I ended up installing ES File Explorer, navigated to the folder containing the PDFs, long press on that folder, a popup is displayed with several options, scroll down to shortcuts and select that. That folder now appears on the home page.
With that I uninstalled astro.
For an OS that is supposed to be easy to use, I took me 3 weeks and countless hours reading posts and looking at u-tube videos. ICS took away options from the home screen long press that made all that advice irrelevant.
Its been quite a frustrating experience.