All Kinds of Best Friends: Izzy in the Doghouse by Caroline Adderson

ISABEL AND ZOE WERE EACH OTHER'S FAVORITE FRIEND--MOST OF THE TIME.

They make each other friendship bracelets and wear them until they are gray and brown. At school they hang their coats in side-by-side cubbies so that their sleeves are in each other's pockets.

"OUR COATS HANG OUT SO MUCH THAT THEY HATE TO SLEEVE EACH OTHER!" JOKES IZZY.

But Izzy tends to take her ideas a bit over the top. They get into trouble as, with toilet paper streaming from their waistbands, they twitter like lizards running down the halls at school, and when at recess she tries to get a Kindergarten boy to pretend a pinecone is cookie and take a bite, both girls find themselves on the carpet in the principal's office.

Zoe blames Izzy for getting her in trouble and chooses a less rambunctious playmate after school. Bernadette turns Izzy down: Patty has piano lessons after school; and Nima says she has soccer practice. Izzy has a dull afternoon at home with her nanny Rosa, who wants to watch her soap opera in peace, and to make it worse, Mom is away on a business trip and won't be home until late. Izzy sleeps downstairs waiting for mom to get home and when she does, Izzy gets more bad news: Mom has an important business meeting the next day, so they can't have their usual Hooky Day and stay in their PJs together all day.

IZZY IS IN THE DOGHOUSE.

But when the next day Mom declares a Make-up Hooky Day, she has another great surprise for Izzy! They are going to adopt a puppy! Since Izzy herself is adopted, she is delighted. But when they bring Rollo home, she realizes that it takes a lot of thinking ahead to take care of a baby puppy.

"HE COULD CHEW CORDS THAT AREN'T UNPLUGGED OR GET STUCK UNDER SOMETHING. OR KNOCK SOMETHING OVER AND GET SQUASHED!"

And when Zoe asks for a playdate so she can see Rollo, Izzy forgets to lock his crate when he naps, and she's horrified when they can't find him anywhere!

"ZOE! WE HAVE TO FIND HIM. YOU CAN'T LEAVE A BABY ALONE! SOMETHING TERRIBLE COULD HAPPEN!"

But then Izzy realizes that she is the one who knows exactly how to find Rollo, in Caroline Adderson's Izzy in her Doghouse (Kids Can Press, 2020). In her new series for early chapter book readers, author Adderson has a character who is even more "over-the-top" than Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby. Adderson goes bravely into the weeds of an unusual family with a more rambunctious and less perceptive young heroine, but catches the moment when the impetuous Isabel suddenly discovers what responsibility to others means.

This is a endearing story, with an infectuously funny character that promises to equal Adderson's beginning chapter success with her Jasper John Dooley: Left Behind series, and Kelly Collier's funny line drawings break up the text and enrich and advance the story line with pazzazz that just fits Izzy. Says Kirkus Reviews, "An endearing, energetic take on chapter books for transitioning readers.

Move Over, Alice! Imogene Comes Back! by David Small

Imogene woke up, wondering what the new day would bring.

And well she should! After all, she had once awakened with antlers and then with peacock feathers. Her family had tried to forget about those occasions. But... to the great amazement of her bony hound dog and a fishy look from her orange cat, the peculiarities have returned--Imogene has a very long neck, not unlike that of Alice in Wonderland, but with the spots and horns of a giraffe.

"What now?"

The family was stupefied. Imogene made the best of things. She retrieved her brother Norman's missing football from on top of the tall living room secretary. Going outside, she rescued a terrified kitten stuck in a tree.

"Hurrah!" cheered Lucy the maid.

"You should work for the fire department," said Mrs. Perkins, the cook.

But every day brings a new transformation for Imogene. The next day Imogene appears for breakfast with the head of an elephant. Her mother is aghast, but Mrs. Perkins puts her trunk to good use watering the flowers. Imogene really gets into her new job until she tries to water a flowering tree and soaks the next door neighbor, sunning and scrolling on her laptop! What will the neighbors think?

