Recalibrating! Best Friends In The Universe by Stephanie Watson

Louie and Hector have a lot in common. They are such good friends they just have to write a book about their friendship.

"Wanna know why we're best friends? "says Louie.

"We both love pythons!" says Hector.

"Our moms got us both fish. We both named our fish Python, says Louie.

They both love knock-knock jokes and dancing to loud music. They both love inventing new foods.

"Here's a peanut butter toast milkshake!" says Louie.

They are such good friends that they decide they need to change the title of their book....

BEST FRIENDS IN THE UNIVERSE FOREVER AND EVER!

"We keep each other's secrets," brags Louie.

"Like how one time Louie wet his pants after too much peanut butter toast milkshake!" says Hector.

"You just told everyone my secret!" says Louie. Ooopsie!

SO... Louie smirks, as he raises his voice. "Hector likes Linda Berger!"

Maybe it's time to retitle their book again!

WORST FRIENDS IN THE UNIVERSE?

Is this the end of the friendship of Louie and Hector? Or will they find that their goldfish are just not up to being best friends? After all, fish don't dance and their sense of humor is totally lacking!

After all, maybe their kind of loose-lipped friendship is worth a do-over, in Stephanie Watson's humorous story of best friends forever in spite of themselves, Best Friends in the Universe (Scholastic Books). With the hilarious and ebullient faux naif crayon drawings of noted picture book artist Le Uyen Pham, this is one funny and fun friendship that kids will love and perhaps from which they may learn a bit about being good friends.

Back to the Books: There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books by Lucille Colandro

It's about that time when school-aged kids get that empty feeling inside. School is going to start soon, and there are sure to be stacks of thick, new textbooks there, all filled with stuff they don't know. It seems overwhelming.

But there is someone who knows how to get on top of everything to do with the beginning of school.

THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED SOME BOOKS.

I DON'T KNOW WHY SHE SWALLOWED THOSE BOOKS.

But books aren't all! There's that little business of school supplies. To write in all those books, the Old Lady swallows a pen, when she ingests a ruler and a folder to hold it in.

THERE WAS AN OLD LADY WHO SWALLOWED SOME CHALK.
SHE DIDN'T BALK.

There's a lot to take in about this back to school business, but this Old Lady has had a lot of practice.

THAT OLD LADY DIDN'T FUSS
WHEN AROUND THE CORNER CAME A SCHOOL BUS.

But true to form, all this ingestion never brings indigestion, in Lucille Colandro's There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books! (Scholastic Books). Lucille Colandro and her trusty illustrator partner Jared Lee come up with a handy list of school supplies tossed in the mix in this parody of the famous folk song "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly." Colandro's oh-so-silly spoof of school-supply shopping is bound to make kids snicker as they wait nervously for the day their school bus comes for them.

Literary Logorrhea! Be Quiet! by Ryan T. Higgins

Rupert the mouse is an aspiring author who is going for a trendy genre.

"Finally! I get my very own book to star in.

I am going to make a wordless book. They are more artistic.

This book will have no words at all.

STARTING NOW!"

It's not that Rupert and his rodent cohorts, Nibs and Thistle, don't have any literary experience, They have been minor characters, walk-ons, a mousy Greek chorus, so to speak, with limited dialog in Ryan T. Higgins earlier hits, Mother Bruce and Hotel Bruce (Mother Bruce) (see reviews here). But now Rupert is ready to author his own avant garde creation, but his buddies, Nibs and Thistle, didn't seem to get the memo.

"Wowee! said Thistle. "A wordless book! Can I help? Oops! I'm talking.... I'm talking about talking!"

"Shhhh! said Nibs. "The book has already started! You are messing it up!"

"Quiet!" shouted Rupert "This book must be visually stimulating!"

"What does "vishery strigulating" mean?" asked Nibs.

The life of an author is not an easy one, in Ryan T. Higgins' latest, BE QUIET! (Disney Hyperion, 2017). Starrom om a wordless book just can't stop Nibs and Thistle from continuously talking about not talking. Their colloquy strays into the metaphyscial meaning of silence, conjures up a superhero, Captain Quiet, Vocabulary Vigilante, and launches into an extensive discussion of the old question of whether a falling tree makes a noise if no one is there to hear it. Nibs obligingly chops down a tree to check. It falls on Rupert.

