It's How You Play The Game! The Thing Lenny Loves Most About Baseball by Aaron Larsen

IT'S SPRINGTIME IN THE PARK.

"ONE DAY I'M GOING TO PLAY IN THE BIG LEAGUES," SAYS LENNY, THROWING THE BASEBALL.

"I'LL BE THERE CHEERING FOR YOU," SAYS HIS DAD, CATCHING IT."

Lenny likes to read up on baseball. That night he tells his dad about a game that lasted for two days.

"IT COULD HAVE GONE ON FOREVER," SAYS LENNY. "I LOVE THAT ABOUT BASEBALL."

In the first game, Lenny gets under a hit to the outfield. He runs back and forth, trying to find exactly where it will fall. But the ball drops to the grass right beside him. Lenny is embarrassed to be afraid of the ball. But he keeps studying about the game, and he's consoled when he reads that home-run heroes Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron had many more strikes than hits out of the park.

"I LIKE THAT ABOUT BASEBALL." HE SAYS.

Lenny tries playing catch in his Greek warrior helmet for protection from the ball, but it doesn't help. Lenny tells himself he's going to miss more than he catches, and he's right. But he keeps on practicing and he keeps on getting better. He tries to remember the old adage to "keep your eye on the ball."

And at the next game, with the score tied in the last inning, there's a hit to the outfield. Lenny goes deep, deep, and when the ball comes down, he's there....

THWAP!

It drops right into his waiting glove!

And when the girl who's up to bat first in the next inning hits it out of the park, Lenny remembers the old saying, "You win some. You lose some."

And the old adage is right: it's not whether you win or lose. It's how you play the game, in Andrew Lewis' latest, The Thing Lenny Loves Most About Baseball,(Kids Can Press, 2021).

It's true that "You can't win 'em all," but you can improve your game and enjoy the gameplay, as Dad models and Lenny learns in this story of the right way to play summer league baseball. You can't always win and you won't always be the star, but Lenny's jolly red-bearded dad teaches his son how to play a team sport for the fun of it--just in time to get ready for the start of the spring baseball season.

Says Kirkus Reviews, "... A good counter to the insistent, invidious message that winning is all that matters."

From Seed to Glow! How to Help A Pumpkin Grow by Ashley Wolff

Where do pumpkins come from? A packet of freeze-dried powder? A can of orange glop? The frozen dessert section of the grocery?

No! Pumpkins come from pumpkin seeds! Cut off the top of any pumpkin and you'll see them, clustered together inside the pumpkin--seeds that came from a pumpkin patch somewhere on earth!

And how do we get pumpkins for Halloween Jack-O'-Lanterns and Thanksgiving pumpkin bread and pies and those ubiquitous pumpkin-spice flavored smoothies? We plant pumpkin seeds in early spring! And that's what author-illustrator Ashley Wolff shows us how to do in her just-in-time pumpkin-planting book, How to Help a Pumpkin Grow (Beach Lane Books, 2021). A helpful black and white Aussie dog recruits some friends and shows them how to cut a lid off the top of a pumpkin and separate the seeds from the glop inside to dry them for planting in the pumpkin patch.

DIG IT!

SEEDS TO SOW.

Protect them from the falling snow! Fence them and chase away a marauding crow. They like a bit of fertilizer and plenty of water from time to time. When the tender stalks and leaves begin to show, fence in the patch so their vines can go! Co-opt the bunnies and geese and goat to let the vines and tiny pumpkins just GROW..., losing their green color and gaining their orange glow!

FILLING UP THE GARDEN--WHOA!

When the big green pumpkins turn to orange, it's time to roast the seeds, to mix the filling, and bake the pies in the oven.

IT'S TIME TO CARVE THEM JUST SO!

Light the candles and watch them--

"GLOW!

With bouncy rhyming text and jolly illustrations of all kinds of friendly animals collaborating and cooperating to produce pumpkin treats together, this lovely book written and illustrated by Ashley Wolff does double duty for fall read alouds. After all, where do next year's Jack O'lanterns and pumpkins pies come from?

