Just Hatched! Dinosaur Kisses by David Ezra Stein

Dinah the Dinosaur has just hatched, after way too long in that egg. Shaking the eggshell off her head, she eagerly heads off to see the world, doin' what comes naturally to a baby dino.

STOMP!

Okay, stomping grass is... just okay.

Then Dinah sees two fish in the pond... kissing. Now that looks like fun. She tries a head bump first to get in the mood.

WHOMP!   

OOPS. She spies a little lungfish crossing her path.

STOMP! 

This relationship thing needs bit of fine tuning.  Then Dinah sees a big dinosaur and closes in for a kiss on his nearest part--his posterior.

CHOMP! 

Ooops again! The big dino is obviously bummed.. Maybe someone smaller?

Then Dinah spots a tiny dino, way littler than she is.   She puckers up.  He puckers up.  Finally, things are going the way they should.

CHOMP! ! !

"Whoopsy," said Dinah, somewhat deflated. "Not so good."

It's back to the hatchery for little Dinah, just in time to try out her moves with a new-hatched sibling, in David Ezra Stein's just-published giggle-grabber, Dinosaur Kisses (Candlewick Press, 2013). With a text limited to less than ten discrete words, the focus here is totally on the Caldecott-winning Stein's expressive illustrations. Dinah the Dino is the quintessential innocent but regrettably blunderbuss toddler, the type who acts first and thinks about it later. Her prehistoric world sports little spouting volcanoes and a sulfurous backdrop, and Stein's heavy black line and orange-toned palette are the perfect choice to set off Dinah's steamroller approach to relating to others, while her body language and facial expressions will telegraph to little readers the predictable results of her over-eager overtures. This is a book that kids of a certain age will instinctively understand and love.

David Ezra Stein is also the author of the award-winning Interrupting Chicken and Ol' Mama Squirrel.

Back Off, Bully Boy! Llama Llama and the Bully Goat by Anna Dewdney

LLAMA LLAMA
LIKES TO SING.
GILROY LAUGHS
AT EVERYTHING.

LLAMA SINGS OUT
JUST THE SAME.
GILROY SAYS
A NOT-NICE NAME.

Llama Llama had his problems getting used to school, but now he likes everything about it--counting and painting, writing and making things, and especially circle time music with songs and clapping to the beat. Llama is in the school groove and everything is going just fine for him and his friend Nelly Gnu until Gilroy Goat joins the group.

In no uncertain terms Teacher tells Gilroy that name-calling is NOT allowed, and he backs off, but when recess rolls around and Llama and Nelly are busy in the sandbox making roads for  Fuzzy Llama and Gnu Doll, Gilroy horns in again, this time jeering at their toys and kicking up a sandstorm with his hooves.

GILROY THROWS
SOME SAND ON NELLY.
"HA HA! GNUS ARE
REALLY SMELLY."

This time Teacher is not at hand, but Llama knows how to handle a bully goat. He advances on Gilroy, looks him in the eye, and tells him to butt out. Then he and Nelly leave the bully standing in the sand all alone. Now who's the goat?

BEING BULLIED
IS NO FUN!
WALK AWAY...
AND TELL SOMEONE.

Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama has had his moments of misbehavior, but in her latest, Llama Llama and the Bully Goat (Viking, 2013), he steps up and makes Gilroy Goat pull in his horns. Dewdney's Llama Stories series combines engaging rhymes and evocative artwork in which body language and facial features help preschoolers interpret situations and see their own behavior as others see it, with adult figures who calmly moderate all that llama drama, leaving her characters to work out better ways to deal with their feelings.

As Kirkus Reviews puts it, "Her textured oil, colored-pencil and oil-pastel illustrations shine when portraying the animals' faces--joy, discomfort, surprise, anger, stubbornness, disappointment are all crystal-clear on them." This skill is a rare gift that has been displayed throughout Dewdney's series, beginning back in 2005 with her best-selling battle-of-bedtime story, Llama Llama Red Pajama. Other not-to-be-missed sequels are Llama Llama Mad at Mama, Llama Llama Misses Mama, Llama Llama Home with Mama, Llama Llama Time to Share, and that classic of the pre-Big Day meltdown, Llama Llama Holiday Drama.

