She's Got It! When My Cousins Come to Town by Angela Shante'

EVERY SUMMER MY COUSINS COME TO VISIT ME IN THE CITY. THEY ARRIVE AFTER SCHOOL IS OUT AND LEAVE AFTER MY BIRTHDAY.

THIS SUMMER I WANT SOMETHING WORTH MORE THAN ALL THE GIFTS IN THE GIFT WORLD.

-

I WANT A NICKNAME.

All of the cousins have great nicknames. The oldest cousin is called "Spice" because of her more than generous use of curry powder. Germaine is called "Stone" because he's so strong. The twins get applause for singing in the subway, so they are "Star" and "DJ-E." Sharise is called "Swift" because she can outrun everyone. Natasha is so funny that she's nicknamed "Giggles," and when the cousins quarrel, Wayne knows how to keep the peace, so he's called "The Ambassdor."

As the summer goes by with tons of fun with the cousins, she tries to star in everything they do. But it's hard to stand out in this crowd. She worries that they'll all go home without giving her a special nickname, and when her birthday rolls around, the cousins outdo themselves. Spice cooks up a great meal for the guests and Stone puts up the best decorations ever. Star and DJ-E plan the music, and Giggles cracks everyone up with her jokes. But the birthday girl is sad.

ONCE THE PARTY IS OVER AND MY COUSINS GO HOME, I WILL HAVE TO WAIT ANOTHER YEAR FOR A NICKNAME.

But just before the guests arrive, the cousins discover that her birthday present is missing. The Ambassador leads a search.

Finally the gift package is found in the kitchen, wedged between the refrigerator and the side of the counter. The space is so small that no one can pull it out!

"WE NEED SOMETHING SMALL!" SAYS THE AMBASSADOR.

"LIKE A SMURF!" GIGGLES JOKES.

And it's the birthday girl who finally squeezes far enough to retrieve the gift, and the cousins christen her with her new nickname:

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO SMURF!

"It's the best birthday gift ever in Angela Shante's just published When My Cousins Come to Town (West Margin Press, 2021). There's something special about cousins, and these cousins are a hard act to follow, but Keisha Morris's charming illustrations do justice to the specialness of each of the cousins and to their biggest admirer, Smurf!

For more cousin fun, share this one with the Caldecott Honor-winning The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant and Steve Gammell.

What to Wear! Annie and Snowball and the Dress-Up Birthday by Cynthia Rylant

It was almost Annie's birthday. This year she had her new bunny, Snowball.

Annie wanted to invite her family--her dad and Snowball, and her cousin Henry, and his parents--and of course Henry's big dog Mudge. She phoned Henry and told him that her party was on Tuesday.

"Dad is going to make all my favorite foods--finger sandwiches and lemon tarts and strawberries dipped in chocolate!

And it's going to be a dress-up birthday!"

Henry couldn't wait to dress up Mudge!

On Tuesday Annie's house was all dressed up, too, with daisies and yellow balloons and fancy finger foods arranged on pretty plates. Annie was wearing a frilly pink satin dress with matching tights and bows in her hair. Snowball even had a little bow on her fluffy tail.

Annie's dad was in a tuxedo!

At last it was time for her guests to arrive.

The doorbell rang.

And there stood a pirate, a gypsy, a mummy, and a moose!

"Dress-up" has more than one meaning, as Annie finds out when Henry, his parents, and his big dog Mudge arrive, all dressed up in costumes for her party, in Annie and Snowball and the Dress-up Birthday (Level 1) (Simon Spotlight). In this early reader story in her series about Annie and Henry, notable author Cynthia Rylant and artist Sucie Stevenson combine their skills to tell a funny story of mixed-up meanings that ends with a good laugh and a perfect birthday party and a happy fortune for the birthday girl told by the Gypsy, a.k.a. Henry's mom. Learning to read is fun when you do it with friends like Henry and Annie. Newbery author Rylant is the author of several outstanding early reader series besides the Annie and Snowball series--the Henry and Mudge, Poppleton, and Mr. Putter and Tabby.

Summering: Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things by Jacqueline Firkins

It's an understatement to say that this has been the winter of Edie's discontent. Her mom has died and Edie and her best friend Shondra have had a horrible quarrel. And now Edie's been sent off to her wealthy suburbanite aunt and uncle in Mansfield, Massachusetts, to finish high school there and summer over with them until she can find a way to fund college. Edie hates being cast as the ragged orphan, and the rescue is a dismal prospect.

And her fears of being received as the poor relation are not unjustified.

At first the car ride was just annoying. Edie slouched in the back seat of the SUV, clutching her mom's sticker covered guitar case. Her Aunt Norah blithely rattled on from the passenger seat. "Poor Edith" must realize that she lucky to have left foster care for a "real home," she says.

"Her wardrobe was atrocious. Her posture was appalling. She had no understanding of proper diet or personal care.

And that hair!" Norah exclaimed. "Good lord, what will the neighbors say!"

