blue and green and red make her happy. She admires the colors she sees out in the world around her and wishes she might be so beautiful. She is sad to realize she is only a little brown spider. When a rainbow appears following the rain Little Spider is enthralled by the sight of a rainbow and sets out to paint herself all the rainbow colors and in doing so comes to understand and accept her own worth as is and not as might be.

Rainbow Spider is another of creative children's author/illustrator Sanders' exquisite works. The concepts presented in the book and illustrations are excellent. And sure to delight little children.

As Little Spider comes to realize herself and the value of her own particular beauty in Rainbow Spider, children are given opportunity to explore their own wonderful uniqueness. Rainbow Spider can be used by homeschool and classroom teachers as well as school librarians/media personnel a 'talking time' starting point leading to awareness of differences and personal worth along with acceptance of others in their own extraordinary singleness.

A love for, and understanding of, color are woven into this highly detailed, fanciful book enabling children a broader understanding of color and how we view it.

Rainbow Spider is sure to hold the interest of the 2 to 6 set.

Night Flies
Terri L Sanders
Illustrator: Terri L Sanders
Crossroads
Story: 5 stars Highly Recommended
eFormat: 2 stars

As dusk falls, brothers Alex and David forget play to watch the evening insects. Alex most wants to see a night fly. The boys are treated to a variety of nocturnal insects as they come out of their daytime lairs.

Writer Sanders has written and illustrated an engaging little 17 page ebook about children and for children. Night Flies should be well received by children in the primary grades. The book has many inviting touches: one I found particularly appealing was the use of 'june bugs' as the signals for moving back or forward. Another nice touch was the providing of coloring sheets which can be downloaded to the home printer for children to continue their fun.

I would like to see a small note stating the target reading level for vocabulary used in the book. This would be an aid to parents, teachers and especially the media personnel who are the ones who purchase books for school libraries. Vocabulary used is 'read alone' for ages 8 and 9, is 'read to'

Detracting from the book's good points is the format: in order to view this book for review I had to download from the Crossroads site: 23 minutes and was presented with 80 separate files. 69 files are jpg, 21 are HTML, believing that books begin with the cover I clicked cover, and found only cover, no way to continue. Clicked a second cover with the same result. Finally on my third try I found the cover which led to June bug progression.

Young children will find this particular format frustrating in that they will not be able to use alone. I prefer the format used by other sites in which the book is self contained and one item only appears on the screen.