No Map Needed! Hidden Treasure by Ellie MacKay

I'M FEELING LUCKY. HOW ABOUT YOU?

DO YOU WANT TO LOOK FOR TREASURE, TOO?

Her shorts over her bathing suit, a young girl sets forth with Dad and her shaggy dog for the beach. As they make their way down toward the beach, a row of seagulls, like a group of soldiers at attention, review their passing from a rooftop.

EACH TIME I COME, THERE'S SOMETHING NEW.

Carefully the girl chooses her new treasures from the flotsam and jetsam along the waterline and from under the pier. She leaves some behind, knowing that they will be easy to re-find.

THE WATER'S COLD, BUT HERE I GO.

I SPOT A GLIMMER DOWN BELOW.

Leaving a moth's cocoon to hatch later, she lays out her ocean finds on the sands and tries to decide what to keep for a while--a softly gray gull feather, a sea-polished rock, a perfect pink shell with the sound of the sea. Which ones will it be?

Every find has its own tale to tell, and some belong in their place by the sea.

I'LL ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THEY WILL BE.

Hidden treasures are revealed in Ellie Mackay's Hidden Treasure (Running Press Kids, 2021) in her elegantly misty and lovely paintings and simple but telling poetry of a time to be treasured in memory.

Not all things can go home from a beach walk, but beautiful memories can remain as bright and shiny as a freshly washed-up shell, and the real treasure here is the experience itself.

Says the New York Times reviewer, "The medium perfectly fits the message in this one-of-a-kind book about a girl’s search for wave-washed treasures."

Birds of a Feather! I Am A Bird by Hope Lin

 

EVERY MORNING, I FLY LIKE A BIRD ON DADDY'S BIKE. I SING LIKE A BIRD ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL.

CA-CAW!

The passing birds seem to sing with her, and all the people along the way wave and smile at her happy face and cheery birdsong.

But one morning the girl notices a strange figure hustling down the street, clutching a heavy carryall. Her long skirt and coat and big hat cover everything about her--except her frowning face. There are no smiles or waves from her. Somehow the scowl on her face makes her whole figure seem sinister. The girl tries to hide behind her father and tells him that she doesn't like that lady.

"SHE'S JUST A LADY TAKING A WALK." HE ANSWERS.

But one morning when they leave home late, she spots the woman in the park. She's feeding and singing to the birds!

CHEE-CHEE-CHEE!

And the girl smiles and waves to her and sings back.

CA-CAW! CA-CAW!

And her smile is returned, in Hope Lin's just-published I Am a Bird (Candlewick Press, 2021). A human connection is made between two people who look different but find they are kindred spirits after all. Finding that fellow feeling with outwardly different sorts of people is one of the great lessons of childhood learning, and author Lin's spare text works hand-in-hand with Hyewon Yum's gentle, understated illustrations which reveal feelings in subtle lines and soft pencil and gouache artwork.

Making a World: What We'll Build--Plans for Our Together Future by Oliver Jeffers

WHAT SHALL WE BUILD, YOU AND I?

I'LL BUILD YOUR WORLD AND YOU'LL BUILD MINE.

WE'LL BUILD A WATCH TO KEEP THE TIME.

A father wants a place to keep his little daughter safe. He has his red toolbox--with hammers, saws, pliers, nails and screws, and all the rest--and with the urge to protect, he builds first a stout red door and a doorstep. But he knows she needs more--more rooms, strong brick walls, a roof to shelter her.

But that is not enough to keep them safe, so he digs an underground shelter... just in case. Or perhaps a castle, where they can cower in the keep while frightful figures (a Viking, a witch and a dentist) scale the crenellated walls? Or perhaps they are not in danger, so he'll build a welcoming table inside for all that come?

Perhaps he can devise an ocean liner that won't sink in a storm? Or perhaps he can build a faraway getaway.... a tiny house by a pond?

A PLACE TO STAY WHEN ALL IS LOST,

TO KEEP THE THINGS WE LOVE THE MOST.

But by this time both are weary and perhaps too tired to do more than build a fire to get them through the night.

