I Had a Favorite Dress

I Had A Favorite Dress by Boni Ashburn
Illustrated by Julia Denos
2011

A young girl had a dress that was her "favoritest dress ever." She wore it every Tuesday, her favorite day of the week. One day, she put it on and it was too short. She got really upset but asked her mom to make something else out of the dress. "And SNIP, SNIP, sew, sew...New shirt, hello!' Her crafty mother turned her favorite dress into a new ruffly shirt which became her favoritest to wear on her new favoritest day of the week, Wednesday. As the seasons change and the girl outgrows the shirt, it gets turned into other articles of clothing until there's only enough material left for it to become a hair bow, and finally the material for a collage portrait.
I Had a Favorite Dress is very entertaining and beautifully illustrated book. It's about growing up, outgrowing things we love and finding a way of preserving the memories. The story is structured around the passing of the seasons and the days of the week, which makes it a good book to include in the lower grades as part of units on time and memories. It's urban and multicultural characters make it a cool addition to any home or classroom library.

Cuddle Up, Goodnight

Cuddle Up, Goodnight by Katie Cleminson

2011

     From the time he's woken up by a loving elephant, til the time he's put to bed, Cuddle Up, Goodnight follows a young boy as he enjoys a day full of routines and activities always accompanied by different animal friends. He stretches with a cat, brushes his teeth with a hippo, gets dressed and heads to school.  There, he listens to a bear reading stories, paints with a dog, practices the violin with an octopus, plays hide a seek with a lemur, and eats with a lion.  As the day ends, the boy picks a book to read aloud to his animal friends, until it's time to cuddle up and "say goodnight, yawn and stretch, close your eyes, sleep and rest..." 

     Cuddle Up, Goodnight is written in simple rhyme text, with the repetition of the phrase "It's time to..."  It's cast of animal characters and the funny situations they are placed in (like a hippo slurping spaghetti) will delight young children.  The illustrations are sweet and entertaining.  Good bedtime book.  

But I Wanted a Baby Brother!

But I Wanted a Baby Brother! by Kate Feiffer
Illustrated by Diane Goode
2010

     Oliver had always wanted a baby brother.  When his parents come back from the hospital, they are holding in their arms Oliver's new baby sister. "Oliver tried looking happy" but he knew it was a mistake. Why didn't everyone else notice there had been a mistake?  So Oliver asked his parents "Will I ever get a baby brother?"  Instead of the answer he wanted to hear, Oliver's parents kept mentioning how adorable his baby sister was.  She was cute, "she gurgled...kicked...smiled...and slept...like a baby brother. But sometimes she wore dresses and that was bad."  Her name was Julie, which was cool because Oliver could secretly call her Julian.  Regardless, Oliver decided that the only solution was to find a way to exchange his baby sister for a baby brother.  He tried trading with friends, looking for a baby boy at the playground, even switching her for another baby while at the zoo. But the truth was that no other baby was as sweet, smart, calm or fast as Julie. And now she had even learned to throw a ball.  Oliver had fallen in love with his sister, just in time to find out his mom is having another baby...
     But I Wanted a Baby Brother! is sweet and very funny.  Oliver's adventures and the situations he finds himself in while trying to find a baby brother to trade for Julie are hilarious.  Goode's watercolor illustrations are wonderful and complement the story adding a lot of details and comic tones.  A great book to read aloud and to share with kids expecting a baby sibling.

Leaves

Leaves by David Ezra Stein
2007

     It's the perfect time of the year to read Leaves. It's bear's first year and everything is going well until the leaves start falling.  He picks one off the floor and sweetly asks, "Are you okay?"  As more leaves fall, the young bear tries to "catch them and put them back on...but it was not the same."  He then grew sleepy, gathered some leaves to bring inside a little cave "and went to sleep, just as the wind began to blow."  The young bear sleeps through the winter, wakes up in the spring and when he sees the "little buds on the bare arms of the trees," he hugs them and joyfully cries "Welcome!"
       Leaves is lovely.  The young bear character is sweet, curious, and enamored with nature.  While the text is simple, it's also quite lyrical.  The illustrations are beautiful.  Leaves is a perfect book to read during this season and to introduce units about fall and hibernation. 

