Moving House! Moose, Goose, and Mouse by Mordecai Gerstein

Even the rubber ducky in the bathtub is unhappy.

MOOSE SAID, "THIS HOUSE IS WET AND OLD."

GOOSE SAID, "IT'S FULL OF MOLD!"

"ACHOO!" SAID DUCK. "IT'S VERY COLD."

Clearly it is time to move to a better house. Moose wants one that's sunny, Goose votes for funny, and Mouse prefers one that comes with a bunny.

The three hop a train to search for a new house, taking a seat in the pink caboose. They all approve of the caboose. But the engineer takes the the mountain route, and the tracks carry the three up and up, and then up and down and up and up, until the caboose, uncoupled, comes loose. Yikes!

"HELP!" YELLED MOOSE.

"IT'S NO USE!" SAID GOOSE.

"THIS IS FUN," SAID MOUSE. "RIDING IN A LOOSE CABOOSE!"

The tracks take the loose caboose down, down, down, until the tracks end, inexplicably, into a palm tree which stops the upended caboose and the three at the edge of the sea. They survey their new neighborhood.

Hey! This isn't so bad. The seaside is sunny!" notes Moose. Goose finds an upside down caboose quite funny!

"IS THAT A BUNNY?" SAID MOUSE.

What more could they ask for, in Mordecai Gerstein's Moose, Goose, and Mouse (Holiday House, 2021), his latest and last book for children, with kid-pleasing digital paper collage with co-artist Jeff Mack in a goofy and good-natured look at an unplanned household move with a jolly surprise ending. A sweet and easy beginning reader in rhyme and a noodlehead tale of three zany housemates who find an new neighbor, this one is a Seussian candidate for a new classic. Says Kirkus Reviews, "Madcap humor at its finest."

Mordecai Gerstein received the Caldecott award as the author-illustrator of his stunning The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (see my review here).

The Zebra Box Mystery! Meet the Crew at the Zoo (Mystery on Zoo Lane Series #1) by Patricia Reilly Giff

The plane roared to a stop. Luke's throat burned. He told himself he was too old to cry.

"You'll love this place, Luke," said Dad. "With the new Zoo!"

Luke tried to nod. If only they were back with Abuelo, his grandfather, at the zoo in Florida.

Dad is so proud of his new job as a zoo physician in New York City that Luke doesn't want to let him know how unhappy he is with their move. His little sister Benita seems excited, but Luke's heart drops when they drive up in front of a row of rather shabby houses with the zoo right behind them. Their old house was nicer, and since Abuela was also a zoo doctor and Luke had a lot of good friends back in Florida, Luke can't see anything better here for him.

The next morning Dad rushes him out to the zoo, telling him a new black spider monkey was going to be born soon, and Luke trails along to the Baby Zoo House. On the way in, Luke notices a door that says STAY OUT. He starts to ask about the door, just as his dad calls him to see the baby spider monkey. On the way out he meets a lady cleaning the ponds who tells him about how anteaters use their long snouts for snorkels and tells her to call her Nana-Next-Door. On the way back home Luke spots a boy sweeping the walkway. Both of them see a striped box partly under a bush and reach for it at the same time.

They rolled in the path.

"Hey!" cried Luke. The boy yelled "hey," too! Were the kids terrible here?

WRONG!

"Sorry!" The boy let go of the box.

"Are you the new kid?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm the old kid. I've always lived here. Let's see what's in the box!"

Inside is a little green collar, Luke's favorite color, and a dollar bill with a note saying it was for lunch the first week. Just as the boys are puzzling over the contents of the stripped box, a girl named Tori comes by. It's not hers, she says. Mitchell tells Luke it may belong to a kid named Alex.

"He never stops talking," he warns Luke.

And Luke soon runs into Alex, who claims the box might be his. But when Alex can't describe what was in his box, Luke keeps walking, leaving Alex going on and on about how hard his whole name is to spell! Mitchell was right about Alex, Luke thinks.

Later that day Luke meets another kid, Omar, working with his dad in the Blue Zoo Stand. Omar points out the waste basket with lots of blue striped food boxes in it and says he is missing one of the boxes, too, but he has no idea what he put in it. A blue cookie? A pen? That solves the question of where the unusual box came from, but Luke feels no closer to solve the mystery of what is in the box. Still, he has managed to meet all the kids in the row of houses beside the zoo, except Tori's brother Ken. But Ken tells him he found his box, and Tori notices some faint writing on one side of the mystery box.

"SEE DAD!" it says.

And Dad takes him back to the Baby Zoo House and opens the door with the STAY OUT sign, and now Luke knows who the small collar is for!