THEN WE'LL SAY GOOD NIGHT,

AS ALL'S ALL RIGHT.

In his latest picture book, What We'll Build: Plans For Our Together Future (Philomel Books, 2020), the best-selling and award-winning author-illustrator Oliver Jeffers has a book for parent and child to share quietly. Jeffers' rhyming text and witty illustrations, executed with his signature lovely lines and little red fox, and his wide palette of colors--from cerise to coral, lavender to lilac, magenta and mauve--will please preschool and primary students, but this book is really one written for sharing between parent and child who together are building their own world. As School Library Journal says, "An intensely personal statement of intergenerational fellowship."

Here To Stay: Friend or Fiction by Abby Cooper

We were stuck in a town that had a different mailman every three days.

Tiveda is a town of transients. Someone leaves or is enrolled in Jade's class almost every week. Since she moved there, she's had three best friends, and all three have left. They didn't even write.

And then her father falls ill and has to have chemotherapy that makes him sleep most of the time. Jade is stuck in Tiveda, and she longs for a friend.

Maybe there wasn't a perfect best friend there for me. Maybe I'd be better off if I created one... here to stay.

I opened my notebook.

Zoe and Jade and the Best Lunch Ever! I wrote at the top.

In her yellow notebook Jade creates Zoe, the perfect best friend, one who giggles with her at lunch and one who likes everything she likes. But then a strange boy in her class called Clue takes her notebook, but when he returns it, it looks the same... except that after she writes a chapter describing Zoe, something wonderful happens.

A moving van appears at the house across the street and and a girl her age comes out of the house and sticks some big red letters on the empty mailbox.

Z O E

And when Zoe turns up as the new student in Jade's class, she and Zoe became friends immediately. Jade can't believe how perfect Zoe is. She likes everything Jade likes and wants to do all of her favorite things. When Jade invites her to dinner, Zoe even likes carrots just like her. Except that...she calls them "orange sticks." Suddenly, Jade realizes that she's never mentioned carrots by name in her stories. At that moment Jade sees that somehow her new neighbor has a life only in what she writes about her.

At first Jade is excited to write about fun things for her and Zoe to do together. They walk to school together, eat lunch and spend recess together, walk home together, and go to the mall and eat ice cream together. Zoe has dinner with Jade's family every night. Zoe is the best best friend ever.

But slowly, drawn by the fun Jade and her friend are having, the other girls in the class, the "sparkle girls" who had ignored Jade, become friendly with Zoe. Jade tries to write them out of Zoe's life, but she's not quite successful. And when her family goes away for a weekend at the Grand Canyon to celebrate the end of her dad's chemo, Jade is afraid of losing control of her best friend.

Then she thinks about something Zoe said.

"I have no idea what I am doing in this weird world of yours."

Jade suddenly realizes it's not good to create a character totally under her own control, and she also sees what she has been missing with her absorption with Zoe, in Abby Cooper's, Friend or Fiction (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2019).  In a strangely sweet and moving story of a "Franken-Friend" who is and is not real, author Cooper has a real tour de force of a middle-reader novel that explores fear and loneliness, family love and friendship, and the magic of friendship in an inspired blend of realistic and fantasy fiction.  Says Booklist, "An endearing story, with a pitch-perfect "tween" voice and a touch of magic about what makes a friend."

Feathered Friend! Hello, Crow! by Candace Savage

Franny sat on her favorite rock and started to eat her lunch.

Crumbs went flying, but... she was too busy watching the big black bird coming toward her. He looked at the crumbs...

Closer he hopped. "Hello, Crow," she whispered. "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance."

The crow fixed one round eye as Franny and gave her a little nod.

Back home Franny told her dad about her friend, the big beautiful bird who shared her lunch,

Dad called her story "featherbrained!"

"You know as well as I do that you can't have a crow for friend."

But the next day Franny makes a lunch with an extra sandwich for the crow. And just as she is about to give up, he appears and bows to her.

From then on, every day was full of surprises.

