Book Review: Narwhal’s Otter Friend
Katie 
This is the 4th book in the “A Narwhal and Jelly Book” series. I do not believe I have read any of the others. It is a comic book that follows Narwhal and Jelly – a jelly fish – as they swim through the sea. In this particular book they meet up with an explorer that is an otter. The otter tells them about all of the adventures he has had with other animal and even a mermaid. Narwhal is impressed, but Jelly, not so much. I guess you could say Jelly was… jelly. So Jelly goes off to try and find a new friend since Narwhal is hanging out with the Otter. It turns out that Narwhal and Otter were looking for Jelly the whole time because it just isn’t the same without Jelly on their adventure!
A cute story about how you don’t have to have just one friend and adventures are more fun with all of your friends!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated. This book will be released February 5, 2019 from Penguin Random House Canada.
About the Book
Narwhal and Jelly . . . and Otty?! Exuberant Narwhal and skeptical Jelly test the waters of adding a new friend to their pod when they meet Otty the super-adventurous otter in the fourth book of this blockbuster early graphic novel series!
Dive into three new stories about the joy of adventure and the power of friendship! In the first story, Otty the otter makes her debut splash; while Narwhal greets her with immediate enthusiasm, Jelly’s not so sure about her…mostly because he worries she’ll take his place as Narwhal’s best friend. Readers will easily see why Narwhal’s so excited to meet Otty, a boisterous explorer who even has an aunt who’s a real live sea captain! But readers will also relate to Jelly’s uneasiness seeing his best friend making a new pal.
Jelly tries to work out his jealousy in story two, and in story three, the new trio say “Ahoy, adventure!” and discover they all have more in common than they thought . . . including a love of waffles! Jelly also takes over the “Super Waffle and Strawberry Sidekick” comic providing a sidekick’s-eye-view of defeating the dreaded dEVILed egg!
Who Are You Calling Weird? Is a book celebrating strange and wonderful animals. There are 21 featured in the book and it focuses on their unique features or behavior. There are no real photos of the animals, just illustrations, but from what I know of some of these animals, the illustrations are a pretty good representation of them. In the end, there is nothing wrong with being weird and we all have our unique features that we need in order to be us. An interesting book with a great message.
Leonardo’s Science Workshop is a book of projects to invent, create, and make steam projects like a genius. This book has 6 chapters: Take Wing, Moving Along: The Science of Motion, One Energy source flows to the next, designing technologies, rocks and stars and write a letter to Leonardo. Each chapter has step by step instructions as well as some text history about the hands on activities as well. I liked that in addition to showing you some of these activities it also talks about the science behind it, so you can learn a little bit and then do a hands on example. I was always much more of a hands on learner and needed to see it to believe it so these activities would have been great for me as a kid. As an engineer, this book had a lot of really fun options in it – especially relating to my job now – like making paper airplanes! I honestly wish I had the time and supplies to go through and make everything that is listed in this book, each page just had a cooler and cooler activity on it.
Leonardo’s Art Workshop is a book of projects to invent, create, and make steam projects like a genius. This book has 6 chapters: Color, Shadow and Light, Lines and Patterns, Forms and Structures, Optics and Special Effects, The Essential Leonardo. Each chapter has step by step instructions for projects related to the topic of that chapter. The color chapter has ways to make colored dyes from foods, which I thought was pretty cool (and may be something to consider for easter eggs?) I liked that in addition to showing you some of these activities it also talks about the science behind it, so you can learn a little bit and then do a hands on example. I was always much more of a hands on learner and needed to see it to believe it so these activities would have been great for me as a kid.
, but what I did know, I was incredibly impressed by. Having read this book, I now know a lot more about her – like how she loved numbers and would often count the steps her siblings took to walk to and from school and would count anything else she could as well. She ended up skipping to 2nd grade, skipped 5th grade and was ready for High School when she was just 10 years old! Wow! Unfortunately, growing up when everything was segregated by race, there was no high school for African-Americans at the time where they lived. Katherine’s Dad stayed to work on the farm while her Mom and siblings moved elsewhere so they all could go to high school and would not be forced to drop out. She graduated high school and started college at 15. Once she finished college the odds were against her in finding a job doing something fun with math – since she was not only a woman but also African-American. It is crazy to think that all this segregation and separation was not all that long ago – but Katherine was in the right place at the right time as she was able to further her education as one of only 3 African-American students in a previously white college. And then discrimination in the work place laws were being placed – so many companies were now hiring women for jobs previously only had by men.
Elvis, Strait, to Jesus was a pretty cool book. It is about Tony Brown who is an iconic producer who has worked with well, just about everyone in Nashville. It is more of a photo book than anything else and he has a lot of the people he worked with sit in a French Renaissance chair – which is not something I had seen before but was really cool and I’m sure a lot of fun for him to put together and reminisce. Lots and lots of stories about the music biz inside and lots and lots of pictures too. If you’re into music, Nashville, Tony Brown, country, Elvis, Reba, Bernie Taupin, etc… you’ll want to check out this book.
Landwhale is subtitled: On turning insults into nicknames, why body image is hard and how diets can kiss my ass and is by Jes Baker. I wasn’t sure about this book at first, but it turned out that I could totally relate to it and it was definitely something I needed to hear/read. The very beginning of the book is a huge trigger warning, and I can see why. However, if you are able to make it through the pages that follow (and I can totally understand if you can’t, Jes herself even said she was often crying when she was writing some of the chapters) there is a lot of body positive information and resources but I think the most powerful thing from this book for me was realizing or reaffirming that I am not alone. There are many others unfortunately out there who feel the same way as Jes and I do. Another helpful piece of information was about how she learned to love herself after a breakup and while she may not love ALL of herself, she is working on that and I think that was another great lesson that everyone needs to learn.
Robin is a biography about the late, great Robin Williams. While I enjoyed Robin and his work, I didn’t really know too much about him otherwise. The book begins with how he grew up and how he always found ways to make his Mom laugh. Robin ended up lonely because his Mom would often travel with his father, leaving Robin alone. He was always very modest and didn’t believe that he was worthy of the fame.
Turned On is a book about Science, Sex and Robots. Yes, Sex Robots. This book piqued my interest when it mentioned Robots, and maybe a little because it mentioned Sex as well. It was a lot more indepth, technical and interesting than I was expecting. Like, I didn’t realize that Corn Flakes were created to be a part of a bland diet to try and reduce masturbation urges. Or that most sex dolls are made in the image of women and while there are some men ones, they are much harder to come by. And that sex toys are getting smarter and smarter and some even use AI to become who the user wants them to become. But there is also a risk with AI because some are programmed to reach their goal – and HOW they go about it is really cared about which can be dangerous. I’m also particularly intrigued by the “incel” community and there was some information on that in here as well and if a solution for their problem could be a sex robot?
The Birth of Loud tells the story of Fender versus Les Paul, how they each got their starts and how they came to end up creating their now well known guitars. It was 42 chapters and a lot of drama and very interesting. I don’t know much about guitars so it was interesting to read about how they were creating them and what materials they were using and what kind of tones they were hoping to achieve out of them. It was also interesting to read that Gibson had denied the idea that was brought to them for one of the guitars! Also interesting was how Les Paul was give a Fender to try out – even though the two were kind of competitors and enemies.