All's well that ends with new puppies for Luke and for Benita. It's mystery solved, in two-time Newbery Award-winning author Patricia Reilly Giff's first book in her new beginner novels series, Meet the Crew at the Zoo (Mysteries on Zoo Lane) (Holiday House, 2020). The author of the top-selling Kids of the Polk Street School mysteries, Giff's return to the early chapter book genre will be well received, and with engaging illustrations by Abby Carter, a group of diverse characters, and a setting just right for intriguing mystery adventures, this one will be welcomed by young readers transitioning from picture books to chapter books.

My Numero Uno: Evelyn Del Ray Is Moving Away by Meg Medina

EVELYN DEL RAY IS MY MAJOR AMIGO, MY NUMERO UNO BEST FRIEND.

Their apartments are just alike, except Evelyn's bedroom of yellow, not pink, so they both know all the best places for hide and seek. There's a zip line between the windows for sending secret messages. They both like to do the same things.

But today, Evelyn's front steps are filled with taped-up boxes and assorted things. A big truck is parked to swallow up Evelyn's furniture inside, her rainy day painting easel, her bouncy sofa, her dresser with the stickers around the mirror. Today is her last day here.

"COME PLAY, DANIELA," SHE SAYS

.

JUST LIKE TODAY IS ANY OTHER DAY.

Daniela and Evelyn find an empty moving box and pretend it's a bus they can drive all over town. But soon the room is empty except for them.

WE PLAY UNTIL THE TABLES THAT WERE BUS STOPS ARE GONE AND THE BEDS THAT WERE SKYSCRAPERS ARE GONE, TOO.

EVERYTHING HAS DISAPPEARED BUT US.

Grabbing both hands they leanback and spin around and around until they are dizzy and fall down together. They make a promise to talk to each other right after school each day. They plan to visit each other when school is out in the summer.

TOMORROW, EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT.

EVELYN DEL RAY IS MOVING AWAY. BUT SHE'LL ALWAYS BE MY NUMERO UNO FRIEND.

The loss of a first friend is a frequent rite of passage for childhood, but losing a best friend is no less hard, in award-winning author Meg Medina's moving story of two best friends, Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away (Candlewick, 2020). Author Medina reveals the closeness of the two friends casually in they re-visit their favorite things, their special games, and the routines of of propinquity and friendship they have shared that made them close, and their leave-taking is brief but poignant as they realize something special has ended. Artist Sonia Sanchez's illustrations are rich with color, texture, and the wordless emotion that document one of life's losses with warmth and pathos.

Be the Best You! Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon by Patty Lovell

Molly Lou Melon was the shortest girl in her class.

Her grandma had told her, "Walk as proudly as you can and people will look up to you."

Molly's front teeth stick out so far she can stack pennies on them, but her grandma tells her to smile broadly and everyone else will smile with her.

Her voice is croaky as a bull frog's, but Grandma tells her to sing loud and clear and the world will be full of joy.

And what Grandma said was true... until Molly Lou Mellon had to say good by to her Grandma, move to a new town, and start at a new school.

Her new school had a bully--Ronald Durkin--who seemed to think it was his job to point out Molly Lou Mellon's shortcomings.

On the first day of school, Ronald Durkin called her SHRIMPO.

So Molly Lou Mellon caught a pass and ran right under Ronald Durkin's legs.  TOUCHDOWN! The kids cheered for Molly. So the next day Ronald Durkin was waiting with a new insult.

He called her "BUCKY THE BEAVER."

And Molly stacked pennies on her teeth and made all the class giggle in amazement. Ronald Durkin was appropriately abashed. But in music class the next day he sneered.

"You sound like a FROG!"

But Molly Lou Melon quacked so loud that Ronald Durkin fell over backward and had to go to the nurse's office for the rest of the afternoon. The rest of the class didn't miss him much either.

And Molly Lou Melon writes Grandma a letter.

"Dear Grandma,

Everything you told me was exactly right!"

"Be the best you that you can be," is good advice in Patty Lovell's beat-the-bully-at-his-own-game story, Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon (G.P. Putnam's Sons), comically illustrated by noted artist David Catrow in his typically quirky style, who shows that keeping your cool and your smile can go a long way. Says Publishers Weekly, "Catrow's full-bleed pencil-and-watercolor illustrations, awash in ripe colors and animated by slapstick exaggeration, radiate a winningly eccentric elegance."

For more giggle-bait, share this one with Lovell and Catrow's Have Fun, Molly Lou Melon and David Catrow's hilarious I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! (Ala Notable Children's Books. Younger Readers (Awards)) and Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs.

Trading Places: A New Home by Tania de Regil

Moving from a loved home is hard. Two kids, happy in their homes in their familiar hometowns, get unsettling news.

With the Empire State building and New York skyline visible through his window, a surprised boy looks up from his toys.

Mom and Dad told me that we are moving to Mexico City.