Her friend the crow brings her gifts every day--an interesting rock, a red bead, a green pebble, and a tiny silver heart--leaving them on Franny's favorite rock. But when she tells her dad, he scoffs at the idea that she can be friends with a a crow.

"I don't know where you got all this trash," he says, "but this silliness must stop."

But when Franny takes Dad to the rock, the crow comes and perches on her head, giving her dad a beady eye, and happily in Candace Savage's Hello, Crow (Greystone Kids, 2019), Dad apologizes and admits that he has to appreciate his smart little featherhead and her friend the crow. Describing the sort of behavior and intelligence that animal behaviorists have observed in crows, Candace Savage celebrates an intriguing cross-species friendship, illustrated appealingly in Chelsea O'Byrne' artwork.

Says Kirkus, "A gift for the nature shelf."

When Daddy Comes Home! My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero

My papi has a motorcycle.

When I hear his gray truck pull into our driveway, I run outside with both of our helmets.

Papi is careful with my ponytail as he pulls my helmet tight.

Daisy feels so special, her arms wrapped around her father's chest, toodling around town, startling the cats and making dogs bark. They zoom past her grandmother's church and the market, where she exchanges nods with the librarian, and she waves at her grandparents in their front yard. Her friend calls out to her as she rolls past.

"DAISY!"

She looks sadly at the shop, now closed, where she and Papi used to stop for fruit-flavored ices, but as they head for home, there is a happy surprise!-- a fruit ices seller's cart with her favorite flavor, right in front of their house.

Time with Dad is special, in Isabel Quintero's portrait of family life in a friendly town, My Papi Has a Motorcycle (Penguin Books, 2019), so poignantly evoked in the warm and detailed illustrations of artist Zeke Pena. Sharing experiences is one of the many ways to be a good dad, and Pena's detailed and joyful illustrations make feelings between parent and child come alive. Says Booklist's starred review, "A heartwarming story that centers joy in the midst of looming change."

"Let Us Probe the Silent Spaces..." Lily's Mountain by Hannah Moderow

"Please tell me you're kidding," Sophie says. A mosquito lands on her forehead and she doesn't bother swatting it away. "It'll take days to get to the mountain."

"No way. It's only twenty miles," I say.

"Twenty miles of danger," Sophie says. "We promised Mom we'd stay in the campground."

"But I have Dad's expert map," I say, "so we can follow his route."

"...To where?" Sophie asks. "To find his grave?"

Their dad had fallen into a sudden crevice in a glacier near the peak of Mount Denali, but Lily persists in her belief that his mountaineering knowledge and skills would have enabled him to survive, sure that if she and her sister Sophie can get to the slope of Denali, they will be able to rescue their father. Convincing her reluctant mother that a camping trip with her sister is the best way to honor their father, Lily uses what she has learned from her dad to prepare for a climb to the glacier where he disappeared.

But nothing could prepare Lily for what she and Sophie encounter. They are attacked by mosquitoes and a grizzly, but the pepper spray her dad always carried saves them this time. But Lily stumbles in crossing an icy river, losing her backpack, her food, and all her gear. Wet and cold, she and Sophie fight off hypothermia as they ascend above the tree line, and even with a broken rib from a fall down a scree-covered slope, Lily resolves to continues toward the glacier, determined to try to find her father alive.

"Soph!" I say. No answer. She's either asleep or just plain ignoring me. She doesn't know I just ate all our food.

I was sure Dad would be here at the base of the glacier.

Now I'm going to have to walk up the glacier alone to find him.

But what Lily finds on Muldrow Glacier is the edge of a new crevasse, hundreds of feet deep. And just before it is a strip of red tape held up by bamboo stakes, with three words written in black marker.

DANGER! Crevasse ahead.

The hole is massive and bottomless, sheet ice on all sides. "Dad," I whisper, one last time. I don't expect an answer.

I know that the silence will be long.

