A Day, a Dog Front Street
Dog gets thrown out of a car in the country. Dog wanders around loose. Dog causes traffic accident. Accident gets bigger and bigger. Dog is curious but, as dogs will, wanders off. Dog wanders into town. Dog finally meets a friend. OK, this textless look at a very eventful day in the life of a dog isn’t “Moby Dick” or even “Old Yeller,” but in page after page of loose and beautiful charcoal sketches, Gabrielle Vincent deftly captures the essence of dog–the absentminded scratching, the sidelong look like he’s about to be fired. The result is a book both heartwarming and unsentimental.
Snowie Rolie HarperCollins
William Joyce’s last two books have been spinoffs from his Disney Channel television show, the Emmy Award-winning “Rolie Polie Olie.” Aimed at a preschool audience, little robot Olie is a much gentler, sweeter creation than the rambunctious crews that usually ramble through such Joyce picture books as “Dinosaur Bob” or “A Day With Wilbur Robinson.” But smart-ass kids’ books are so common these days that gentle and sweet looks mighty attractive. So here’s to Rolie Polie Olie and his visit to Klanky Klaus, which is sure a klunky name, but hey, he’s a robot too.
Little Lit HarperCollins
“Snowie Rolie’s” only problem is that it looks too perfect. It needs to have its edges roughened, as if it were drawn, not generated by a computer. If you want to see how well Joyce can draw, and how much warmer the results, check out “Humpty Trouble” in “Little Lit,” Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s anthology marrying fairy tales to the funnies. They’ve put some of the best illustrators and cartoonists around–from Daniel Clowes to Bruce McCall–to work on the classics. Biggest surprise: this is an irony-free zone. Nicest surprise: an unpublished “Gingerbread Boy” by the late Walt Kelly, creator of “Pogo.”
The Sign Painter Houghton Mifflin
Adults will savor Allen Say’s “The Sign Painter” from the get-go, as his young hero is seen standing in front of the storefronts of Edward Hopper’s “Early Sunday Morning.” Kids may need the whole first paragraph, as taut as the opening of a Hemingway story. Too arty? No way. The sign painter who teaches the boy his craft has a Ford pickup with workaday dirt on its fenders.
Big Numbers Millbrook Press
Using household objects and food, mostly green peas, writer Edward Packard and illustrator Salvatore Murdocca have created a hilarious, highly instructive look at the relative size of numbers. It takes about 1,000 peas to fill a dinner plate (that’s piled high). Then 100 million peas to fill up the kitchen and dining room and a billion to fill a two-story house with some overflow into the yard. The peas, and the facts, keep coming. A trillion is a thousand billion, a zillion is not an actual number (darn) and a line of a billion mice would stretch around the world.
Everything I Know About Pirates Simon & Schuster
Avast! Here be the answers to all your nagging questions about things piratical. Such as, what does “avast” mean? According to author- illustrator Tom Lichtenheld, it means, “Hey you, cut that out!” So we probably meant “Ahoy” a couple of lines back, but anyway… what’s the story on those pirate pants with ragged pants legs? Chewed by sharks. The horizontal stripes on pirate shirts? Makes them look " bigger and meaner than they really are." And never name a pirate parrot Polly. It’s Butch or Spike. A word of caution: it’s best to read this book in months with arrrghs in them.
The Yellow Train Creative Editions
Kids are fiercely ethical creatures, and Alistair Highet and Francois Roca’s gently eerie “The Yellow Train” may strike them as a ripoff of “The Polar Express”: trains steaming at an upward angle across mysterious landscapes (jungles and cities, not just evergreens and permafrost), a Wise Old Man (Grandpa, not Santa), even the token at the end that tells us it was no dream (keys, not a sleigh bell). In fact, it’s a knowing tribute, as well as a parable about technology, old age and the imagination. And think what fun you’ll have explaining the word hommage.
Cinderella Seastar
If there’s no room for another rendering of that goodhearted beauty whose glass slippers are literature’s happiest mistranslation–in the French original, they’re fur–we may as well just hang it up and watch “Scooby-Doo.” K. Y. Craft’s “Cinderella” illustrations have beefcake-Blakean characters, the pumpkin-coach flying over a Thomas Cole landscape, as good a version of Cinderella’s booking it down those endless palace stairs as you’ll see outside your dreams and a fairy godmother who looks like Gloria Swanson floating among the stars.
Kate and the Beanstalk Atheneum
“Jack and the Beanstalk” is a beloved classic and all that, but some retellings are pretty thin on backstory. Why is it OK for Jack to steal from the Giant? Seriously. The Giant may threaten to make bread out of Jack’s bones, but he never actually lays a finger on him. And, come on, how stupid is the Giant’s wife? Jack keeps stealing stuff–and she keeps letting him in! In “Kate and the Beanstalk”–which was written by Mary Pope Osborne and illustrated with gorgeous, folk-arty watercolors by Giselle Potter–our heroine is reclaiming treasures that the Giant snatched from her family once upon a time. What’s more, she has the sense to wear a different disguise every time she knocks at that castle in the clouds.
