Early Bird! Good Morning to ME! by Lita Judge

There is a cottage, a cozy cottage, where everyone is sleeping, everyone but ONE....

"GOOD MORNING TO ME!" SQUEALED BEATRIX.

Beatrix the parrot is an early riser, a very early riser. She's wide awake! She knows she's supposed to use her quiet, inside voice while others are still sleeping, but she just can't help herself!

Her patient but drowsy friend Mouse has no desire to salute the rising sun, but he bestirs himself to try to keep Beatrix from waking up the whole household. But this bird can't stop talking.

"I LOVE MOUSE! TODAY I WILL BE A GOOD BIRDIE!

OH, LOOK! THERE'S KITTY. I LOVE KITTY!"

Kitty is a grouchy Siamese who clearly does NOT love Beatrix or enthusiastic early awakenings. With eyes still half closed, her hackles are rising and her claws are already flexing.

But Beatrix is oblivious. Scatting the Jaws theme, she stalks Kitty.

"DAH-DUH, DAH-DUH, DAH-DUH....."

Beatrix moves in, and Kitty grabs with her clawed front feet. Suddenly the tables are turned.

"uh... MOUSE!!! (HELP!)

Mouse grabs a fork and gives Kitty a poke, and Beatrix escapes away to her perch. Kitty sits below, thumping her tail angrily on the floor. But to Beatrix it's all a good game of tag.

Suddenly she remembers that she hasn't greeted Goldfish yet. Enthusiastically, she sticks her head under the water into Goldfish's bowl. Bad move.

Beatrix falls in. Blub! It's crowded in there! Mouse has to run and wake Gracie the Bassett hound to pull Beatrix out of the goldfish bowl. It's a rough wake-up for Gracie, but, unfazed, Beatrix flaps her wet wings with glee.

"NOW WHAT CAN WE PLAY?"

Beatrix is not a good birdie, but her joie de vive is infectious in Lita Judge's giggle-fest-filled Good Morning to Me! (Atheneum Books, 2015). Judge's animal illustrations are joyfully comic, set in both framed vignettes on the page or spreading ebulliently across double-page spreads as full of life as her vibrant feathered heroine. This is a book that would be hilarious if you couldn't read a word of the text, with Beatrix and her buddies' facial expressions telling the whole story. As Publishers Weekly adds in their starred review, "... a lovely book... Judge uses aqueous, shimmering blues for her environments so that the furs, feathers, and marvelous expressions of her cast pop."

This is terrific picture book fun even if you, too, are not an early bird, one which will also resonate with night-owl parents who have a nest full of early risers. It's a book worthy of pairing with that classic tale of sleep disturbed, Audrey and Don Wood's The Napping House.

Calling All Lions! Lion Lion by Miriam Bush

"LION!!!"

A boy steps out of his house and calls loudly, but when a real, full-grown lion answers his call, he looks very surprised! Clearly, this isn't the Lion he expected.

Lion says, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to find Lion. What about YOU?" the boy answers.

"I am looking for lunch."

Coming from a lion, that sounds ominous. Trying to look unflustered, the boy looks around for lunch possibilities.

"Care for some grass?"

The Lion ventures into the grass, but a snapping turtle grabs his foot.

The Lion declares the grass too "snappy." Offered some mushrooms, he steps on a prickly hedgehog snacking on the 'shrooms and declines the offer as too splintery.

The berry bushes are stinky from some skunks who have been sampling the fruit. Flowers, maybe?

The Lion points out that a hummingbird has gotten there first.

"Feathers make me sneeze!"

Aha! Suddenly the boy's anxious look changes to a crafty one. Hmmm! He has a plan. If he can make the Lion sneeze....

AH--AHH--AHHH...
CHOO!

Miriam Busch's Lion, Lion (HarperCollins, 2014) has a surprise ending (with a happy MEW from the boy's rescued cat Lion) that close readers may have already figured out, involving feathers and the big red flashlight in the boy's back pocket.Illustrator Larry Day is in on the joke, of course, and offers visual clues that foreshadow the happy reunion, not to mention the little mouse on every page. (Note: No hummingbirds, skunks, hedgehogs, turtles--or cats-were harmed in the making of this story!)