On the Tail of a Shaggy Dog Tale: Chick 'n' Pug Meet the Dude by Jennifer Sattler

CHICK 'N' PUG WERE AN UNSTOPPABLE TEAM. THEY SPENT MOST OF THEIR TIME LOOKING FOR EXCITING ADVENTURES AND SAVING ORDINARY CITIZENS.

At least, that's the way Chick tells it. Chick has a thing for hyperbole, and to her this somnolent  pooch is Wonder Pug, definitely a super-hero ready to spring into action to the right wrongs of the world. But Pug is no action figure. In fact, his main action appears to be finding times and places for naps, with great success.

But when a ginormous shaggy white dog makes off with their favorite toy, Squeaky Hamburger, Chick thinks it's time for some caped crusading.

"JUST LOOK AT THOSE CLAWS! AND THOSE SHARP FANGS! THE EVIL LOOK IN HIS EYES!" SAID CHICK.

"WHO IS THIS MONSTER?"

Underwhelmed, Pug opens one droopy eyelid just as the beast makes off with the toy, page right.

"THE DUDE," HE SAYS DROWSILY.

"DON'T WORRY, WONDER PUG!" CHICK BOASTS. "I WILL NOT LET THE VILLAIN ESCAPE."

Pug, on the other hand, dozes off again, only rousing himself when a nice woman offers him a treat.

"DOES MY PUGGY WUGGY WANNA NUMMY BONE?"

Chick is on her own sleuthing out the theft of Squeaky Hamburger in this one, but now Wonder Pug has a trick or two under his blankie to soothe the savage beast, in Jennifer Sattler's sequel to her 2010 hit, Chick 'n' Pug, (see review here), Chick 'n' Pug Meet the Dude (Bloomsbury, 2013). Chick, a sort of hyper-frenetic Tweetie Bird, is the real mover and shaker here;  nobody draws comic pugs like Jennifer Sattler, with her heavy-lidded pooch playing the perfect straight man to the over-caffeinated Chick. While silliness is the main order of the day, Sattler's simple premise--that good friends are sometime wildly dissimilar--comes through as loud and clear as Chick's histrionics.

Break A Leg! Zombelina by Kristyn Crow

MY NAME IS ZOMBELINA AND I LOVE TO DANCE!
I MOONWALK WITH MUMMIES AND BOOGIE WITH BATS.
I SPIN LIKE A SPECTRE AND GLIDE LIKE A GHOST.

Zombelina's mom decides that it's time for dance lessons, and little Zee is soon off on the family broomstick to Madame Maladroit's School of Ballet.  The other little student ballerinas look askance at Zombelina's green complexion, and although Mdm. M. admires her extreme extension (her leg flies high above the barr),  the others keep their distance. And when Zombelina executes a grande pirouette, her image even shatters the practice room mirror.

But despite the fearful glances of her corps de ballet, Zombelina  persists, and soon it's time for the Maladroit student recital. Zombelina has practiced her plies constantly for the bats in her attic and thinks she's ready for the footlights, but when the music starts, she finds herself frozen with stage fright in the middle of the stage.

I  QUIVERED AND SHIVERED RIGHT DOWN TO MY BONES.
I HELD OUT MY ARMS, AND I MADE A FEW MOANS.
"A ZOMBIE!" THE CROWD CRIED WITH HORRIFIED SCREAMS.
THIS WASN'T THE BALLET DEBUT OF MY DREAMS!

Zombelina's ghoulish groans clear the room, except for her loyal family and their spectral friends, but with the pressure off, Zee dances with a heartfelt abandon that leaves her audience howling. Madame Maladroit, who has probably experienced worse horrors at student recitals, is pleased.

"BRAVA! MAGNIFIQUE!
DREADFULLY UNIQUE!"

It had to happen. Some author was bound to combine those two all-the-rage picture books themes, ballet and zombies, and it seems that Kristyn Crow has done it well in her just-in-time-for-Halloween rhyming zombie story, Zombelina (Bloomsbury, 2013). Artist Molly Idle adds much interest to the story with lots of campy details, such as Zombelina's house on Twisted Lane, her baby brother's cauldron car seat, and Zombelina's tire swing which is actually a life preserver reading RMS Titanic. Greatly abetted by Molly Idle's downright sweet take on not-so-grisly girl zombies, Crow's latest has drawn no moans and groans from the reviewers. Rather, they predict a bright future for ballerina Zombelina. "An unusually well-done mix of Halloween, dance, and family that's sure to please many youngsters," says School Library Journal.