You Will Be My Friend

You Will Be My Friend by Peter Brown
2011

     Lucy is back! After realizing that Children Make Terrible Pets, she decides that today is the perfect day to get back out there and find a new friend.  She is so excited! "I cannot wait to make a new friend! We're going to do cartwheels! And have picnics! And climb trees! And go swimming! And have dance party!"  Lucy tries to hang out with a group of frogs at a pond, but when she jumps in, she splashes all the water out. No pond, no frogs.  Things are not looking good.  She tries squeezing into a burrow, climbing trees, even dressing up as a kangaroo.  But as hard as she tries, things don't work out and Lucy finds herself frustrated and lonely.  She tries a new method: imposing her friendship of others. "Come back here and have fun with me!" She even scolds a little egg:   "You WILL be my friend! I can wait."  But nothing. Then finally, when she's about to give up and screams "Doesn't anybody want to be my friend?!" A bow-tie wearing Flamingo -a perfect match for Lucy's tutu- approaches her to give the book a perfect ending...there's cartwheeling, swimming, and dancing...just as she had wanted.
     You Will Be My Friend  is hilarious.  Peter's Brown text and illustrations complement each other beautifully, with some of the story being driven by the text bubbles and others just by the illustrations. I loved the page where Lucy is trying to calm herself down...I want to have that page as a poster in my classroom.  There are some cool details to discover during careful reads, like the foreshadowing of Lucy's visit to the frog pond -which you can see in the previous page as she walks away from home.  I believe I also saw a fish wearing a hat that I associate with Peter Brown.   It's a great read aloud that will have kids laughing the whole time.
Fish with Peter Brown's hat.  Forshadowing of the pond

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man

The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man by Michael Chabon
Illustrated by Jake Parker
2011

     Awesome Man can fly, shoot positronic rays out of his eyes, smash all sorts of things, and has a trademark Awesome Power Grip.  He's "just basically awesome."  As with most super heroes, he has a secret identity which he uses to sneak up on unsuspecting enemies like Professor Von Evil.  When his enemies are able to get away, Awesome Man gets really angry (he might even kick a building down when that happens) and the one thing he can do to calm down is to sit on his Awesome bed and give himself a "ginormous Awesome Power Grip."  After a busy day defeating his nemesis, nothing makes Awesome Man happier than heading back to the Fortress of Awesome, and enjoying one of his mom's home cooked meals.  "I'm so happy to see her, I throw a power grip around her, too."
     Awesome Man will capture the imagination of super hero obsessed boys.  Awesome Man sounds like them, gets angry like them...it's them.  There are many clues along the way for readers to figure out that Awesome Man is really just a boy: there's the language he uses, but also a point when we can see him as a boy hiding from Professor Von Evil (though the illustrations cleverly make it look as if it is an grown man), or when he's defeating Flaming Eyeball and his shadow is a kid's shadow (there's a nice detail later on when the boy walks into his mother's kitchen and his shadow is now Awesome Man's).   The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man is a great book for super hero fans.

The Black Book of Colors

The Black Book of Colors by Menena Cottin
Illustrated by Rosana Faría
Translated from Spanish by Elisa Amado
2008

     If you were blind and you had to describe colors, you would use all your other senses.  That's how Thomas describes them, using his senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing.  To him, yellow tastes like mustard, red is as sweet as watermelon but hurts when you find it on a scraped knee, brown smells like chocolate, blue is "the color of the sky when kites are flying," green tastes like lemon ice cream and smells like freshly cut grass.  "Thomas thinks that without the sun, water doesn't amount to much. It has no color, no taste, no smell." And black, well, black is the king of all the colors, "soft as silk when his mother hugs him and her hair falls in his face."
      The Black Book of Colors is a marvelous book.  Its use of sensory details to describe colors is wonderful and lyrical.  The design of the book is captivating.  The pages are all black, with the shapes embossed in shiny black.  Each page with text is accompanied by its Braille counterpart and the full Braille alphabet is also included at the end of the book.  The Black Book of Colors belongs in every household and classroom where diversity is encouraged and discussed.  Its use of metaphors, similes, and sensory details, also makes it a superb mentor text to use in the writing workshop.  A great find!