Share this one with Margaret McNamara's How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? (Mr. Tiffin's Classroom Series), reviewed here:

Good Things in Small Packages: How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara

Charlie is the smallest kid in the class, and because Mr. Tiffin lines his class up by height, he's always last and least!

But then, "one chilly fall morning," little Charlie arrives at school to find three fine pumpkins, one large sized, one medium, and one, well, rather small pumpkin lined up on the table at the front of the classroom. When Mr. T. challenges his class to guess which one has the most seeds inside, Charlie is too timid even to hazard a guess.

But when the "messy business" of separating the seeds from the slimy stuff inside the three pumpkins is done, there are "three empty pumpkins and three full bowls" of pale yellow seeds to count. Amazingly, it's the smallest pumpkin, by a small margin, which turns out to be the pumpkin with the mostest!

"Small things have a lot going on inside them!" Charlie points out, and Mr. Tiffin agrees, lining the class up smallest to tallest, with Charlie leading the way to lunch.

In her new book, How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? author Margaret McNamara provides a lot of pumpkin science (e.g., pumpkins with a lot of vertical lines have the most seeds), pumpkin math (counting by twos, fives, and tens), with a bit of values learning as well, with the reminder that physical size isn't the whole story--in pumpkins or in people!

Also known for her similarly themed book, The Pumpkin Patch, McNamara is ably supported by the illustrations of G. Brian Karas, (Muncha! Muncha! Muncha!). Their new book comes along just in time to be a worthy addition to older seasonal standbys for pumpkin picking, pumpkin decorating, pumpking carving, and pumpkin pie baking time in the primary grades.

Spring Thing! Carpenter's Helper by Sybil Rosen

THE NEW BATHROOM IS HALFWAY FINISHED!

In her overalls and yellow safety helmet, Renata is happy to be helping Daddy. They are refurbishing their bathroom with a fancy oval window and a big old-fashioned bathtub with fancy legs.

SHE CAN ALREADY PICTURE THE CASTLES OF BUBBLES SHE WILL BUILD IN IT.

Renata carefully holds the bracing board as Dad nails it up to support the place where he will cut out the new window! With interest she peeps inside the walls at the pipes and wires inside.

But it is early spring, and Renata's is not the only family working on a new house. After one night, when Daddy leaves the new window space uncovered, Renata's discovers that a pair of wrens seem to be building their new house on the bottom shelf over the tub in her bathroom. Daddy's bathroom makeover has to come to a halt while the bird parents build a snug and comfy nest of leaves, grass, twigs.

And just as soon as Mama Wren lines the nest with soft moss and a squiggle of ribbon for decor, she beds down in it and soon lays four red-brown eggs.

"WE WON'T BE ABLE TO WORK NOW," SAID HER FATHER.

"CAN YOU WAIT THAT LONG FOR YOUR BUBBLE BATH?"

"I CAN WAIT!" RENATA SMILES.

Soon the baby wrens hatch and peep, while the parents fly back and forth through the window with take-out baby bird food to keep the babies growing in their little nest on the shelf.

SOMETIMES PAPA WREN SITS IN THE WINDOWSILL AND SINGS AND SINGS!

And when the little wrens are ready to fledge, Mama and Papa Wren sit in the window frame and churr to the babies to fly to the window and outside with them. But the babies are not able to fly all the way, and all four of them wind up making emergency landings in Renata's big bathtub! Thinking fast, Renata grabs a small plank and puts one end in the bathtub to make a bridge for the fledgelings, and soon they are up and on the wing to the warm spring scene outside, in Sybil Rosen's just published Carpenter's Helper (Schwartz and Wade, 2021).

With this beguiling story of a unusually patient girl and her dad, brought to life with the delightful illustrations done in colored pencil and soft palette by artist Camille Garoche, this is an unusual picture book that utilizes a loving parent-and-child and parallel avian family relationship, a sweet baby bird rescue story filled with the warmth of love and spring.

Says Publishers Weekly's starred review, "Excelling in natural illustrations with a slightly cartoonish bent, Garoche offers fine-lined colored pencil art done digitally in a soft color palette. This gentle story, with its respect for family, nature, construction, and collaboration, will lift readers’ spirits as surely as Renata boosts the wrens.”