"I don't care what it is!" shouted her mother. "No child of mine will be a beast, a bird, or a bug!"

"Donate her to the zoo!" suggested Uncle Alphonse.

"ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" Mother howled, fainting into a side chair.

Although Imogene seems unconcerned, everyone else in the household is in a tizzy! So the next morning, they all wait with bated breath, Norman with his fancy camera at the ready to photograph Imogene's transformation de jour. But Imogene presents herself well turned out, fully herself, nose and all, once more!

Uncle Alphonse, Father, Mother, Norman, Mrs. Perkins, and Lucy are relieved. Things are back to normal! But then... there's a ...

PING!

It seems that Imogene is not the only person in this household subject to sudden transformations, in Imogene Comes Back! (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020). After a break of only thirty-five years, Caldecott-winning artist David Small returns with an Imogene story just right for this year of odd and sudden transformations.

How Mother deals with her abruptly arriving moose antlers is an intriguing consideration for a new generation of Imogene fans. With his highly refined and subtle illustrations, Small has been the winner of the Caldecott Medal for So You Want to Be President?: The Revised and Updated Edition and the Caldecott Honor books, The Gardener and One Cool Friend, and it's great to see his modern-day Alice who takes her Through-the-Looking-Glass transmogrifications with equal aplomb. Says Publishers Weekly, "Small’s pen, ink, and watercolor drawings are as sly as ever, rendered in creamy tones befitting Imogene’s posh lifestyle and punctuated by sublime goofiness—and reminding readers that being able to roll with change is a useful part of transformation.

Ties That Bind: Just Like a Mama by Alice Fay Duncan

Mommy and Daddy live miles away. I wish we lived together. Maybe one day.... I live with Mama Rose now. She's just like a mama to me.

Mama Rose combs the tangles out of her hair and buttons her up in her winter coat, and waves to her as she goes off to school.

"I love you, Lady Bug!"

Mama Rose gives her a watch for her fifth birthday and teaches her how to tell time. She shows her how to make her bed and how to dribble a basketball.

And when she is six, Mama Rose gives her a yellow bike so they can ride through the park together and see the birds.

She tells me, "One day, child, you will spread your wings and fly!"

And like a mama, Mama Rose makes her do her chores, marching her back upstairs to make her bed and put her clothes away. Like a mama, Mama Rose makes her eat her veggies before she gets a piece of chocolate cake.

"Carol Olivia Clementine! Peas are good for you!"

And when Carol Olivia Clementine does well, Mama Rose tells her...

"SUPER JOB!"

Mama Rose is just like a mama to me.

In her new book, Just Like a Mama (Simon and Schuster, 2020), author Alice Fay Duncan celebrates what she calls "fictive kin," those people who are in loco parentis, taking the place of mothers and fathers to children to offer love and nurture and guidance when their natural parents cannot. Illustrator Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, granddaughter of Caldecott artist Jerry Pinkney, adds gentle, warm, and affectionate illustrations which show the love between Carol Olivia Clementine and her Mama Rose. Kirkus Review adds, "A beautiful story of love and kinship, so needed for the many children living apart from their nuclear families."

Making Do: Lena's Slippers by Ioana Hobai

The school dance recital was almost here!

Lena swirled and twirled.

She did one last pirouette outside the classroom.

Taking a deep breath, she cracked the door open and tiptoed inside.

Mrs. Pascu did not tolerate tardiness.

Mrs. Pascu, the ballet teacher, doesn't tolerate much.

She tells the girls that they are to be dancing flowers in the spring recital. Their skirts must be daffodil yellow and their slippers must be white.

Lena knows that money is tight and that fabric is in short supply in her little town. Her mom waits in line for hours just to get milk, and the only yellow fabric she can find is more like the color of a winter squash than a spring daffodil.

"It's not the right yellow!" protested Lena. "Mrs. Pascu is so picky!"