"Did the tree make a sound?" Nibs asked.

"Hard to tell with Rupert shouting," said Thistle.

Author-illustrator Higgins' alter-ego, Rupert the mouse, fails in his first literary effort, but Higgins' third book succeeds as a comedic riot, with ironic humor, clueless but endlessly loquacious characters, slapstick action, gleeful sight gags and even a cameo appearance by grumpy bear Bruce and one of his adopted goslings to tie Higgins' series together. Sophisticated yet silly, this one hits a new high in absurdity when Rupert finds himself fiercely yelling...

"No onomatopoeia!"

Says Publishers Weekly, "Higgins breathes emotional life into his characters, visually and verbally, and his smart, laugh-out-loud comedy is expertly paced. Of course the project marches right off the cliff, but watching it go is entertainment gold."

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time?: Help! We Need A Title! by Herve' Tullett

HEY!  SOMEONE IS WATCHING US!

COME HERE.

LOOK AT THIS. THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE AND THEY HAVE OPENED OUR BOOK!

It's not really even a book. To be generous, we might call it a collection of preliminary sketches, a hastily crayoned pink pig, a scraggly sorceress-princess, a one-eyed giant green worm bordering on the bizarre, and a stick-man which looks as if it was drawn by a four-year-old on a bad day, all surrounded by random squiggle-doodles in different colors!

But the princess and pig playing together inside are proprietary about their pages and don't quite know what to make of  the peeping Tom people peering at them. But these would-be "readers" seem innocuous enough, if a bit intrusive.

"WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

The interlopers seem sweet, but they have caught Pig and Princess quite by surprise.

"I THINK THEY WOULD LIKE A STORY."

But...

"WE'RE NOT QUITE READY YET!"

Giant Green Worm suggests adding a backdrop to the page, and Stick-man, who has wandered into the scene from page right, conjures up a bland tropical beach scene that looks like a cheap 1920s postcard. It doesn't help much. How about a monster? A red crayoned monster with fangs appears. He's not very scary. And he has no idea what he's supposed to do. Princess laments:

"WE'RE BORING, AREN'T WE?"

What they need, the characters decide, is someone to organize these pages--AN AUTHOR! And they actually know one!

In the follow-up to his best-selling, groundbreaking hit, Press Here,  Herve' Tullett's newest, Help! We Need a Title! (Candlewick Press, 2014) takes the metafiction picture book to a whole new level. Author-illustrator Tullett is summoned from behind his studio door, appearing in comic snapshots pasted on a hastily-drawn body, protesting that he's barely started work on this book. After listening impatiently to the protests, he throws a crumb to the visiting "readers," a hackneyed paste-up in which a kind fairy vanquishes a evil monster. Even his characters pronounce it, at best, only so-so. Tullet-head loses his patience.

LOOK! IF YOU'RE NOT HAPPY, GO LOOK FOR A STORY SOMEWHERE ELSE. THERE ARE LOTS OF BOOKS...!

Of course, Tullett's "readers" aren't going anywhere in this joyous fourth-wall-fracturing spoof of the interaction between books, authors, characters, and their "dear readers." Tullett again turns the whole author-reader relationship inside out and upside down as he invites kids to interact with his story, encouraging them to "Press This Button" and turn off the lights on the whole fiasco. In the dark, the characters, only their eyes visible, beg the readers to turn the lights back on, but, that done, find themselves still without a premise or plot to go on. But as they grow anxious, Stick-man notices a way out of this altogether awkward situation--there are only a few pages left! With a little luck, they can fill them out with a l-o-o-n-g Goodbye! CIAO!

Herve' Tullett and a growing group of other author-illustrators have taken on the challenge of interactive computer games for kids and shown that there is plenty of life left in the old picture book format yet. He captures the kidlike joy of filling the page with untidy, unconventional open-ended possibilities with eye-and mind-opening potential. For some other promising ventures into to the meta-book for preschool and primary students, begin with Mo Willems' We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) and Barney Saltzberg's Beautiful Oops!

From there, well..."There are lots of books...."