The Bulletin for Children's Books call this one downright "Sendakian," and Kirkus says, "The grand joke comes at the end, when the clever boy forces the lion to sneeze, and there is another play on the same theme on the very last page. Sly, dark humor for little ones—at its best."

He Who Laughs Last....: AH HA! by Jeff Mack

LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP!

It's a good rule, especially out there in the swamp, and, for sure, it's one this chubby little frog should keep in mind as he takes a flying leap onto that smooth, sun-warmed rock. A-A-A-H-H-H-H! A fine spot for an awesome amphibian nap!

Except there's a determined barefoot boy, hound dog pup at his heels, armed with a canning jar with its stout lid and gunning for a capture. Down it comes on Frog just as he stretches out to sleep. Clap! and Frog is a specimen--under glass!

"AH HA!"

But his pup cannot curb his enthusiasm and jumps up at the jar, causing the boy to let it slip, and Frog falls out, free as, well,... a frog, with an AHHHH! of relief. He leaps out over the water to a pale rock with dark spots and grins at the hapless boy on the shore!

But that rock is not what it seems.  It's a hungry turtle's back, and the snapper's chomper snakes back ready for a bite!  A-a-a-a-a-ahhhHH!

Frog launches himself forward onto what looks like some tall reeds near the cattails, sighs an a-a-a-hhh!,  just as Flamingo's business end, his beak, swivels around ready for a bite of  the frog on his leg with a triumphant HA! But Frog is already leaping away across the water, landing on what he believes is a lucky log.

By this point in the story, most savvy readers will KNOW that's no log at all. It's an alligator, aiming to munch a bunch of Frog for lunch. Frog needs to make the leap of his life, which lands him....

... well inside a nice, safe jar, as the boy fields the catch of his life!

There are yet more AAHHHs and AH HAs and one happy HA HA! ahead in this game of leapfrog before Frog gets that last laugh, in Jeff Mack's recent Ah Ha! (Chronicle Books, 2013). A charming tour de force of a text using words made up of just two letters in only three combinations, set off by beautifully composed illustrations which will have most youngsters leaping right in to read along with every novel page turn. This one is so much fun to read aloud that everyone (even the most early reader) will want a shot at putting  his or her own pizzazzy spin on those three words. As Publishers Weekly puts it, "... more than just a great script: it’s gorgeous, too, with lush and tightly composed images, hypersaturated colors, and textures reminiscent of midcentury printing."

Jeff Mack is also the author of the similarly styled Good News, Bad News (Chronicle, 2012).

Best Pet Bet: Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett

IT HAD BEEN SNOWING FOR DAYS.

WINTER WAS LASTING TOO LONG.

SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH ANNIE'S CAT. TAFFY HAD STOPPED PLAYING.

SHE ATE LESS THAN USUAL.

SHE SLEPT ALL DAY LONG. SHE CURLED UP IN STRANGE PLACES.

Annie is worried about her cat, and when Taffy suddenly fails to come home one morning Annie looks everywhere outside but with no luck.

ANNIE WAS LONELY.

I NEED A NEW FRIEND, SHE THOUGHT.

Annie takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find a new pet. Since she lives in a snow-covered forest, a pet shop is out of the question. Instead, she bakes some fragrant corn cakes and puts one outside at the edge of the woods. The next morning, there IS an animal there, waiting for more. But... it's a ... moose.

HE'S TOO BIG FOR A PET, THOUGHT ANNIE.

Annie keeps trying, putting out a corn cake each evening, but all the applicants for Annie's new pet have their issues. A wildcat is too wild to tame. A brown bear is too grumpy. Annie decides she needs more bait, scattering a whole batch of her popular corn cakes at the edge of the woods, but when a wolf, a giant stag, and a black bear start fighting over the food, Annie despairs of finding a proper pet among these rambunctious applicants.

NOT ONE OF THEM IS SOFT AND FRIENDLY LIKE TAFFY, THOUGHT ANNIE.