There's a certain peace in knowing the truth for Lily, in Hannah Moderow's, Lily's Mountain (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Moderow's story-telling is fast-paced, with short chapters and plenty of outdoor action to keep middle school and young adult readers involved to the end, but in this riveting coming-of-age debut novel, the mountain is both metaphor and an all-too-real challenge to find a way to deal with the death of a beloved parent. Learning emotional courage as well as physical courage is an significant journey for Lilly, and although Sophie's journey is different, both sisters find a closeness and a solace in knowing that their father is with them yet.

"It's a miracle we made it," says Sophie.

"No, it's not," I say. "Dad taught us exactly what we needed to know."

Surprise! A Perfect Father's Day by Eve Bunting

"I'm taking you out for a perfect Father's Day," Susie said.

"First we'll go for lunch."

"May I drive?" Dad said.

Certainly," Susie said.

It's no surprise for Dad that Susie chooses her favorite fast food place for lunch.

"May I pay?" Dad says.

Susie announces that next she is taking Dad for a walk around the pond to feed the ducks. Dad buys the duck food, but he is mostly mobbed by pigeons.

Susie asks if Dad likes the swings, and he agrees, pushing her way up high. Susie asks if he likes monkey bars as she scampers to the top. Dad tries to follow her, with a little less of a scamper.

Susie asks Dad if he wants a Father's Day balloon.

Dad buys two, a red balloon for Susie and another one, blue, for Mom, and they head for home.

Dad closed the car window so the balloons wouldn't float away. And so Susie wouldn't float away either.

Susie leans toward Dad with a conspiratorial voice.

"Mom has a special cake for you," Susie whispered. "It's chocolate with chocolate frosting and yellow writing, and there are four yellow candles, one for each year you've been my dad. It's a surprise."

"I like surprises," says Dad

And back home it is just as promised. Mom is dressed up in Dad's favorite, her sparkly shirt, and her prettiest tablecloth is on the round table, with the aforementioned chocolate cake with four yellow candles all lit, one for each year he's been a dad. All that's left to do is to give Dad a well-deserved hug. And Susie does. (And so does Mom.)

Eve Bunting's A Perfect Father's Day (Houghton Mifflin Clarion) celebrates everything that makes a good father so special. The multiple award-winning Bunting knows well how to pace a story for the storytime set, with a touch of sly humor for the grownups in the mix, and Susan Meddaugh (of the famous Martha Speaks books and PBS series) provides the charming and evocative illustrations (watch Dad's eyes) that provide the perfect book for Father's Day.

If you dare give away the surprise, pair this one with Jean Reagan's How to Surprise a Dad (see review here).

A Daddy Day: Nelly Gnu and Daddy, Too! by Anna Dewdney

A GREAT BIG BOX, SOME TAPE AND STRING--

DADDY CAN MAKE ANYTHING!

Daddy Gnu is doing the day with his daughter, and does this dad know his Nelly!

As the story opens, there are two big and invitingly empty cardboard boxes in the living room, and Daddy Gnu knows just what to do with them to please his little girl.

Nelly Gnu is a crafty kid, and Daddy Gnu has just the project for the day--a playhouse just the right size for Nelly and her little Gnubie doll.

Nelly lays down the tape line and Daddy has her step aside while he wields the carpenter's saw.  Nelly watches until it is her turn to spread some glue. Finally the construction phase is finished, and Nelly inspects the interior.  It's perfect, but...

IT NEEDS SOME FLOWERS, JUST A FEW.

IT'S TIME TO SHOP WITH DADDY GNU.

It's off to the big box home improvement store, where Nelly rides high on Daddy's shoulders as they head toward the paints section.  There are so many colors that Nelly Gnu doesn't know what to do.  But then, she spots the perfect blue.

Daddy carries the bucket of paint and heads for the section with all the paint brushes. They are almost done, but then there's a near Gnu disaster! Nelly realizes that she's dropped her doll somewhere, and when she runs back toward the paint section to find it, she realizes that she can't see Daddy Gnu anywhere! There's a moment of panic!

Nelly Gnu rarely gets in a stew, but this is serious!

But Daddy Gnu is looking for her, too, and soon she feels his big, strong arms corral her in a big hug.

