School Library Journal Review

PreS-Gr 3-Suzanne Toren narrates Cynthia Rylant's story (S&S, 1998) with distinctive voices for each character. Henry and Mudge help his cousin Annie feel good about leaving her old house, friends, and school and moving to Henry's neighborhood. Level two readers will easily follow along with the text while listening to the cassette. Gentle background noises add to the presentation. After introducing the title, author, illustrator, and herself, the narrator demonstrates the page-turn signal which is on one side of the cassette. The only problem is that Toren tells youngsters to turn to the first chapter without indicating a page number, which might be confusing for beginning readers. This high quality production would be a worthwhile acquisition for school and public libraries for a classroom group listening center or for independent modeling for English Language Acquisition students or others who are less fluent readers.-Sherrie Davidson, Lyn Knoll Elementary School, Aurora, CO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.