"Oh, Lena," said her mom. "We're lucky to have found any yellow at all. I'll sew you a beautiful skirt."

And her skirt is beautiful. But when Lena and her mother wait in line to buy the white slippers, someone else gets the last pair and there are no more to be had.

As expected, Mrs. Pascu scolds Lena about her skirt, but when she sees Lena is wearing white socks, she is truly angry. Picky Mrs. Pascu snaps that she absolutely will not be allowed to dance in the recital without white shoes.

When a friend gives Lena's father a pair of his daughter's old ballet slippers, Lena's is happy... until she sees that they are black. She is sure Mrs. Pascu will never let her dance in black shoes.

But where there's a will, there's a way. With a coat of white paint, perhaps Lena's slippers will pass muster, in Ioana Hobai's true story of her childhood in Romania, Lena's Slippers (Page Street Kids, 2018). And in the spirit of making the best of what you have, Hobai's endearing illustrations, filled with light and the joy of dance, demonstrate that what you do with what you have is what is important in art and life. It is the spirit of the dance that shines through in this different ballet story with an inspiring theme for young balletomanes.

Reminders: Dear Girl, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Paris Rosenthal

Dear Girl,

Make you room awesome. Make it YOU!

And while you're at it, make your bed!

There are plenty of things we want to say to a beloved child, things we hope are helpful, memorable, and hopeful. There is a world of good counsel here--like "Know when to say NO," or "You won't be invited to every party," or "It's okay not to feel sparkly all the time." If you need to cry, go ahead. You can color outside the lines if you like, but don't forget to clean up your room. You need friends, but you also need to be alone sometimes.

There are no rules, but... I'm giving you some points to remember, just in case. Listen to your heart, be brave when you can, and when you can't, I'll be there for you.

Amy Krouse Rosenthal and her daughter Paris Rosenthal had created a little book for daughters or granddaughters or any much-loved girl, Dear Girl, (Harper, 2017), filled with all the things we want to say to a child, those truisms that rarely get said. Artist Holly Hatam adds spare but expressive illustrations that flesh out Rosenthal's sweet text with free-flowing action. A fine gift for a special girl, and a first choice for library shelves.

The Outsider:: Confessions from the Principal's Kid by Robin Mellom

To be clear, I have no desire to be at the top of the School Coolness Pyramid--if that even exists. I just want to be part of something.

Almost everyone avoids me now like I'm some sort of rat--who tells on people and uses her connections to get them in trouble. (See previous info about my mother being the principal.)

It's complicated. Allie West's mom's promotion from regular teacher to principal just happens to coincide with the ITCP--the Intense Trading Card Phase. a craze for swapping Mammal-Morph cards, led by chief nerd-boy Graham Parker, whose hand-drawn super-gecko El Guapo cards become the hottest item at recess. The rivalry's squabbles spill over into the classroom; Allie's mom has to ban the cards from the school; and when one is found in Allie's desk, she inexplicably blurts out that it belongs to her best friend, Chloe Alvarez. Allie becomes tattletale-non-grata all over the school, and poor Graham goes from superstar to the butt of everyone's jokes, especially the jibes of bully-in-chief Joel Webster. Graham is an easy target, the weird kid who carries his grandfather's clarinet everywhere he goes and apologizes to poles when he walks into them.

Now Allie West finds herself the chief Outsider. Her only friends are the custodian Frances, who lets her use the super floor polisher to secretly remove the spitballs Joel launches daily at Graham, Miss Jean, the cafeteria manager who puts her in charge of spagetti inventory, and the Afters, a motley group of teachers' kids who have to stay late after school--their leader, fourth-grader Lexa, "born with a clipboard in her hand," fifth-grade outcasts Allie and Graham, and second-grader Maddie Vicario--who meet undercover daily to play Eavesdropping Bingo and come up with Acts of Random Awesomesauce for the staff. It's definitely a group with inside information, the ones who know all the shortcuts around the school and where the snack foods are kept in each classroom.