It's a great big whew! for Nelly Gnu, in Anna Dewdney's brand-new Nelly Gnu and Daddy Too (Viking Books, 2014), as the two Gnus head homeward, where Nelly can paint her playhouse with blue flowers and Daddy Gnu can paint the whole exterior in perfect brickwork. The paint dries while Daddy whips up dinner just in time for Mama Gnu to arrive with Baby Gnu to admire their work. The paint is dry by bedtime, and on this special night Daddy Gnu tucks Nelly and her doll into a special bed inside her new playhouse.

Nelly Gnu, introduced earlier in two of Dewdney's best-selling Llama Llama books, gets her first solo story in this latest entry. Dewdney's charming couplets tell the story with just the right rhyming words, and her strong saturated colors and soft, rounded characters make even hoofed animals endearing, with each story showing her preschoolers in a transitional moment. This new Gnu story is a great choice for Fathers Day reading.

Dewdney's two stories featuring Llama Llama's best friend Nelly are Llama Llama Time to Share and Llama Llama and the Bully Goat.

I Hate Badurday! Saturday Is Dadurday by Robin Pulver

AFTER THE TWINS WERE BORN, MIMI AND DAD HAD AN IDEA FOR THEIR FAVORITE DAY.

IT CAME AFTER FRIDAY, AND MIMI AND DAD CALLED IT DADURDAY.

With newborn twins, Mom is totally busy, and Mimi feels left out.

So Dad steps into the breech and offers to spend all day Saturday doing things they both like to do. After sharing their custom-designed silly-shaped pancakes, the two of them read the comics in the newspaper, and then each makes out lists of fun ways to spend the day. They compare notes, choosing matching things on both their lists.  They ride bikes and make silly-shaped picnic food. When it rains they stomp in puddles and get happily wet.

Dadurday is Mimi's BEST day of the week.

But one day Dad regretfully announces that he's going to be working on Saturdays for a while.

"BUT WHAT ABOUT DADURDAY!" MIMI ASKS.

"IT WILL STILL BE DADURDAY WHEN I GET HOME!" DAD OFFERS.

"IT WON'T BE THE SAME!" MIMI MOANS.

At first Mimi is stunned into a major meltdown. Daduday is SADurday.

Dadurday is MADurday!

Dadurday is BADurday!

Mom promises to play with Mimi if the twins ever go to sleep at the same time, but Mimi knows that's probably not going to happen any time soon.  Mimi wants Saturday to be HER day again.

"TODAY SHOULD BE MIMIDAY!  ME! ME! ME!"

But after a while, Mimi calms down and decides that she's going to make the best of it as Dad said.  Working on Saturday is definitely a lemon, but she sets to work making some Mimi lemonade!

And when a dispirited and tired Dad finally comes home, Mimi has artistic decorations and party hats to welcome him back and  silly-shaped pancakes on the griddle for his supper, in Robin Pulver's just-in-time-for-Fathers-Day book, Saturday Is Dadurday (Walker, 2013). Mimi is an ebullient girl with a mind of her own, but she soon gets it that it's not all about her just in time to make it a Dadurday after all. R. W. Alley's watercolor, pencil, and ink illustrations keep the angst light while capturing the real emotions that Dad and Mimi share. Sometimes things are beyond mom and dad's control, and Mimi rises to this occasion with admirable flair.

Art for Its Own Sake: The Vine Basket by Josanne Le Valley

"Hello," Mehrigul said, the English word she had practiced at school strange in her mouth.

The lady, Abdul explained, was from San Francisco in the United States. She owned a craft shop and was on a buying trip. She was interested in purchasing the vine basket and wondered if Mehrigul had more.

"It is your vine basket she wants," Abdul told her, "and as many more as you can make in any shape or form that pleases you. She thinks your work is very skillful. Mrs. Chazen will return in three weeks. Can you meet us here with whatever you have made?"

Mehrigul could not stop her lips from trembling. Could she do it again?

"What is your price, Mehrigul?"

