Potluck Party! Dumplings for Lili by Melissa Iwai

IT'S A SPECIAL DAY! NAI NAI SAYS, "LILI, DO YOU WANT TO HELP MAKE BAOS?"

Lili is delighted. Bao are little bundles with a delicious things inside, soft and warm and juicy dumplings! And Lili loves making them with her grandmother. But there is one problem. When Nai Nai goes to her refrigerator she finds she has no cabbage! How is that possible? She always has cabbage--except when she doesn't! Nai Nai's recipe's secret is big fresh cabbage leaves to line the steamer to simmer the dumplings properly!

"ZAO GAO!"NAI NAI EXCLAIMS IN EXASPERATION!

But... no problem! Her Polish friend Babcia on the sixth floor usually has cabbage. She sends Lili to borrow some. Lili discovers that the elevator is out of order, so she dashes upstairs, where Babcia is having a problem with her special recipe for pierogi. Her potatoes have sprouted. She hands Lili a big cabbage but asks her to run down to Granma's apartment on the sixth floor to see if she has some potatoes to spare. Lili thanks Babcia and hurries down with the cabbage to Nai Nai and back up to Granma's kitchen to borrow the potatoes for Babcia. But Granma has her own culinary emergency, too!

"HOWDEEDOO!" SHE SAYS, HUGGING LILI.

She has potatoes, bu she's making her special Jamaican meat patties and her garlic buds are all wrinkly and dried out. She wonders if Lili would run down to Abuela on the fourth floor to see if she has some to spare for her recipe. Lili agrees and runs upstairs with the potatoes for Babcia and back down to Abuela's, who has plenty of garlic to spare for Granma, but she is fresh out of cumin for her tamale fillings! She asks Lili to run down to see if Nonna on the third floor has some to spare. Nonna does, but by the way, she asks, could Lili trot up to Teta's to see if she has some olive oil to share for her ravioli recipe?

By this time Lili's trot has slowed down to a tired trudge, but there's a heavenly smell coming from Teta's kitchen.

TETA IS MAKING FATAYER!

Teta has a big bottle of olive oil for Nonna, so Lili treks up to make her delivery to the waiting Nonna and finally heads back down to Nai Nai's kitchen on the ground floor to recount her grocery delivery adventures. Nai Nai and Lili laugh at the ups and downs of her travels as they take out the dumplings steamed with cabbage leaves "imported" from the top floor.

The tall building is filled with the smells of irresistibly delicious finger foods, so what else is there to do but to leave their hot kitchens and take their special dishes downstairs to the cool courtyard to share a potluck party for everyone, in Melissa Iwai's just published Dumplings for Lili (Holiday House, 2021).

Little Lili has certainly worked up an appetite procuring ingredients for the tasting party feast, and author Melissa Iwai includes the recipe for baos and even saves one big surprise for Lili (and her readers) for the ending. Iwai's sprightly, colorful, and joyful illustrations of cooks from all over the world making their specialties set off a funny story that proves that many cooks definitely don't spoil the broth in this modern multicultural version of the old folk parable of Stone Soup.

Says Publishers Weekly, "A resonant portrait of intergenerational care, and a toothsome celebration of how food unites a multicultural community.

Strange Friends! Smell My Foot (Chick and Brain) by Cece Bell

"HELLO, BRAIN," SAID CHICK.

"YEAH, I KNOW!" SAID BRAIN.

"NO, BRAIN. I SAY, 'HELLO, BRAIN!' YOU SAY 'HELLO, CHICK!'"

LIKE THIS," SAID CHICK, FLYING UP ON BRAIN'S NOSE AND REPEATING, "HELLO, CHICK!"

"MY NAME IS NOT 'CHICK!'"

"BRAIN, YOU LOOK SMART. BUT YOU ARE NOT VERY SMART!" SAID CHICK.

"OH, NO?" SAID BRAIN. "SMELL MY FOOT!"

"I WILL NOT! COME ON, BRAIN. NO!" SAID CHICK.

By the end of this dialogue, young readers will know that they are in for a classic noodle tale in Cece Bell's Chick and Brain: Smell My Foot! (Candlewick, 2019). Whether Brain's foot smells good or not, Chick refuses to smell it until Brain says PLEASE. Chick demonstrates:

"SMELL MY FOOT, PLEASE!"

Brain gets down on all fours and smells Chick's foot!

Things continue in the same vein as Chick and Brain meet a dog named Spot, who agrees that Chick's foot smells good--because it smells like chicken, and he loves chicken! Flattered, Chick accepts Spot's invitation to come for lunch, neglecting to find out whether he will be a diner or the dinner. After much coaching, Spot says please and thank you as he ushers Chick to sit down in a bowl and sprinkles him with salt and pepper. But before Chick becomes chicken dinner, Brain arrives to rescue him. He asks Chick if he knows what food dogs eat. Chick guesses dog food.