This re-issued Yuletide-tinted edition of Jan Brett's Annie and the Wild Animals (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2012, 1985) is a delightful blend of the picturesque and charming Ukrainian setting seen in her classic, The Mitten 20th Anniversary Edition. With its snow-covered cottage and evergreens and the pigtailed Annie's red coveralls, green, handmade sweater, and furry boots, this book is a delight to the eye, with Brett's trademark page frames providing dramatic irony as they foreshadow what comes next, espcially Annie's cat Taffy and her new kittens holed up in the hollow of a forest tree as the robin in the branches and the trilliums among the melting snow foretell Taffy's triumphant return with her three kittens. Classic Brett in a brand-new package!

Life's Little Lessons: What To Do If An Elephant Stands On Your Foot by Michelle Robinson

IF AN ELEPHANT STANDS ON YOUR FOOT,

KEEP CALM.

PANICKING "WILL ONLY STARTLE IT.

"YEEOOOWWW!"

NEVER MIND.

THESE THINGS HAPPEN.

Going on safari can be hazardous to your health. If it's not one thing, it's another.

All tricked out in her Indiana Jones gear, our little adventuress can't seem to stick to the warnings of her somewhat stilted, stiff-upper-lip guide.

IN THE EVENT OF STARTLING ELEPHANTS, YOU WILL PROBABLY FEEL LIKE RUNNING AWAY RATHER QUICKLY.

TRY NOT TO.

RUNNING AWAY MAY ATTRACT TIGERS.

And heaven knows, no one needs that. One rain forest faux pas leads to another, as, unable to keep silent in the presence of a tiger, our girl's sneeze wakes up a rowdy rhino, and when she breaks protocol and climbs a tree, (I told you so!) she naturally meets up with giant snakes, and unable to stay perfectly still, she flees the trees, only to fall into a jungle pool where--oh, yes, as warned, there are crocodiles.

YOU NINNY!

There's no use calling for Crocodile Dundee; he's busy elsewhere, but perhaps a stray troop of manic monkeys are waiting in the wings for a dramatic rescue.

It's out of the frying pan and into the fire for our clueless little safari-goer in Michelle Robinson's new What To Do If An Elephant Stands On Your Foot (Dial Books, 2012). Peter R. Reynolds' peerless comic illustrations of one scary disaster after another are the perfect foil to Robinson's wry, veddy veddy British narration to this comic walk on the wild side, one tall tale of a trip readers will want to take again and again.

Morphin' Message: Pass It On! by Marilyn Sadler

Remember the old party game called "Gossip?"

Players sit in a circle, while the game leader quietly whispers a sentence in the first player's ear. Each player passes the message on to the next softly in his or her ear, making sure no one else overhears. The final player has to tell the group what the "message" is. Inevitably, the sentence has changed incrementally but radically by the time it makes the full circle, usually with comic results.

Marilyn Sadler makes good use of this device in her newest picture book, Pass It On (Blue Apple, 2012).

ONE DAY BEE WENT TO VISIT HIS FRIEND COW.

FINALLY BEE FOUND COW IN THE BACK FIELD. COW WAS STUCK IN THE FENCE!

"I'LL GET HELP!" BEE OFFERED.

Bee soon meets Frog and delivers his message, with his own advice to "Pass it on!" Frog hops off to recruit more friends, and when he meets up with Pig, he delivers the news:

"COW PUT A DUCK IN THE TENT! PASS IT ON."

Of course, Pig further mangles the message as he passes it to Goose, who scrambles the sense of it as she passes it on to Dog, who rushes off to tell Kitten, who mixes it up as she reports to Mouse, who then reports the big news to Hen as he thinks he heard it.

"COW HAS MILK AND HONEY!"

Now that is news worth acting on, and when Hen proclaims her version of the story, everyone goes into instant find-Cow mode, and Cow gets her rescue squad at long last.

All's well that ends well for this mixed-up mob, with plenty of milk provided by Cow and ample honey brought by Bee for a real "rescue party" back in the barn. Veteran writer Marilyn Sadler makes good use of this device, ably aided by Michael Slack's bright, stylized illustrations. It's a comic cow caper, with the long-term lesson that fact checkers have their place in this world!