Times are very hard on the little Uyghur farm in China. Mehrigul's  big brother Memet has left them for the city, and grief over the loss of their eldest child has left her mother sadly depressed and her father angry, taking refuge in alcohol and pulling Mehrigul out of school to work  beside him in the fields.  Her only joy is in the baskets she makes under the tutelage of her elderly grandfather who tells her she has magic and power in her fingers.

But the Chinese law under which the Uyghurs live says that girls over fourteen who are not in school shall be sent by the village cadre to the coastal cities to do factory work.  Mehrigul wants to go back to school, to learn and be with her friend Pati, but she knows that without her brother, her only hope is to make enough money from the American woman to provide for her family over the winter and allow her to return to school before she can be sent away.

Resentful of being out-earned by a mere girl child, her father is angry and spends most of  the 100 yuan her vine basket brings on gambling and drinking with the other men. Secretly, Mehrigul tells no one else, but spends every stolen moment she can, making more grapevine baskets concealing them in the hidden bamboo grove where she and Pati used to play and praying that the basket buyer will return on the promised day to buy them.

But when her father leaves for a convocation of Uyghur men in the mountains, Mehrigul finds her stash of completed baskets gone, and knows that her father has taken them to sell for himself.  She has only a week to try to make more.  Fearful of being sent to the factory if she fails, she is afraid that her hands have lost their magic, their will to create beautiful baskets.  With no one else on her side,  Mehrigul turns to her grandfather to help her do what she has to do.

Josanne LeValley's forthcoming first novel, The Vine Basket (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2013), brings a unique setting to this familiar theme of an ambitious girl's longing for education and self-expression in a repressive traditional family. Mehrigul is a strong character who struggles to be seen by her father as a person with abilities and worth, a fight in which many young women are still involved, and LeValley clearly sets forth this situation in her absorbing novel.

"A haunting tale of artistic vision triumphing over adversity,"  says Kirkus Reviews.

Do It with Daddy! Let's Have a Daddy Day by Karen Kingsbury

LET'S GO ON A DADDY DAY.
A TIME FOR ME AND YOU.
TODAY WHILE YOU'RE STILL LITTLE
THERE'RE SO MANY THINGS TO DO.

Karen Kingsbury's Let's Have a Daddy Day (ZonderKidz, 2010) riffs on the format of the folk lullaby, "Hush Little Baby," in which the singer invents the IF-THEN loop, coming up with an escalating series of possible alternative gifts, as in "If that mockingbird won't sing/Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring." Here the papa in question comes up with wonderful activities for a "Daddy Day," beginning with building a fort in their tree, but just in case, he's also got a Plan B.

BUT IF THE RAIN FROM YESTERDAY HAS MADE THE TREE TOO WET,
WE'LL BUILD THAT HOUSE ANOTHER DAY. IT CAN'T BE DONE JUST YET.

SO HOW ABOUT SOME TADPOLES? CANBY CREEK HAS LOTS OF THOSE.
THEN WE COULD HAVE A DADDY DAY WITH SQUISHY, SOGGY TOES.

But what if those tadpoles have already turned into frogs? Well, there's always the lake, a perfect place to play Army rangers. And if it's too hot to chase each other around down by the water, there's always the vacant lot for an pick-up game of baseball in which everyone gets to star. Of course, that vacant lot could now be the site of a new building, in which case.... well, you get the picture.

This daddy is a fount of ideas for what to do on Daddy Day, and in case ALL of those scenarios turn out to be a no go, Dad and the two kids can always get down on the floor for a bit of wrestling or playing horsey on Dad's strong back.

'CAUSE, HEY, WE'RE HERE. WE'RE SIDE BY SIDE!
LET'S DROP DOWN TO THE FLOOR.
LET'S WRESTLE 'TIL WE LAUGH AND CRY
AND SHOUT OUT LOUD "NO MORE!"

SO WHEN YOU'RE ALL GROWN UP AND YOU LOOK BACK UPON THIS DAY,
YOU'LL KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU 'CAUSE WE TOOK THE TIME TO PLAY.

Around Fathers Day it's always good to be reminded that those "Daddy Days" don't last forever. So for fathers looking for a way to observe their day, Karen Kingsbury's motto is carpe diem. Whatever else the kids have in store for you, seize the day and play with the kids for a while. They'll love it, no matter what, as long as you're in the game with them.

