Sullivan reverently celebrates a musical apprenticeship that spans generations in this poetic narrative based on a real-life relationship and punctuated by the titular phrase. Read full book review >
In her characteristic stripped-down verse, Kay fashions the attributes and enterprise of the Pony Express, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial. Read full book review >
In his first children's title, former Poet Laureate Kooser follows a plastic grocery bag, "just the color of the skin of a yellow onion," on a skittering journey from landfill to thrift shop. Read full book review >
Wilma is a successful gardener who lives happily by herself on a farm in New England. Read full book review >
A new illustrator gives both color and more variety in the visuals to Fleischman's 1979 tale of a child who leaves but then comes back. Read full book review >
When Owen's distant Granny hears that he's a baby who goes "wiggly, jiggly, all-around giggly, and tip over tumble for bluegrass music," she just has to pack up her banjo and go dance with him. Read full book review >
Kids who have played any sport in a vital but unsung capacity will identify with this second outing from the Barbers, twin professional football players. Read full book review >
The Barber twins not only play professional football for the NFL, they're also both great enough to be stars. Read full book review >
A quintet of infectiously grinning behemoths, a well-delivered punch line, and an unexplained joke left for young readers or listeners to figure out on their own buoy this globe-spanning game of "Giant Steps." Read full book review >
Root's spare, warm-hued rural scenes perfectly capture the tone of this tender tale about two curmudgeons—a grizzled "ol' Texas boy, country-raised, don't you know," and a cat—sharing one roof. Read full book review >
The tone is light, the pictures are bright—but there's a hint of Stephen King in this tale of a big sister who loves playing doctor to small injured creatures so much that she won't let them go when they're healed. Read full book review >
Catchy couplets and luscious full-bleed illustrations combine in this joyous celebration of a Central Park summer. Read full book review >
In propulsive rhymed couplets, Burleigh (Hercules, 1999, etc.) tells a day in the life of a bicycle messenger in a city inspired by Chicago. Read full book review >
Speed and Root (Two Cool Cows, 1995) pit a platoon of feisty prize spuds against grimacing chef Hackemup in this gleeful culinary contretemps. Read full book review >
``It grew and it grew and it grew'' is a familiar chant among readers who know the classic Russian folktale of the giant turnip. Read full book review >
From the team behind Two Cool Cows (1995) comes the sweet story of Henry, who wants nothing more than a cat for company. Read full book review >
The narrator, a boy (or a short-haired girl), listens to his astronaut-grandfather's bedtime story about his trip to the moon and imagines himself along for the ride. Read full book review >
``All her life'' Mrs. Tillby has lived in the same country house, wondering what it would be like to live elsewhere. Read full book review >
Two hip, sunglass-wearing Holsteins borrow some ``new black button-back boots'' and head for a party on the moon. Read full book review >
As in Chin Yu Min and the Ginger Cat (1993), Armstrong uses her knowledge of Chinese lore to create a transcendent fable. Wan Hu is a prototype of the absent-minded professor. Read full book review >
For 31 years Arvilla has wanted to see the Pacific Ocean, but her husband Alvah, a practical, 19th-century New England farmer and man of few words, says, ``You can't have a farm and travel.'' So, for 31 years Arvilla and Alvah stay home, until one day Arvilla has an idea: to build a house on wheels, put all their animals in it, and bring the entire farm with them. Read full book review >
A nicely spooky cumulative Halloween tale that begins: ``One dark and stormy night Ghost floated out of the wall and he began to WAIL. Read full book review >
A children's literature professor, reared in Alberta, makes a fine picture-book debut with some nicely understated tall tales about the warm, dry wind that sweeps down from the Rockies' eastern slopes. Read full book review >
When a sparrow lands on one end of his pole, a tightrope walker pleads, ``Heaven help me!'' Bumbling Saint Tony happens to be on duty in Heaven's emergency room; he sends a second sparrow for the other end of the pole, but the first sparrow flies over to make friends with the second. Read full book review >