Zombelina lends itself well to a storytime combo with Pace's and Pham's equally trendy Vampirina Ballerina (see review here) and DiPucchio's drop-dead funny Zombie in Love (see my review here).

School Days: Sea Monster and the Bossy Fish by Kate Messner

"WE'RE GETTING A NEW STUDENT IN MY CLASS," SEA MONSTER TOLD HIS MOM. "I'LL BET HE'LL BE NERVOUS LIKE I WAS."

"BE A FRIEND AND SHOW HIM AROUND," MOM SUGGESTED.

That's usually good advice, But when Sea Monster gives the new kid the grand tour, it soon becomes obvious that this newbie is anything but shy and reserved and he's clearly not impressed with Sea Monster's school. Everything about his old school was bigger and better.

At the music room, when the primary choir belts out "The Eels on the Bus," for the new kid, he's clearly underwhelmed:

"WE SANG COOLER SONGS AT MY OLD SCHOOL.

I'M AWESOME AT PLAYING THE DRUMS," HE BRAGS.

At P.E. he gets to choose a team and he gives his picks embarrassing nicknames--Smelly Smelt, Lurch-the-Perch, Big Mouth Bass,  and Earnest-O-Saurus Rex for Sea Monster, and when Sea Monster gives him a lift to score a basket, he declares himself the "slam-dunk king." Back in the classroom he hogs the blocks and the costumes in the dress up box while the others stand around nervously for fear of being given an even worse nickname:

"I'M A NINJA-COWBOY-DINOSAUR-WIZARD," HE BOASTS.

But things get even worse after school. The new kid organizes the Fresh Fish Club, for only the "coolest kids," with himself as president, and the chosen get their own set of shades to show off.  Sea Monster has always wanted to be in a club, and at first he is proud of his cool sunglasses and goes along with the new guy's "anything for a laugh" style. But then he notices that most of the class aren't sporting shades and are looking left out.

"SUDDENLY MY COOL SHADES FELT HEAVY ON MY SNOUT."

It's time for a more inclusive, alternative style of leadership in Kate Messner's latest, Sea Monster and the Bossy Fish (Chronicle Books, 2013), as Earnest manages to include everyone in his new Friend Fish Club and to co-opt the bossy bully by forming a seafloor band with the new kid on drums. Verbal bullying is more complex than the physical type of intimidation to deal with, and Messner lays out one possible remedy clearly in her text. Meanwhile, artist Alex Rash has an under-the-sea blast with his comic characters, having especial fun with the book titles on the display shelf in the underwater school library--Gar in a Car, Make Way for Minnows, The World According to Carp, Where the Wild Fish Are, and that Seuss classic above and below the water line, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish.

For a couple of fish tales that won't leave returning students with the all-wet, back-to-school blues, pair this one with Messner's earlier Sea Monster's First Day (read my 2011 review here).

Bottoms Up!: Animals Upside Down by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page

WHAT DO SPIDERS, BATS, AND BIRDS OF PARADISE HAVE IN COMMON?

Along with many other creatures, they turn upside down. A few of them, in fact, spend most of their lives that way.

But animals go bottoms-up for different reasons.

The upside-down jellyfish rests, tentacle-side up, its head planted on the floor of the ocean, masquerading as a water plant, with its tendrils drifting back and forth with the current until an unwary prey floats into its reach.  Then--ZAP--it's meal time!

Mallards dabble upside down, with only their cute little duck tails above water, using their wide bills to forage on the muddy bottom for a ducky dinner.

The sparrowhawk flies right side up... until it spots a snack-sized bird for its breakfast. Birds are programmed to watch for raptors from above, so this small hawk flips in flight and mounts its sneak attack from  the prey's  blind side below.  And since bats can't reach airspeed right side up, they sleep upside down and let gravity do the work when they drop-glide into flight for the  night shift.