Man and the Moon: Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me by Eric Carle

Eric Carle's beautiful Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me is usually viewed as a book about the lunar cycle, with its fantasy story of the dutiful dad who tries to give his little girl the full moon, only to be forced to wait until it shrinks to a manageable-enough size to retrieve.

But this story can just as easily be viewed as a story with a sentiment which makes it well suited for Father's Day as well.

Before Monica went to bed, she looked out of her window and saw the moon. The moon looked so near.

"I wish I could play with the moon," said Monica.

"Papa," said Monica, "please get the moon for me."

Papa got a very long ladder. He carried the very long ladder toward a very high mountain. Then Papa put the very long ladder on top of the very high mountain. Up and up he climbed.

Perhaps all proud papas have moments of wishing to give their daughters the moon, but this devoted dad actually fetches a fantastic ladder and mounts it to the very surface of the full moon, where he sees that the moon is much too massive to manage by himself. But the wise old moon counsels patience, promising to shrink until he is the proper size for a plaything.

And Monica is pleased with her little crescent moon and plays with it happily as it wanes until it suddenly vanishes from sight altogether. Saddened, little Monica watches the place in the sky where the moon once soared.

Then one night, Monica saw a thin sliver of the moon reappear.

Each night the moon grew... and grew... and grew.

A loving father who longs to give his daughter her heart's desire not only does so, but also gives her a gift which continues to delight forever. It's a beautiful thought, beautifully executed. Carle practically invented the modern book-as-toy, and this one, with its four-page gatefold which shows the dad carrying a ladder so long it continues off the left and right-hand pages, shows his skill in creative book design with vertical flaps which open upward and downward to reveal Papa's climb up to the moon and back down to Earth with his prize.

Aglow with Carle's distinctive technique and palette, it's a lovely book with a lovely message for fathers.

Days with Dad: It's the Best Day Ever, Dad! by Brooke Shields

Is there a perfect dad anywhere in the world?

Well, there's definitely one--just in time for Father's Day--in Brooke Shields' newest picture book, It's the Best Day Ever, Dad! And, apparently, it's not because he's well rested!

Violet and I wake Daddy up by playing music and doing a dance. We call ourselves the Alarm Clock Girls.

Does Daddy roll over and give Mom a nudge to take over her dancing daughters? Nope, not this dutiful dad. He sneaks out of the bedroom to let his wife get her day of rest, stirs up shaped pancakes, and whisks the girls out to the dog park, where he teaches the older daughter to throw a Frisbee like a pro, with a warm "Good throw, Frankie!"

Then, after a stop for ice cream, Dad takes the girls home, puts little Violet down for her nap and joins Frankie on the couch for a little father-daughter B-ball-watching. "Defense, defense," Frankie cheers, while Dad slips into a much needed sofa nap. Then when Violet is up again, the three go outside and chalk up a home-designed hopscotch game on the driveway, one that even Darla the dog manages to enjoy.

Lots of hopping builds up a bit of an appetite, so it's up to the girls' bedroom where Frankie and Violet set up the Sister Cafe, where the girls dress up in heels and toe shoes, tutus and tiaras, while Dad cheerfully dons beads and a boa for a full-dress tea party.

Dad just has time to turn into the tickle monster as he oversees the cleanup of the tea parlor before heading down to the kitchen, where he and Mom are the lead cooks on a SUPER DUPER SPAGHETTI SURPRISE created by the FIVE FAMOUS CHEFS. Spreading a plaid blanket on the grass outside, the whole family has a moonlit picnic supper to wind up a wonderful day.

"Wow. We had the best day ever, Dad!"

Dad kisses me goodnight and says, "Tomorrow we'll go to the beach!"

Cori Doerrfeld's jaunty daddy and his delighted daughters bounce through her illustrations of their perfect day in Shields' tribute to this paragon of papas. It's the Best Day Ever, Dad! is fun for daughters who dote on their dads, and, we hope, an inspiration to fathers everywhere.