Confession: I also know where Frances stores the extra toilet paper, and I'm embarrassed that I'm a little proud of that.

Allie's one chance to re-friend Chloe and her friends is to make the Pentagon Math Team, hoping to spend enough time with Chloe to apologize and restore their friendship. Unexpectedly, she's paired with Chloe on a project and their time together goes well. When Chloe invites her to her birthday party, Allie feels like her days as outsider are over. But then she overhears the other guests talking about her.

"So embarrassing for her," Andrea was saying. "Chloe was so bummed she had to partner with her and invite her over to work on the project."

"Does Chloe even like her?" Sophie asked.

"Who knows? I'm sure Allie's mom called to get her invited to this party, too."

I back away slowly and slip out the front door.

I'm alone. Being an insider at school--knowing the ins and outs--it all makes me an outsider.

I hate being the principal's kid.

Fifth grade is complicated. Allie's relations with her parents and the kids at school are so hard to unravel. How can things go so wrong when everyone seems to be trying to do the right thing?

There comes a time when relationships stop being a smooth grassy playground and start being a playing field full of stumbling blocks, as Allie West discovers in Robin Mellom's forthcoming Confessions from the Principal's Kid (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).

Mellom's protagonist is likable, smart, funny, honest, and yet lonely, as she tries to navigate the sudden changes in her life. Sooner or later--perhaps much later--most people find themselves somehow on the outside, looking in. Allie discovers who her real best friend is--Graham, who stopped being her friend during the school day to spare her from taking the treatment that fell on him, and from there she realizes that even complicated things make sense when seen from the other side.

Making new friends is sometimes a struggle, but it's also important to leave no one behind, she learns. Using her own experience as a principal's kid and an After herself in this strong character-driven story, Mellom's Allie helps middle readers vicariously experience some of those tangled webs we mortals weave along the way.

Getting There First! Isabella: Girl in Charge by Jennifer Fossberry

"I'm ready!" said the little girl. "Let's GO!"

"It's not time, Isabella!" said the mother. "It's not even daylight!"

"My name is not Isabella! I am Susanna Salter, the mayor of this town!"

Isabella is ready to get to work as the first female mayor of Argonia, as her sash proclaims.

"Well, Susanna," said her mother. "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!"

But Isabella is on a roll. When it's time for breakfast, she's rarin' to get going.

"I'm not Susanna. I'm Jeannette Rankin. I will represent you!" she proclaims.

"Well, Jeannette," said her mother. "In this House, we will eat a good breakfast!" she says.

But Isabella is still channeling Jeannette Rankin, first woman to qualify for Congress, two years before women got the vote.

"I'm the only woman who ever voted to give women the vote," she proclaims.

By now the Isabella and her family are outside, strolling through the streets of Washington, D.C., walking past the historic buildings.

But little Isabella quickly moves on, personifying famous women--Nellie Ross, first woman governor, Frances Perkins, first female Cabinet secretary, and Sandra Day O'Connor, first woman justice of the Supreme Court, Sonia Sostomayor, first Hispanic woman Justice, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, first Jewish woman on the Supreme Court.

By this time the family are nearing the Capitol, where lots of flags are flying. And Isabella has a big announcement as they join the crowd for the inauguration of the new President of the United States.

"It's TIME!"

How big can a girl dream? In Jennifer Fossberry's sequel to her 2010 My Name Is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can a Little Girl Dream? (See review here) Isabel dreams really big, in Fossberry's timely Isabella: Girl in Charge (Sourcebooks/Jabberwocky, 2016).


Little Isabella gives the reader a quick summary of the history of women in public service, from Susanna Madora Salter, first woman mayor of a city to Madeline Allbright, first woman Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice, first African-American Secretary of State, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomeyer, the first women of their ethic group to serve on the Supreme Court.

