Frills and Flowers! Annie and Snowball and the Magical House by Cynthia Rylant

At school Annie made a new friend.

One day Sarah invited Annie over to play.

And Annie can bring her bunny Snowball! Dad drives her over to Sarah's house. Annie is immediately blown away!

Sarah's house looked like a gingerbread house!

Sarah's house is a white-painted Victorian, with fancy gingerbread trim around the roof and along the porch, which is surrounded by flowers of all colors. There's a weather vane topped by an ornate whale. There's even a flower box at the upstairs window and a pink, flowering tree in the yard.

Sarah's mother greets them at the door and invites Annie and her dad inside to an equally frilly room, with flowery wallpaper, and with heart-shaped wreaths and bows, doilies, fringe, and doodads everywhere. There are even fresh frosted cookies with sprinkles for Annie's dad to take home!

Frilly things were Annie's favorite things!

Outside in the equally flowery backyard, with climbing ivy, roses, smiling angle statues, and even a spouting Cupid fountain, Sarah and Annie choose a huge blooming hosta as a perfect place to make a fairy house under its broad leaves and with a fairy table and plenty of rose petals. Snowball the bunny is happy to nibble the lavender. By the time the fairy tea is served, the girls' frilly dresses are a bit dirty and the two are very happy with their completed fairy house.

Back home with Dad, Annie has happy memories of her play date.

"It was magical," says Annie.

Annie the girly girl is in her glory in Cynthia Rylant's Annie and Snowball and the Magical House (7) (Aladdin Books/Simon and Schuster), in contrast to her usually more boisterous play times with her cousin Henry and his big dog Mudge.

"Dainty" is the word of the day for this addition to notable Newbery and Caldecott author Cynthia Rylant's beginning readers' books. Level 2 books in the Ready-to-Read series offer "more complex stories, varied sentences structures, paragraphing, and chapters" tailored to primary grade readers." Rylant's best selling series about Annie and Snowball, Henry and Mudge, and the High-Rise Private Eyes are great for rising independent readers.

Easy Being Green! I'm A Frog! by Mo Willems

RIBBIT! RIBBIT!

"PIGGIE! IS THAT YOU?"

Gerald is worried.

Gerald is nearly always worried, but this is serious! Piggie looks like Piggie, but she's acting like a... frog! She's hopping all over the page, and between ribbets, declares that she IS a frog!

That is a worrying thought for Gerald, who tends to take things literally. If a pink pig can become a frog, hopping all over and (shudder) eating flies, could the same thing happen to an elephant? Gerald most certainly does not want to be a frog. He can't even imagine acting like a frog. It's not a pretty picture!

The horrified look on Gerald the Elephant's face is priceless!

Piggie, who enjoys being the center of attention, is enjoying her little masquerade for all it is worth.

But at last she takes pity on poor Gerald and tries to explain what she is doing.

"I AM PRE-TEND-ING...!

"AND YOU CAN JUST DO THAT???"says Gerald incredulously.

Piggie hastens to persuade her stodgy friend that anyone can do it. Pigs do it, even grownups do it sometimes. She tries to encourage Gerald to take that leap of faith and pretend to be a frog along with her. Gerald proclaims he can't be a frog, and Piggie retorts that Yes, he can!

But when Piggie demands to know why not, she finds that Gerald has already m-o-o-o-v-e-d on, taking fantasizing to another level.

"I'M A COW!

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Mo Willems' latest, I'm a Frog! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) (Hyperion Books, 2013), in his award-winning series shows beginning readers that it's easy to jump into reading with the help of Piggie and Gerald, two very different but very good friends. Willem's minimalist black-line drawings look simple, but the artist is a master of the cartoon trope, using expression lines in the faces of his characters which show everything they are thinking, providing plenty of contextual cues to help his readers. Willems keep the action lively, with characters entering and exiting from the page and with action lines showing Piggie's every hop and sweat spouting from Gerald's nervous face as he contemplates catching and downing flies. Emergent readers will love reading out loud Piggie and Gerald's two-page spread of repeated "Yes, you cans" and "NO, I CAN'TS," and joining in joyfully in Gerald's surprising MOOOing denouement. Yes, reading about out-pretending Piggie can be FUN!