"AND CHICKEN!" ADDS BRAIN!

Maybe Brain is pretty smart after all, in this beginning chapter book sure to gain giggles from early grade readers just trying their skills in longer books. Author-illustrator Cece Bell, already a Newbery Honor Medal winner, also earned the 2019 American Library Association Theodor Seuss Honor Medal for this clever first in series book for young readers. Set in comic book paneled page format, with four chapters and with plenty of silly interchanges between the two characters, kids will get lots of laughs (and perhaps a few etiquette hints) in this first title. Says Kirkus, "In this first series entry, Bell flips the repetitive primer structure on its head and transforms it into a winning oddball comedy."

Cece Bell's next book in this series is Chick and Brain: Egg or Eyeball?

"Tracking" the Clues: The Case of the Snack Snatcher (West Meadows Detectives) by Liam O'Donnell

EVERYTHING WAS NEW. NEW SHIRT. NEW SHOES. NEW SCHOOL.

I DON'T LIKE NEW," SAYS MYRON TO HIMSELF.

New teachers and new classmates make Myron's brain itch. And sometimes his itchy brain makes him lose control of everything.

But Myron likes his new Resource teacher, Mr. Harpel. And before the other three students arrive, there is a shrill scream from down the hall.

"AAAAAHH!

Mrs. Peterson, the cafeteria manager, has discovered all the morning snacks she laid out on the big steel table are gone! The kitchen floor is littered with scattered flour, broken crackers, and shredded boxes and wrappers.

"WE'VE BEEN ROBBED!" SAID MRS. PETERSON.

Myron is sorry about the theft, but he is happy to have a mystery to solve. Myron is a detective who loves to search for clues. And he also has a very keen sense of smell, and he smells licorice. He follows his nose to a closet and pulls it open. Out pops a very bouncy girl, Hajrah, who has been hiding from the daycare lady to eat her candy. When she hears that Myron is a detective and that he is determined to solve the mystery, she immediately volunteers to help.

"I LOVE MYSTERIES! I'LL BE YOUR DETECTIVE PARTNER!"

"I WORK ALONE." I SAID. MY BRAIN BEGAN TO ITCH.

But Hajrah is a girl who doesn't take no for an answer, and soon she introduces Myron to a another classmate, Danielle, a.k.a. Glitch. Hajrah whispers that Glitch stole things last year and should be their prime suspect. Glitch doesn't help her case by continuing to scowl at Myron, but Myron meets another suspect at lunch, Sarah "Smasher" McGintley, and her two henchmen, Cameron and Carter, who deliver a suspicious warning:

"MYRON MATTHEWS, KID DETECTIVE! KEEP YOUR SNOOPING AWAY FROM ME!"

Myron plans to do some serious snooping for clues at recess, but he finds all the kids gathered around a big tree, fallen during last night's storm. Mr. V., the custodian, is busy cutting the trunk into sections and sadly points out a blue tarpaulin now covering part of the school roof where the tree fell.

"HEY! THAT'S SMOKY'S TREE!" HAJRAH SAID.

And when Hajrah explains that Smoky is the raccoon who lives in that tree, Myron's brain begins to itch. But this time it's a pleasant itch, one that means that he now has some circumstantial evidence to help solve the mystery. And when the thief strikes again, with the help of his new friends Myron finally gets to inspect and detect at an undisturbed crime scene with the tell-tale physical evidence needed to identify the snack snatcher.

Liam O'Donnell's new West Meadows Detectives: The Case of the Snack Snatcher (Owlkids Books, 2015), presents a different third grade detective. Like his idol, Sherlock Holmes, Myron's unusual mind can't stop turning over the facts in the case until he has a solution, and in his classmates he discovers some talents to rival Dr. Watson's. Glitch provides the technical support in the form of a motion-detecting camera, and never-still Hajrah is happy to do the legwork leading to the solution of Myron's first case at West Meadows School. Thanks to artist Aurelie Grand's pen-and-ink illustrations and author O'Donnell's clever foreshadowing, savvy young sleuths may well detect the solution even before Myron's super senses do, in O'Donnell's first book in his new spinoff series about the West Meadows Detectives.

See also Liam O'Donnell's earlier mysteries (in which Myron is an assistant detective), Max Finder Mystery Collected Casebook Volume 1

Have Trenchcoat. Will Sleuth: Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth by Jane O'Connor

The only thing Nancy was missing was a mystery.

"If only more criminals lived around here," she said to her father.

"Nobody ever gets kidnapped. I bet there's never been a jewel heist." Nancy added, in case her father didn't know, "That means a jewel robbery."