This latest, with its companion book, are great for primary grader students for the approaching Women's History Month in March. Fossberry's spunky spokeswoman for women knows her stuff, and she gives Isabella's mother some clever puns on the accomplishments of these historic women. Litwin's energetic illustrations portray Isabella's rapid changes of persona with humor, and the author offers an appendix with a detailed timeline of women in office which adds some solid punch to the story line for background and fodder for young researchers. Because these books offer a collective summary, rather than an individual biography of women in American history for youngsters of the primary persuasion, they should be a definite purchase for libraries.

Co-Creations: Knit Together by Angela Dominguez

I LOVE TO DRAW.

MOM DOESN'T DRAW. MOM KNITS.

I THINK KNITTING IS MUCH BETTER THAN DRAWING.

WHY? BECAUSE YOU CAN WEAR IT.

Mother and daughter are both creative, but with a practical bent. Mom knits useful things, like a wool hat with a cat face and a scarf and mittens for her little daughter. It seems both of them like to walk on the cold and windy wintry beach together.

But the little girl decides that she need to learn to knit like Mom. Mom agrees to show her how to cast on the yarn and knit her stitches. Except knitting is not so easy for little hands. Soon the yarn is all in a tangle all over the floor.

No one is happy about that but their little dog, who thinks the yarn makes a great puppy toy.

Sensing a meltdown in the making, Mom tries a different tack.

WE COME UP WITH THE BEST IDEA.

WE'LL MAKE SOMETHING TOGETHER!

Daughter sets to drawing. trying to come up with the perfect design for Mom to knit. It has to be special, celebrating something that both of them love.

And after some frustrating failures, she comes up with the perfect design, The last page shows mother and daughter at the beach, watching the boats bouncing over the waves and wrapped in a knitted blanket with a beautiful sailboat design on the back.

Angela Dominguez' latest, Knit Together (Dial Books, 2015), captures just the right mood in her story of mother and daughter knit together in a common project which they can put to practical use together right away. Dominguez's black line and mixed media illustrations--ink, colored pencil, gouache, and digital color--full of movement, yet showing the affection between the two characters, tell her story well. There's plenty of gentle humor, with our girl having a bit of a sulk under the sofa table, drawing on its underside in frustration, and the antics of their little dog as he tries to get into all the action. A perfect tale for crafty parent and child to share, and right for a Mothers Day read as well.

Angela Dominguez is also the author of Maria Had a Little Llama / María Tenía Una Llamita (Pura Belpre Honor Books - Illustration Honor), Santiago Stays, and Let's Go, Hugo!, (see my reviews here).

Glimmerings: The Ghost in the Glass House by Carey Wallace

"Hang on," Teddy said as Denby took his first step into the cave. Then Teddy struck a match. A terrible keening wail split the darkness. Denby staggered back into the girls.

Bridget clutched Teddy's arm. Laughter echoed through the cave. Bram emerged from the shadows.

"You sounded just like a ghost!" Bridget said. She touched Bram's arm. "I was so scared."

Not to be outdone, Denby pushed past him into the passage. In the stone gap, Teddy turned back. He held out his hand. "Clare," he said. She took it and followed him.

Bridget gamely picked her way along behind them. Clare tried to pull her hand from Teddy's, but he slid his arm around her waist. His lips found her face just under her eye.

Clare's skin crawled as if a spider has just run over it. She yanked free. But inside she had another feeling, as if warm caramel had just spilled in her rib cage.

Since her father's sudden death, Clare and her mother have lived as wealthy gypsies,  traveling from one rented house or fashionable resort to another through Europe and America. Now past her twelfth birthday, Clare longs to return to their own home, but keeps her feelings from her mother, energetic and sociable, but also somehow too fragile to meet anyone's needs but her own.

But as they summer in a house on the New England shore, Clare's emotional life seems strangely split, split between  death, always just on the other side of her mind, and glimmerings of romantic love which suddenly fill her consciousness as well. She notices what seems an innocent little flirtation between her mother and her friend Bridget's handsome father, and wonders at her own feelings of an unfamiliar attraction to young teenagers Bram, Denby, and Teddy.