Sloths make like Red Riding Hood's wolf, "the better to eat you, my dear," as they hang by their curved claws, conserving energy, while they snack on low-calorie leaves. Three diverse animals use the upside down position to feign death: the pale green beetle and o'possum do the flop, legs stiff in the air, to appear unappetizingly dead. But the hog-nosed snake tops all of them with an act any Academy Award winner could envy: he inverts with his pale underbelly up, secretes a smelly liquid that makes him reek like road kill, and even adds a persuasive trickle of blood from his mouth.

And the male bird of paradise turns himself into a feathery Valentine to woo a lady, flipping and displaying his bright underside to wow and woo his sweetheart.

Robin Page's and Steve Jenkins' forthcoming Animals Upside Down: A Pull, Pop, Lift & Learn Book! (Houghton Mifflin, 2013) is replete with gorgeous animal drawings from illustrator Jenkins and highly readable text by author Page. But in a departure from their many award-winning nature study books, this one ventures into the interactive book genre, quaintly called "Toy and Movable Books." With surprising special effects in the form of pop-ups, flaps, pull-tabs, and wheels to make amazing things happen on the page:  a swimming mallard paddles across the water until a tab-pull flips a flap and shows him bottom up; a pop-up fruit bat explodes from its perch, upside down, its wings spread wide; a threatened skunk does a handstand, raises his tail, and lets fire with his memorable stinky spray stuff and pangolins, woolly monkeys, and green monkey skinks use their prehensile tails to swing through the treetops.

Adding the hands-on feature to Jenkins' notable illustrations make this book a surefire child pleaser and with ultra sturdy moving parts and an appendix of picture index of featured creatures to prod further reading, Animals Upside Down: A Pull, Pop, Lift & Learn Book! is a rising star in interactive nonfiction for the primary grades.

Happily Page and Jenkins end their book by taking the focus right back to reader, with a child flipping to do an upside downer in a full handstand.

Turning upside down helps animals in lots of different ways....
But sometimes going topsy-turvy is just for fun!

Waitin' for the Weekend: Saturday with Daddy

SATURDAY MORNINGS I'M ALWAYS THE FIRST TO WAKE UP!

Waking up Mom and Dad, dressing to the smell of coffee, having a leisurely breakfast, is just the beginning of the best day of the week--because Saturday is a special day, the day a  boy and his dad do all the things that they love to do together.

Singing their favorite songs, they drive down to Patel's Market for wieners and to the Handy Hardware Store, where they get a new barbeque grill and head home for the promised hot dog dinner.  The boy "helps" Dad put it together, holding the big wrench while Dad tightens the screws.

And when they're done, it's time to break in that barby, grilling the best hot dogs yet!

ON SATURDAY, I WEAR THE SAME SORT OF APRON AS DAD!

Mom adds her special side dishes to the feast, and then it's time for a snooze in the hammock with Dad!

Even pachyderms can be paternal, and every dad gets his due in Dan Andreason's Saturday with Daddy (Henry Holt, 2013). Andreason's jolly father-and-son story, featuring a family, who, despite artist Andreason's use of blue for the elephant characters, is definitely not in a blue mood, just right for young preschoolers to celebrate doing those Saturday duties with dad. Read this one along with Robin Pulver's insightful Saturday Is Dadurday, in which a mom and dad play tag team to keep the fun in Saturday even when work duties intervene (see review here.)

Rainbow Ruler? King of the Zoo by Erica Perl

THEY SAY THE LION IS KING OF THE JUNGLE.
BUT WHO'S THE KING OF THE ZOO?

CARLOS! THAT'S WHO!

Carlos the Chameleon is a legend in his own mind. According to this self-proclaimed Master of the Menagerie, he's the coolest, the cleverest, the charming-est critter in the enclosure.

With his two little lizard henchmen, Carlos leads the way in a tour of his kingdom. But what's this? A pretender to the crown? A sign in the kangaroo's domain proclaims that he is King of the Zoo!

Carlos is so angry he turns orange with envy. In fact he's hopping mad!

In front of the monkey cage, Carlos stops and scratches his head at another insurrectional sign. Monkey? King of the Zoo? Carlos frowns and turns brown at the very thought!