Bedhead Simon & Schuster
“Bedhead” is a funny, cartoony creation from writer Margie Palatini and illustrator Jack E. Davis that reads like a parody of all those solemn children’s books about families’ overcoming pain and adversity. Young Oliver wakes up on school-picture day, only to find his red curls bobbing crazily like broken mattress springs. The entire family rushes to the bathroom and battles his ‘do with water, hair spray, gel, mousse–even barrettes. You’ve got to give “Bedhead” points for realism: the family loses, the hair wins.
Wings Scholastic Press
OK, now that we’ve bashed all the oh-so-serious children’s stories, here’s a book that tries to be uplifting and actually achieves liftoff. Christopher Myers’s’ “Wings,” which is full of rich Romare Bearden-ish collages, concerns new kid in town Ikarus Jackson. Ikarus has wings, and everybody’s treating him like a freak show. (It doesn’t help that his wings are so big that no one in class can see the blackboard.) Ikarus, however, has a secret admirer. She’s shy, but she just loves to watch him fly. You will, too.
How to Fly a 747 Candlewick Press
Picture a terrified flight attendant lurching out of the cockpit and shouting, “Are there any pilots onboard? No? Well, are there any seven-year-olds?” Your kid had better be ready. Ian Graham’s “How to Fly a 747” is a clear, cool primer on engines, wings, weather, navigation and so on. It even teaches children how to execute takeoffs (“If something is wrong and you need to abandon the takeoff, you must do it NOW”) and landings (“Cut your speed now, or you’ll be going too fast to stop on the runway”). Airsickness bags are in the seat pocket in front of you.
Wemberly Worried Greenwillow
Kevin Henkes’s conflicted little mouse-kids are instantly recognizable from books like “Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse,” and he sticks close to his tried-and-touching formula here. Wemberly has the jitters 24/7 and only a doll named Petal to comfort her: “When Wemberly was especially worried, she rubbed Petal’s ears. Wemberly worried that if she didn’t stop worrying, Petal would have no ears left at all.” Wemberly’s a basket case on the first day of school. Fortunately, she finds her soulmate as surely as Ikarus Jackson does in “Wings.” Sometimes all you need to see is another kid clutching a doll.
First Day Jitters Whispering Coyote
“First Day Jitters,” which was written by Julie Danneberg and illustrated by Judy Love, makes a great companion book to “Wemberly Worried.” In the opening pages, we meet a certain Sarah Jane Hartwell, who’s in the midst of her own first-day-of-school-related panic attack. Sarah Jane is buried under her covers so far that you can’t even see her face. In fact, you have no idea what she looks like until the very last page of the whimsical book, which suddenly delivers a sly and funny twist: Sarah Jane’s the teacher.
Sally Goes to The Beach Abrams
Stephen Huneck’s “Sally Goes to the Beach” would be your typical I-had-a-happy-day-and-went-to-bed book, if Sally weren’t a black Lab. Sally’s one of those dogs who exist only in profile and full face; Huneck’s woodcut technique makes her look like she has toothpicks pasted all over her. But somehow he gets her to register hope, balefulness, gratitude, joy–and even a sort of doggy self-irony when a starfish gets stuck to her snoot. Of course there’s a trick to it: have talent, use imagination, love dogs.
Olivia Atheneum
A personal favorite among all these personal favorites. Ian Falconer’s “Olivia” is a wry, spare little story about a piglet who wears everybody out. She hammers, she yo-yos, she puts lipstick on her kid brother, she builds mammoth sand castles of the Empire State Building. “Olivia” calls “Eloise” to mind–it’s mostly black, white and gray with flashes of red–but the heroine’s far sweeter. Falconer’s done many a New Yorker cover, as well as sets and costumes for the New York City Ballet. This is his first book for kids, and he’ll be welcome in our library any time.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Czech emigre artist Peter Sis is best known for his rapturously intricate picture books like “Tibet.” So “Madlenka,” the story of his daughter’s trip around the block to show off her loose tooth, comes as a delightful surprise, even to Sis: “I never connected ‘Madlenka’ with my previous books. But everything in your life has some connection. Maybe my biggest influence was that I left home and came to another country. All my books are about a journey. Maybe I’m still on some sort of journey myself.”
The Wizard of Oz at 100
The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz (Little Simon)
To celebrate the centennial of L. Frank Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” you couldn’t do better than artist Robert Sabuda’s pop-up version, complete with a terrific tornado and a pair of green glasses to help the reader get in the mood.
The Annotated Wizard Of Oz (Norton)
For something more scholarly–but no less fun–grab author Michael Patrick Hearn’s absorbing effort. It explains all about anything Ozian.