A mysterious glass house on the edge of the woods behind the house draws her attention.  Inside she first feels an inkling of a spirit, one which soon speaks with her and seems to be a boy of her own age who claims his name is Jack. And when Jack touches her at last, his light touch affects her the same way that Teddy and Bram's touch had.

Clare felt a touch, light but undeniable.

"Could you feel that?" Jack asked. Clare nodded. "Don't be scared," Jack said.

She felt a faint pressure as he settled beside her on the divan. Then something like a shawl settled over her bare shoulders.

Another touch guided her head toward Jack's unseen shoulder. At first she held back, not certain it could support her. But it did. The faint weight of his hand covered her own again.

Both death and love seem near, frightening yet with a mysterious magnetism, almost like the mist that separates Jack from the house where he had lived and whatever lies beyond for him, in that summer when Clare was twelve and becoming aware of those things that had before existed outside her child's consciousness. There are changes to come for all of them, even the ghostly Jack, in Carey Wallace's fantasy novel, The Ghost in the Glass House (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

Although set in the 1920s, the historical setting barely intrudes on this story, which seems to exist almost outside of time.  Wallace uses her settings, especially the deep cave on the edge of the sea and the glass house, furnished with rugs and sofa, yet somehow part of the leafy woods, to extend the atmosphere of this story of inside and outside, seen and unseen, past and future, set on the borderline of childhood and maturity.

You Great Big Beautiful Doll: Prettiest Doll by Gina Willner Pardo

Dear Mama,

When you get this, I'll be gone. I'm with a friend, so don't worry. Not Imogene. Someone you don't know but you would like. I'll call you later when I can. Don't worry. I know you will anyway. But don't.

I am a terrible singer and I always will be. Lessons won't help.

I'm through with pageants for good.

Love, Liv

Liv Tatum knows she is pretty. She should. She’s been winning pageants since she was three years old. She knows that she’s lucky, that having everyone know she wins contests gives her a place in the beauty clique with the other pageant girls at school. But since she’s turned thirteen, she’s been having some strange thoughts–like feeling invisible inside the pageant gowns that her mom works so hard to buy, wondering who she is underneath the makeup tricks and behind the twirls and the smiles.

Liv finds herself wishing that she could be like her friend Imogene, who never has to worry about having poise or looking pretty, as long as she has her horse, Honey. Liv doesn’t want a horse, but lately she knows that she wants something else. She’s not sure what it is, but she knows it’s not having to rehearse that song, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” with the grouchy, old-lady-smelling Miss Elsie Drucker. It’s not competing in The Prettiest Doll Pageant and dozens more stretching endlessly out ahead of her.

But Mama won’t listen. She’s been working two jobs for ten years just to keep buying gowns and paying for lessons to keep Olivia winning pageants, and with the Prettiest Doll competition coming up, she’s determined that Liv is going to win the big one this time. Suddenly Liv sees that it’s not really about her, not about having poise and winning trophies. Mama’s whole identity is in being a pageant mom, a bit of glamour in her dreary life in Luthers Bridge, Missouri, and Liv can’t see any way out of doing pageants forever.

“Mama,” I said, “if I didn’t do pageants, would you be proud of me?”

“Olivia Jane, I’m too tired to play this game.”

“It’s not a game. Okay, now, what would you be proud of me for?

She just sat for a minute, Finally she said, “I don’t know.

You’ve been doing pageants for a long time,” Mama said. “I got used to being proud of you for that. I ain’t gonna apologize.”

Then Liv meets Danny, a boy who is a running away from something. His mother wants him to take human growth hormone shots to make him taller, and he’s not sure he wants to let her. He wants to get to Chicago, somehow believing that the father he hasn’t seen in a decade is going to know what he should do. And Liv decides to go with him, also believing that finding her dead dad’s brother, her beloved Uncle Fred, will somehow give her the strength to tell her mother that she’s done with pageants.

