Special Delivery! The Lost Package by Richard Ho

LIKE OTHER PACKAGES, THIS ONE BEGAN WITH AN EMPTY BOX.

A child places a carefully chosen gift inside, secures the flaps with great care and lots of tape, and addresses it with a personal message, and with a dog on leash, a boy and his mom set off down the sidewalk to the big post office, where the box is weighed and stamped and begins its travels

It moves through the wondrous process of the conveyor belt where magical devices measures sort, and route it to to the airport. But on the way, the delivery truck hits a pothole, the door flies open, and, unnoticed by the truck's driver, the box bounces out and into the puddle alongside the curb, where a curious dog is walking with a boy and his mother.

The dog pulls on his leash to give the package an investigative sniff, while the boy and his mother read the address on the label.

THE BOX WAS TATTERED BUT ITS DESTINATION WAS CLEAR.

The boy and his mom exchange surprised looks as they realize that they and the box are making the trip to the same place. The package takes its place in their moving truck with boxes of their belongings. All day they drive down the long, wet, rainy roads taking them to their new home.

And when they arrive, their first stop is at the very address on the lost-and-found box, where another surprised boy and his amazed mother open the door to find them on their doorstep.

NOT ALL PACKAGES TRAVEL THE SAME ROAD.

SOME GET LOST. SOME GET FOUND.

But this one is delivered, not by Santa, but by a really kind boy and mom, in this sweet story of a gift, lost, found, and delivered by hand by perhaps new friends, in Richard Ho's The Lost Package (Roaring Brook Press, 2021), lovingly illustrated by Jessica Lanan's rain-burnished artwork.

Says Publishers Weekly in a their starred review, "The richness of the tale lies in subtly textured watercolor illustrations by Lanan (The Fisherman and the Whale), which poignantly portray a broad range of settings, from gritty urban streets shimmering with rain to snow-swept terrains to a desolate gas station."

The What's Missing Mystery: I Lost Something by Beth Johnson

The kids are just arriving at school, struggling out of their bulky winter jackets and boots. Emily stands in the middle of the group, looking a bit wistful.

"I LOST SOMETHING." SHE SAYS.

Her teacher Mrs. Hill looks concerned. The others do, too. Kendra asks Emily if she lost her hat. But Emily says no.

Victor wonders if she's lost her scarf. Jasmin asks if she's missing a glove. Emily shakes her head to both. Nope.

Her boots? The others giggle at Derek's joke, as they imagine Emily walking in the snow in bare feet!

Well, WHAT? Everyone is mystified. What did she lose?

"I LOST MY TOOTH!"

Emily smiles her new gap-toothed smile, and everyone laughs at her trick.

Missing teeth are both commonplace and yet exciting in first grade, and Emily has a little fun with her classmates before the big reveal, in Beth Johnson's early first-grade reader, I Lost Something, in King Press' The King School Series - First Grade Collection (60 books) (Townsend Press). With a bit of a mystery and a word count of 74, this Level 4 early first-grader primer has a lot to recommend it. It's an all-too-common scenario for primary grade readers, and artist Mark Weber portrays the diverse students in Mrs. Hill's class with a variety of sympathetic expressions, while his illustrations provide visual cues for the words for items of dress included in the text.

Too Much Of A Good Thing? The Boy and the Bear by Peter Stein

The boy had a bear
A fuzzy brown bear

The boy. The bear.
Always a pair.

The boy and bear go everywhere together.

But on the way to everywhere, what does he note? A goat... in a polka-dot coat!

Who could resist such a jolly fellow? But then the boy spots a toy slug who needs a hug...

And on a tree limb, he spies HIM--a funky monkey! And that's not all. Under a ten-gallon hat... is that a toy rat?

The boy can barely believe it! He's loaded down with irresistible fuzzy toys, but then, with a goofy grin, he spots this... THING with a pull string that makes it sing!

The toys are all sweet and neat, but a boy can only carry so many cuddly critters before he... (yikes!) TRIPS! Fuzzy toys scatter all over the quirky landscape.

But where was the bear?
He looked everywhere.

Kids will giggle as the boy, his beloved bear right smack on top of his head, searches high and low for his favorite, and that's not all...

He saw a blimp.
A delivery blimp...

A slippery latch
Had opened the hatch...

It's a flying contraption straight out of the mind of Dr. Seuss (or maybe a daffy drone doing an Amazon delivery), and what's a kind boy to do but help upload its jettisoned cargo, in Peter Stein's whimsical toy story, The Boy and the Bear (Holiday House, 2019). With jolly rhyming text and a whimsical and wacky landscape, author-illustrator Peter Stein's latest is a highly visual comic story written in playful verse that begs to be read aloud.