The only thing Edie has to look forward to is seeing Sebastian, the boy-next-door with whom on one summer visit she had blissfully shared tree-climbing, Pixie sticks, and her first kiss at age ten. But while Sebastian is just as kind and welcoming as always, most of his time is taken up by a demanding and gorgeous girlfriend, Claire. And then her cousins, Maria and Julia, take Edie on as a potential Aschenputtel, woefully in need of a magical makeover.

"We get to go shopping!" Maria said. "Dad gave us his credit card."

"You're totally Cinderella," Julia gushed. "Which means we have to find you a Prince Charming."

"You, Miss Edie Price, are about to be introduced to Mansfield society," said Maria.

And before she's even learned to walk in high heels, Prom is approaching. It seems that in Mansfield society, she can't opt not to go. And when the dazzlingly handsome and charming Henry finds time away from his other admirers to pay attention to Edie, she impulsively asks him to Prom. She finds herself impossibly falling for the magnetically attractive Henry and for the romance of it all. But something about it just doesn't satisfy her expectations. There's still that connection to Sebastian, and when he and Claire part, Edie realises that the Cinderella role with Henry doesn't quite fit into her happy ever after....

In her just published Hearts, Strings, and Other Breakable Things (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), Jacqueline Firkins clearly molds her modern novel in the format of Jane Austen's classic social romance, Mansfield Park, even using some of the same character names--Julia, Maria, Claire, Tom, and Henry-- and although Fanny becomes Edie and Edmund becomes Sebastian, Firkins keeps basic personalities easily recognizable and even leaves behind "bread crumbs" of plot links--names, games, jewelry, and places embedded for those Austen afficionados to discover.

Love and marriage and getting on in the world have changed since the early 1800s, but the process remains quite recognizable in this engaging social coming-of-age story of a girl finding her way through the twists of happily-ever-after, leaving plenty of the twists of true love left yet entangled, perhaps awaiting a sequel.

Cousin Crisis! Don't Feed the Geckos! (The Carver Chronicles) by Karen English

It's after school, and Carlos sits down at the kitchen table to eat his Toaster Tart and eavesdrop on his mother and Tia Lupe's telephone conversation.

Carlos overhears that his cousin Bernardo is coming to stay with them all the way from Texas because Bernardo's mom--Tia Emilia--"needs a fresh start." She's moving to their town and sending Bernardo ahead.

A cousin his age moving in "for a while"--that could be good or bad, Carlos muses. He remembers Bernardo vaguely as a big, bossy kid celebrating his sixth birthday and demanding two pieces of birthday cake at the same time. Maybe having Bernardo around, sort of like a bodyguard, would be a good thing, Carlos thinks. Maybe Mami will let him go to the park or the store anytime he wants if Bernardo is with him. Then Mami interrupts these promising thoughts to tick off jobs for him to do. She tells him firmly to make room in his closet and dresser for Bernardo's stuff.

"I want you to put fresh linens on the top bunk."

"But that's my bunk, Mami," Carlos complains. His little sister Issy is smiling. Sometimes she likes to see Carlos flustered.

"He's had a hard year," Mami says. "I'm thinking Bernardo will probably prefer the top bunk--so let him have it.

Carlos frowns. No way I'm going to let that guy touch my geckos. Or my ant farm, he thinks.

And Carlos' memory is right on target. Bernardo is still big and bossy. He punches Carlos on the arm--hard! He demands to feed the geckos; he leaves his clothes all over the floor; eats all the Toaster Tarts even though Mami only allow one a day for after-school snacks, and then sneaks the empty box back in the cupboard to cover his crime. He stays up playing video games after bedtime and keeps Carlos awake. He fakes his showers most of the time, and when he brushes his teeth, he leaves the spit-out toothpaste all over the sink. He even snores.

It's even worse at school. Mrs. Shelby-Ortiz moves Carlos' best friend Richard and gives Bernardo his seat so Carlos can "help" him learn the class routine, but Bernardo only pretends to do his work. At recess, he announces to all the kids that he's good at all sports. Unfortunately he is. He gets chosen first for teams, and Carlos is picked last, not even on the same team with his friends Gavin and Richard. And after school, Mami takes him to soccer practice with Carlos, and Bernardo takes over the scoring right away and becomes the star of the team, making Carlos look even worse than he is.

Then Carlos sees Bernardo steal three pieces from the 1000-piece puzzle the class is doing, just so it can never be finished. Carlos doesn't want to be a tattletale, a curmudgeonly cousin, but he hates that Bernardo keeps getting away with everything. Carlos wonders just how much longer "for a while" is going to be!

And then one night, Bernardo claims he's done a perfect job of feeding crickets to Carlos' geckos, but in the middle of the night Carlos comes wide awake to the chirp-chirp of loose crickets from the bathroom. That's it! Carlos flips on the bedroom light. It's time for a midnight cousin showdown!

Mami comes in and Carlos unloads all his complaints, even telling about the theft of the puzzle pieces. At first Bernardo denies it all.

"Bernardo--I found the pieces in your backpack. Why?, Bernardo? Why?"

"I ... don't know." Bernardo says. "How come you just fixed it so someone would find them on the floor?"