Appearance and reality is the theme of Gina Willner-Pardo’s latest, Prettiest Doll (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2012), dealing with that time in the maturation process in which young adults must learn to see themselves as they are and can be, not merely as their parents and others see them. While Danny’s father rejects him outright, being on her own, away from Luther’s Bridge, helps Liv see herself in a new way, as a person who can make her own choices. With Uncle Fred’s gentle counsel, she knows she can go home again but as someone who is more than just “a great big, beautiful doll.”

Willner-Pardo knows how to create realistic characters, both the young and the adults in their lives, in real-world situations with easy humor and insight. Middle readers will find her most recent novel as absorbing as her earlier notable books, including The Hard Kind of Promise and My Mom and Other Mysteries of the Universe.

Name Game: My Name Is Not Isabella by Jennifer Fosberry

"COME ON, ISABELLA!" THE MOTHER SAID.

"IT'S TIME TO GET OUT OF BED."

"MY NAME IS NOT ISABELLA!" SAID THE LITTLE GIRL. "I AM SALLY, THE GREATEST, TOUGHEST ASTRONAUT WHO EVER WAS."

"WELL, SALLY, BLAST OUT OF BED, PUT ON YOUR SPACESUIT, AND COME DOWNSTAIRS FOR BREAKFAST."

But by the time our would-be heroine shows up for breakfast, she has shifted roles. Now she's Annie, the "greatest shooter who ever was." Heading out to the bus stop, she announces that she is now "Rosa, the greatest, bravest activist who ever was." Her mom is seemingly unruffled by her daughter's identity shifting.

"Well, ROSA, MARCH OUT AND TAKE YOUR SEAT ON THE BUS.

And so it goes through the day. Isabella's imagination morphs her into the scientist Marie Curie during science class, and when she returns home and is asked to set the table for dinner, she announces that she is now ...

..."ELIZABETH, THE GREATEST, KINDEST DOCTOR WHO EVER WAS."

"WELL, ELIZABETH, HAVE PATIENCE WITH YOUR MOTHER AND USE THE NICE PLATES, PLEASE."

In her new My Name Is Not Isabella: Just How Big Can a Little Girl Dream? (Jabberwocky, 2010), Jennifer Fosberry's lesson in women's history goes down easily, abetted by an appendix with information on Isabella's alternate identities and web sites for further investigation. Isabella even kindly tips one of her many hats toward the role of "Mommy" as she gets ready for bed, ready to rest up to see what she can be tomorrow.

Mom! I'm Hungry!: Bee-Bim Bop by Linda Sue Park

Almost time for supper. Rush to the store!

Mom buys the groceries--"More, Mom, more!"

"Hurry, Mom, hurry! Gotta hop, hop, hop!"

It's late afternoon and at least one little tummy is grumbling. But Mom has a favorite stand-by she knows is quick and satisfying--bee-bim bop, which means "rice and everything stirred together."

Back at home mother and daughter set to work like a well-oiled wok. The little girl measures out a pot of water for the rice and beats the eggs bubbly and fluffy for the egg pancakes, and then tosses her mom just the right cooking tool:

"Mom, catch the spatula! Flip the eggs high!"

"Hungry, hungry, hungry!"

Rice simmers and Mama chop, chop, chops, and into the stir-fry go green onions, spinach, carrots, chicken, and sprouts to sizzle up together while the daughter sets the table with spoons, chopsticks, and her favorite plates and bowls striped in blue. Mama takes up the dinner, arranging the thinly sliced egg strips, the stir-fried meat and veggies, and the rice artfully in their own serving bowls.

"Hurry, family, hurry! Dinner's on the table.

Rice goes in the middle.

Egg goes on top.

Mix it. Mix, mix, mix!

It's bee-bim bop!"

Is everybody hungry now? Who could resist Mama's best quick supper, and Linda Sue Park's delicious Bee-Bim Bop! (Clarion) certainly sets the table with a place for all of us. With warm and appealing illustrations by HuBaek Lee, Newbery-winning author Linda Sue Park takes us into a comfy Korean-American kitchen for a cooking lesson that will have almost everyone crying "Bee-Bim Bop!" too! A full recipe is appended in case readers want to try out this homey specialty themselves. Break out the chopsticks and chow down!