The tiger's claim to rule makes Carlos growl. He stomps his foot at the elephant's proclamation of power. Everybody's getting into the act--giraffe, even an itsy-bitsy pygmy shrew! And there's that lion, at it again, lording it over everyone and claiming to be King of the Beasts. Sheesh! Carlos the Chameleon refuses to abdicate!

KING OF THE ZOO? ME. THAT'S WHO!

In her latest, King of the Zoo (Orchard Books, 2013). Erica Perl spoofs its improbable pretender to the throne, happily abetted by the jolly comedic illustrations of Jackie Urbanovic, whose delightful Duck at the Door and sassy sequels are comic portrayals of another manic menagerie, starring the duck who came to dinner and stayed and stayed and stayed. See more of the unique Urbanovic's work here.

Erica Perl is also the author of the charming and cheeky Chicken Butt!

Help the Homeless!: Ruff and the Wonderfully Amazing Busy Day by Gillian Shields and Caroline Jayne Church

"BUSY, BUSY, ALL DAY LONG,
TOODLE-OODLE, THAT'S MY SONG."

Ruff is not your lazy, lay-about pooch. His little home is shipshape, his windows washed, his gardens are flower-filled, and he has decided to use some of his extra energy digging a scenic pond out front.

But there are unforeseen consequences.

Ruff's landscaping inadvertently destroys the underground home of little mouse, who is understandably upset with him.

"SOMEONE HAS DUG UP MY HUBBLE HOUSE!" HE SQUEAKS.

"WHAT'S A HUBBLE HOUSE?" ASKS RUFF.

"THAT WAS MY HOUSE!"

So the kind-hearted Ruff stops excavating long enough to construct a cozy shed for Hubble's habitation.

Back at work, with Hubble's help, Ruff soon has the pond dug and filled, and he pronounces it perfect.

But then another homeless critter appears! An unhappy little duckling, unable to keep up with the migration, falls into the pond.  Tears ensue.

"NOW I HAVE NO WHERE TO LIVE!" LOTTIE THE DUCK SOBS.

RUFF AND HUBBLE LOOK AT EACH OTHER.

Hmmm. Ruff has an empty ornamental pond. Lottie has no place to call home. Perhaps his pond is not quite perfect. Perhaps what it needs most is a perfectly picturesque duckling plying its waters. It's all in a day's work in Gillian Shields' and Caroline Jayne Church's homey little story, Ruff! And the Wonderfully Amazing Busy Day (Harper, 2013).  Ruff is as cute as a speckled pup, which is how Church portrays him, but a pooch with a kind heart for needy new friends. It's a sweetly simple tale that captures the preschool nature of her characters gently, with a theme that softly suggests an admirable personal code of behavior.

Fish Tale: The Story of Fish and Snail by Deborah Freedman

EVERY DAY .... SNAIL SITS IN ONE SPOT AND WAITS FOR FISH TO COME HOME WITH A STORY.

Stay-at-home snail has a good thing going! Fish loves to swim off and find adventure. Best of all, each day Fish ventures forth and finds a new book, reads it, and swims home to retell it to snail.

But today is different. Fish can't just tell this story: for this one you have to BE THERE!

"AAARRRGH!  SNAIL!!

THE NEW BOOK HAS A WHOLE OCEAN, A SECRET TREASURE, AND A PIRATE!"

When snail is too timid to follow Fish out of his old story and into the new one, Fish gets impatient.

"FINE."

But Snail can't bear for this to be The End of The Story of Fish and Snail. He creeps to the very edge of the page and peers across to the next book. Can he make the leap to follow Fish into a new story, one with treasure and pirates? Will Snail take the plunge?

In Deborah Freedman's new little modern fable of friendship, The Story of Fish and Snail (Viking, 2013), being a friend requires a leap of faith that brings a new beginning to Snail's story, one in which he is brave enough to be a bold buccaneer along with friend Fish. Freedman's story has a little meta-fiction fun, playing with the concept of book and page in the same way that Mo Willems did so humorously in his recent Elephant and Piggie tale, We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book), with the added theme that friendship and books have a way of stretching the boundaries for each of the pals in unforeseen ways. The New York Times Book Review says "It's meta for beginners, and even if the surreality may float over young heads, they'll relate to the story of friends with differences," while Kirkus raves, "Texture, scale and angle accentuate the exciting difference between the in-book worlds and the pale library background. This marvelous metabook shines in both concept and beauty."