"Good question." Carlos says.

Family loyalties are complicated, as the award-winning Karen English shows in the latest in her series, Don't Feed the Geckos!: The Carver Chronicles, Book Three (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015). And when his sister Issy admits being the cause of the great cricket escape, Carlos quickly apologizes to Bernardo, and when he learns that Bernardo's father was killed in the military, he begins to understand his cousin's behavior a little better. As in her earlier books in series, Dog Days: The Carver Chronicles, Book One and Skateboard Party: The Carver Chronicles, Book Two (see reviews here) author English has great insight into early elementary students as they begin to learn how to be members of a family and school community, one with careful respect for the changing child. For young readers Karen English's easy narration and Laura Freeman's realistic but humorous drawings ease the transition from picture book to novel format with great insight and sensitivity.

What's Buzzin', Cousin? Dozens of Cousins by Shulla Crum

As kinfolks gather once again,
we spill out of cars, snatch up greetings, stuff ourselves

on hellos and howdys

our arms around their squishy middles.

Nothing can kick up  a commotion quite like  a crowd of rowdy, reunited cousins!

Like parts of a jigsaw puzzle suddenly coming together for down-home hijinxs,  these cousins rush to each other and are off on adventures while the grown-ups catch up on the family news. "Hungry for hugs," the kids are waylaid by tickling, teasing uncles, and engulfed by adoring aunts who threaten to leave lipstick prints all over their freckled faces.

The cousins race barefoot through the homeplace, a old house with its welcoming wide porch, many turrets and gables, and weirdly shaped windows, their bare feet slapping across the cool kitchen floor.  It's through the back screen door and through the woods to the creek.

Rushing down to the secret grottoes of the creek,
... catching frogs and crawdads
on double-dog dares crossing balancing logs.

They get the neighbors into a grumpy swivet with their trespassing, and mockingly moon their older cousins, who dunk the little whippersnappers under the pump and make them marginally presentable for the big feast. It's worth the wetting, though, when they approach hungrily, "gazing at the hallowed tabletop" spread with everyone's specialties.

And when the ice-cold watermelon is cut and slices passed around, it doesn't take long before there's a seed-spitting contest in full swing. As dusk draws close, the cousins creep around, stealthily spying on the grownups and dodging their baths.

We grab at fireflies,
We fling ourselves, whirling
beyond the crackling firelight
that spirals up to the stars.

Soon, sleepily stuffed full of the grown folks' laughter and oft-told stories, the cousins are carried off dozing, piled like puppies together on their pallets on the floor inside, to dream through the night of family reunions to come.

Shulla Crum's Dozens of Cousins (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2013) captures the rapture of reunited relatives who romp through the day, free to be a bit wild in the joy of being together and the exuberance of childhood. Add to Crum's poetic prose the art of noted illustrator David Catrow's exaggerated comic figures who run rampant across the pages, left to right, until twilight brings them to rest by the bonfire to listen to the tales of their parents' times at the reunion. A nostalgic and universal story of childhood remembered, this story will make little ones long for such cousins and older folks misty at the recall of carefree times themselves.

Read this one along with Cynthia Rylant's and Stephen Gammell's like-themed Caldecott Award book, The Relatives Came for more family-time fun.

House Guest: Annie and Snowball and the Cozy Nest by Cynthia Rylant

Happy day! It was May and Annie was happy. So many good things were happening.

Her cousin, Henry, was having a birthday.

The tulips she planted were blooming. And on her porch someone was making a nest.

Cynthia Rylant, that multiple-award winning author who has given us Newbery novels, Caldecott Medal books, and the delightful and evergreen beginning reader series Henry and Mudge and Mr. Putter and Tabby begins her Annie and Snowball and the Cozy Nest (Annie and Snowball Ready-to-Read) (Aladdin, 2010) with a simple but moving tribute to the joys of early summer in the spinoff Annie and Snowball series. Rylant offers up a quiet story of Henry's cousin Annie and her pet rabbit Snowball as the kids spend some tranquil moments on the porch swing watching for weeks while a nest fills up with five mystery eggs and waiting hopefully until they finally catch a glimpse of the mother robin responsible for the summer building project.

Soft, appealing illustrations contributed by notable veteran artist Sucie Stevenson and simple text make this series a delightful alternative to the Fancy Nancy I-Can-Read beginning reader series. For example, in her latest in this series, Rylant's Annie and Snowball and the Pink Surprise (Annie and Snowball Ready-to-Read) (Aladdin, 2010), Annie enlists the help of cousin Henry and his enormous St. Bernard dog in trying to entice more hummingbirds to her carefully tended garden. As always, Henry is a bit reluctant to get involved in these determinedly pink-tinged activities, but working together the cousins come up with a lot of fun for both of them along the way.

Keeping Henry on the cover and as a strong presence in the text gives this series a bit of appeal to those boy fans of the Henry series, while the big pink bow on the cover puts this newer series firmly in the pinkanista party for primary students in the beginning reader crowd. Summertime reading for young emergent readers is a good thing, and the veteran team of Rylant and Stevenson have plenty of offer.