Linda Sue Park is the versatile author of noted historical fiction works, including A Single Shard, and The Kite Fighters, set in medieval Korea, When My Name Was Keoko, her novel of Japanese-occupied Korea, Keeping Score, a story of the post-war Brooklyn Dodgers, and her recent installment in the popular adventure series, The 39 Clues, Book 9: Storm Warning.

One for Moms: Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman

Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind,
This is a prayer for a blueberry girl.

First, may you ladies be kind.

Neil Gaiman, recent winner of the 2009 Newbery Award, has a new picture book, a prayer-poem, first written for a friend expecting the birth of a girl child. In it he calls upon the Fates, whom he terms the "Ladies," to grace the baby girl with all the blessings one would wish for any child.

Let her tell stories and dance in the rain,
Somersault, tumble, and run.
Her joys must be high as her sorrows are deep.
Let her grow like a weed in the sun.

The blessings sought run from the fantastic to the ironical but purely practical:

Keep her from spindles and sleeps at sixteen.
Nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty.
These will not trouble her eyes.
Dull days at forty, false friends at fifteen,
Let her have brave days and truth.
Let her go places that we've never been.
Trust and delight in her youth.

Illustrator Charles Vess spins out glorious illustrations, amid varied depictions of the to-be blessed girl--tall, small, white, black, infant and youth, realistic and magical--surrounded by a protective cohort of animals who lead and guide her, all with a curvaceous, voluptuous movement which evokes the art of the pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau, Rackham and Parrish, and even Trina Schart Hyman, and which swirls forward and around the text in a movement which leads the reader forward through the pages as the child moves forth through life.

Truth is a thing she must find for herself,
Precious and rare as a pearl.
Give her all these and a little bit more,
Gifts for a blueberry girl.

It's hard for even the cynical to read Blueberry Girl without a hint of a lump in the throat. A wonderful gift for a mother-to-be or even an "old" mom whose girl is already launched, this is a book for anyone who wishes the best for their children.

A trailer for the book, read well by the author, can be found here.

Mom's Day: My Mom Is Trying to RUIN MY LIFE by Kate Feiffer

This is my mom. Sure, she looks like a nice mom.

Here are five ways that my mom is trying to ruin my life:

Way #1: She kisses me in front of my friends. She doesn't just kiss the top of my head. That would be bad, but not as bad. My mom gives me kisses all over my face.

Way #2: She stops by my school in the middle of the day, barges into my classroom, and says, "I thought Emmy might be hot and would like to change into these shorts." Like I would ever change my clothes at school! I don't think so.

Way #3: She talks too loudly.

Way #4: She never lets me eat any food that I think would be good for me.

Way #5: She worries about everything and never lets me do anything fun because I might get hurt, which I won't.

I have decided it's time to stop my mother before she ruins the rest of my life!

Emmy fantasizes about how she will escape from her mom and dad (who is also trying to ruin her life, but in different ways), imagining speeding away on her bike, chased by her concerned mom in the car until her mom is put in jail, followed by her dad when he comes to bail out his wife.

For a moment Emmy basks in the thought of being in total control. But then she starts thinking about the consequences--parents in jail, a dark house with no dinner for hungry daughters, no bedtime stories, and no one to come to her rescue if she has a bad dream because she went to bed hungry. Hmmph!

"My parents are both in jail. My life will be ruined!"

Kate Feiffer's My Mom Is Trying to Ruin My Life (Simon & Schuster, 2009) is a funny take on the first skirmishes in the mother-daughter wars, with a main character with a strong voice and a far-fetched imagination about her own emancipation. Caldecott-winning artist Diane Goode's appealing illustrations extend the story perfectly, especially in picturing Emmy's fantasy flight from her doting parents' control. A very nice story about a "nice" mother for the upcoming Mother's Day season.