Don't Book Me! I Hate to Read! by Rita Marshall

VICTOR DICKENS WAS A GOOD KID.

HE TOOK A HELMET WITH HIM WHEN HE SKATEBOARDED. HE COMBED HIS HAIR FOR SCHOOL PICTURES. HE ALWAYS SHARED WITH HIS DOG.

YES, VICTOR DICKENS WAS A GOOD KID. BUT VICTOR HATED TO READ.

HE GOT As IN MATH, BUT HE GOT Fs IN THE ABCs.

For a guy who shares the surname of a famous novelist, Victor Dickens is a maverick bibliophobic!

The best he can muster is to pretend to read long enough to qualify for TV time. But then, sitting there in front of an open book, something strange happens.

A CROCODILE IN A WHITE COAT CLIMBED OUT OF THE BOOK.

"JUMP INTO MY POCKET IF YOU LIKE TO READ. IT'S STORY TIME."

"I HATE TO READ!" SAID VICTOR.

But then a little mouse gnaws his way out of the book, followed by a parrot with a treasure map. A rabbit in big black boots appears and they all invite Victor to come along on an adventurous voyage to the Spice Islands. A frog brandishing a sword urges Victor to read the page so the frog can turn back into a prince.

"I HATE ADVENTURES," SAID VICTOR.

But can Victor resist finding out what happens next? After all, anything can happen in a fiction book, and Victor is in for some surprises in Rita Marshall's new edition of her I Hate To Read! (Creative Editions, 2013). Swiss artist Etienne Delessert's elaborate and fanciful illustrations take this fanciful story over the finish line. As Publishers Weekly puts it, "Delessert's inventive art... wreaks playful havoc with perspective and scale, and features striking, earth-tone pastels punctuated with splashes of vibrant color."

Pair this one with Marshall's sequel, I Still Hate to Read! or Barbara Bottner's hilarious reading avoidance tale, Miss Brooks Loves Books (And I Don't) (see my review here.

Facing It: Wonder by R. J. Palacio

I know I'm not an ordinary ten-year-old kid. I mean, sure, I do ordinary things. I eat ice cream. I have an XBox. I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds.

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

The Universe has not been kind to Auggie Pullman.

Auggie just wants to be a face in the crowd. One no one notices.

But with his face, the one he was born with, even after 27 surgeries, he stops ordinary people in their tracks, staring, giving him "the look." Even the doctor who delivered Auggie fainted.

August has been home-schooled through fourth grade to shield him from the looks he gets whenever he goes in public. When he was younger, his sister Via's friend Miranda gave him an astronaut helmet, and for two years, he wore it all the time. For obvious reasons, Halloween is the best day of the year for Auggie.

But his mom feels that fifth grade, the beginning of middle school in his town, is the best time to start at a real school. "It's his reality," she explains to his dad, and she persuades a very reluctant Auggie to go along with the plan. Two weeks before school begins, his parent want him to meet the principal. And his name cracks up Auggie and his parents.

"Mr. Tushman?" I said.

"He's the principal," said his mother.

"Mr. Tushman?"

"Can you believe that name, Auggie? I mean, who on earth would admit to a name like Mr. Tushman?" said Dad.

"You should go to that school just so you can hear his name said over the loudspeaker!" Dad said excitedly. "Paging Mr. Tushman!" faking a fake old-lady voice. "Hi, Mr. Tushman. I see you're running a little behind today. Did your car get rear-ended again? What a bum rap!"

"Who's Mr. Tushman?" Via said groggily. She'd just woken up.

"He's the principal of my new school," I answered.

Auggie goes, and it's as bad as he feared. One boy, Jack Will, is decent and shows him around, and a girl named Summer joins him as he sits alone at his table in the cafeteria, but a kid named Julian seems to think it's mega-cool to talk about the way he looks right in front of him. Auggie notices that no one will touch him or anything he has touched, and soon Julian and his friends begin the "Plague War," sticking mean notes in his and Jack's locker and doing everything they can to embarrass him and isolate Jack and Summer. Rat Boy, Freddie Kreuger, E.T., Gross Out, Mutant, the notes read.