Nancy sighed. "I wish we lived someplace like River Heights." That was where Nancy Drew lived. "In River Heights, criminals are lurking around every corner."

Fancy Nancy Clancy has got the gear-- floppy hat, rhinestone-encrusted magnifying glass, a notebook, a pink trench coat, and five Nancy Drew books under her belt. Best friend Bree has a trench coat, too--a lavender one. Now all they need is a CASE.

And then, after Parent Day at school, the fashionista sleuths get their first real mystery. The sapphire blue marble, a big shooter given to her teacher Mr. Dudeny by his grandfather, is discovered missing from the class's display of their prized possessions. Every one of their classmates--and every one of the guests for their presentation--is a SUSPECT! Nancy and Bree swing into action, interrogating all the kids, looking for motives, and searching for evidence.

Everyone denies any knowledge of the missing marble. There seem to be no tangible clues--until Bree, the class shutterbug, has the film of the event in her reusable camera developed. Studying the prints with their magnifying glasses, Nancy spots a series of real clues. Among the snapshots of classmates showing off their favorite items, the big blue marble is plainly in evidence in its place of honor on the exhibit table behind the proud parents and students, the clock face readable behind them, until just before the program ended at lunch time, and it is clearly missing from its mounting in the final photo taken after lunch. The time of the crime is established! And one photo of a pair of parents smiling broadly in front of the table reveals one of the guests clearly reaching for that marble in the background.

It looks like the case is solved. But there is one more interrogation that Nancy must make to be sure. And why is Nancy Clancy, super sleuth, not happy with the brilliant solution to her first case?

Jane O'Connor's best-selling picture book heroine, Fancy Nancy Clancy, debuts in her first full-length mystery and her first beginning chapter book, Fancy Nancy: Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth (Harper, 2012) already hitting the charts as a best-seller in book world. How does a primary grader in a pink trench coat shoot to the top as soon as her book hits the sales shelves?

Initially I myself was a Fancy Nancy resister when the first book came up as a nominee before the Volunteer State Book Awards in 2005. As a primary schooler in that distant era when bows and ruffles for girls were the mode, I was a determined tomboy, a frou-frou resister, and when the first book came out, I figured the last thing the current crop of little princesses needed was yet another fashionista role model. But Nancy Clancy's plucky persistence in being herself in a plain Jane family and O'Connor's insightful family-centered plots soon won me over.

Thinking back, I now wish I had had a fictional friend like Nancy to help with the rites of passage of the primary years--dealing with mean girls, bad-hair picture days, and the undeniable horror of barfing in front of the whole class. A girl could do worse than have Nancy Clancy as a mentor, and thanks to the continued artistry of author O'Connor and illustrator Robin Glasser, whose drawings lose none of their telling line and piquant extension of the text in black and white, detective Nancy shows no sign of losing her touch for her readers. Vive!, Nancy! And Merci!

Secret Love: Super Secret Valentine by Abby Klein

"I have a problem, a really really big problem. I want to give Jessie a special Valentine for Valentine's Day, but I don't want anyone else to know.

Let me tell you about it."

Mrs. Wushy's class Valentine's Day party is Friday, and for a change Freddy has a bigger problem than class bully Max. Freddy's mom has decided that this year he and Suzie will make their own Valentines instead of buying them, and after some problems with crooked cut-out hearts, Freddy really gets into the project. There are nineteen to make for the kids in his class, and Freddy finishes eighteen of them under Suzie's bossy supervision, but the last one, the special one for Jessie, is a different matter.

Pretending to help his mom put his laundry away, Freddy sneaks the needed art supplies up to his room and finishes an especially nice one for his special friend. So far so good, Freddie thinks, until Suzie catches him glue-handed with the forbidden sticky stuff in his room. "You are so busted," she cries triumphantly, and only a promise to turn over all his candy hearts and all his chocolate kisses to Suzie buys her silence.

Still Freddy has to smuggle the special Valentine to school without anyone seeing it. Visions of hearing Max singing the dreaded rhyme in front of everyone torment Freddy as he stealthily waits for a private moment to give Jess her Valentine:

"Freddy and Jessie, sitting in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

But this time Freddy is lucky in love. At recess he manages to catch Jessie alone to give her the handmade Valentine with the special message "I Like You!" And wonder of wonders, Jessie has one for him with the very same message.

In Abby Klein's beginning chapter book Super-secret Valentine (Ready, Freddy!), hero Ready Freddy has special appeal to youngsters of the boy persuasion--a realistic character whose wishes and worries tickle the funny bone while striking a common chord with young readers. Pair this one with Park's hilarious (and touching) Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime (Junie B. Jones, No. 14) for some independent reader Valentine's Day fun.