Then, in homeroom on Halloween, disguised as The Scream, Auggie quietly sits down close to a mummy and a Darth Sidious, and as they talk, he realizes they must be Jack and Julian, talking about him.

"Why do you hang out with him so much?" asked Darth Sidous.

"I don't know," answered the mummy.  "Tushman asked me to hang out with him and he must've told all the teachers to put us next to each other in all classes or something.  I mean, the thing is, he always follows me around."

"Just ditch him," said Julian.

"I've thought about this a lot," said Jack, "and I really think... if I looked like him, seriously, I think that I'd kill myself."

Auggie slips out of the room, physically sick to his stomach, crying, and tells the nurse he's got a virus and goes home. Getting through the rest of the year, getting through the rest of his life, seem unendurable.

But the Universe has some surprises ahead for August Pullman, in P. J. Palacio's celebrated, best-selling debut novel, Wonder (Random House, 2012). Getting to that happy ending for Auggie is an example of the high art of fiction writing, one blessed with extraordinary, yet believable, character development and believable story construction, one which takes on all the big themes--friendship, self-worth, bullying, and especially abundant courage and the grace of human kindness--as he finishes fifth grade with a courage that transforms his classmates as well. How the author does that in page-turning and heartfelt prose is a revelation relevant to adults as well as to its target readers. With starred reviews all around, best-of-the-year-list honors, and kudos from his fellow writers, Wonder is a wonder, that rare book that does it all.

Auggie's teacher has a "Precept of the Month" and he asks his students to send him a postcard during the summer with their own precept of the year.

Jack Will's Precept: Keep calm and carry on!--some saying from World War II.

Summer Dawson's Precept: If you can get through middle school without hurting anyone's feelings, that's really cool beans.

Julian Alban's Precept: Sometimes it's good to start over.

August Pullman's Precept: Everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their life, because we all overcome the world.

Curb Your Enthusiasml! Clark the Shark by Bruce Hale

CLARK THE SHARK LOVED SCHOOL, AND HE LOVED HIS TEACHER MRS. INKYDINK.

OF ALL THE FISH AT THEODORE ROOSTERFISH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, THE BIGGEST AND STRONGEST WAS CLARK THE SHARK!

Clark's enthusiasm for the school experience knows no bounds... and that's the problem.

"Lunchtime! Sweeeet!" he yells as he inhales all of his lunch and most of his tablemates' grub as well. His big voice drowns out even the teacher, and at recess Clark's cowabunga style dissuades the other students from even approaching the swings and slides.

There such a thing as too much of a good thing, and Clark's over-enthusiasm for everything is overwhelming for his friends and and a bit over the top for even his veteran teacher, Mrs. Inkydink. Clark is making waves. In fact, he's a dorsal-finned tsunami!

"SOMETIMES THE RULE IS STAY COOL IN SCHOOL!" SHE SAID.

But how can Clark keep that rule in mind? Every time the class transitions into a different activity, Clark's runaway enthusiasm makes a mess of everyone else's efforts. Then Clark begins to coach himself silently.

STAY COOL IN SCHOOL. HEY! THAT RHYMES!

Putting school rules into rhyme works!  Soon Clark has concocted couplets for everything he needs to remember about being a good citizen in his class. Only your own lunch is yours to munch! No walking while Mrs. Inkydink is talking, he reminds himself, and it helps.  The class and the teacher relax. Whew!

Bruce Hale's latest, Clark the Shark (Harper, 2013), points up what is a hard transition to classroom etiquette for some rookie students,  learning not to overwhelm others with your own wants and ideas. And it's just in time for Clark the Shark, because a new student appears, Sid the Squid, whose size intimidates even Clark and who has his many hands all over everything in the room! Now it's time for Clark to teach this newbie the rules for a cool school! Hale's rhymes and Guy Francis' cartoon illustrations of an undersea school, nicely executed in watery palette and wavy lines, offer plenty of fun while the premise makes its point that everyone in a group needs to be considerate of all the others--a good message to keep in mind for back-to-school time!

Pair this one with Tom Lichtenheld's comic Shark vs. Train for a twosome of over-enthusiastic shark tales.