With a golden monument and far, snow-tipped mountains in view, a girl sits in front of her large window with tropical flower all around.

Mama' and Papa' told me that we are moving to New York City.

Both kids wonder if they will find something like the same friendly and familiar places they love in their new homes.

... listening to my favorite song on my way to school...

Both children recall waving to a familiar sidewalk busker (saxophonist and street organ) on their way out in the morning.

... getting something delicious to eat on my way home in the afternoon...

Both think of stopping for a snack at their favorite sidewalk vendors.

In Tania de Regil's A New Home (Candlewick Press, 2019), author-illustrator Tania De Regil ironically shows her characters in their different-but-the-same activities, sharing the big game (baseball and futbol') with the crowd in big stadiums, ice skating and biking in their iconic outdoor places--Central Park and Bosque de Chepultepec, visiting their respective famous museums and negotiating the noisy crossings in Times Square and the Anillo Periferico around Mexico City.

De Regil's engaging side-by-side illustrations, done in bright mixed media (gouache, colored pencil, watercolors) picture some of the famous sights of each city with which the two young travelers will soon become familiar. And in a charming closing illustration, we see the two children smile at each other in the airport as they pass, trading home places in this story of familiar and foreign places and finding a home in a new city. De Regil also adds an appendix of thumbnail illustrations of scenes in both big cities of the famous places that will soon become familiar to both. This is a different book about relocating, one that involves changing countries and climates, a story about places that are different but alike, with all the inevitable but familiar feelings about moving to a new home."De Regil’s reassuring ode to one’s beloved home acknowledges both the flaws and vibrancy of the two places and encourages children to be brave and open-minded about moving," observes Horn Book.

A Glimpse of the Magic: The Lost Boy's Gift by Kimberly Willis Holt

There are places where you want to go and places where you want to leave. Sometimes you have no choice in the matter. This was the case for a boy named Daniel.

Daniel is moving, to a smaller house in a smaller town, and he can't take all his favorite things along. His world is shrinking.

He didn't take Snappy the Snail, but he packed his rock collection, his slingshot and skateboard.  He packed the sailboat his dad had given him, promising to find a pond to sail it in together. But he couldn't take his dad along. He had already moved somewhere else.

He packed the only book worth reading, Peter Pan.

But riding his bike down While-A-Way Lane he spots a lemonade stand that says CLOSED FOR SPRING BREAK, a pond where he could sail a boat, and a woman with a big, shaggy dog, talking to something in the grass. She says it's a grass snake, named Isadora.

And that's how he meets Tilda Butter, who nervously gives a spider a spot of tea and a crumb of toasted biscuit with jam as he chats about how his web captured a grasshopper hungrily eyeing Tilda's hosta's big green leaves.

"Yes, indeed," said Spider. You got to keep your perfect hosta and I got a nutritious meal. One must eat one's greens."

With a woman like Tilda to introduce him to the hidden magic of While-A-Way Lane, Daniel comes to see things in Falling Star Valley with new eyes. Tilda lets him walk her big dog Fred, and introduces him to some simple magic like mulch piles that transform garbage into rich dirt and the Woof Woof Wafers that make lay Fred into an obedient dog. He meets the most beautiful girl he's ever seen, Lemonade Girl, Tilda's friends Zip and Zap the squirrel brothers, and dodges the stern-looking piano teacher who pretends to play a shiny saxophone by her window every night. And he discovers the fireflies that swarm over the pond like a cloud of little stars.

Slowly the magic of While-A-Way Lane becomes visible, and when in his new school Daniel gets to play a Lost Boy in the school play Peter Pan, he finds himself an actor, playing a part, because he's not really lost anymore. He's home.

There are said to be people who work magic, and then there are those who can see and feel it, and Tilda Butter is that person for Daniel. Far from the place and people he knows, life had lost its magic and a lost boy needs a woman who talks with snakes and snails to help him find it again, in Kimberley Willis Holt's latest, The Lost Boy's Gift Henry Holt and Company, 2019. Sometimes life loses its sheen and it takes a guide to learn to see it again, and author Holt's novels are always guides to help find the way back to life's magic. Says the Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books, "Holt’s whimsical narrative moves between Daniel’s struggles in his new life, Tilda’s reflections on her old one, and the critters and community that surround them both. . . A smart, hopeful perspective of life on any lane."

Kimberly Willis Holt is the National Book Award-winning author of When Zachary Beaver Came to Town and the noted My Louisiana Sky

Too Much of a Good Thing? The Two Mutch Sisters by Carol Brendler

The Mutch Sisters were collectors. It started when they were very little girls.

First there were two toy teapots.

One for Ruby, one for Violet.

As Ruby and Violet grew, so did their collections. But Violet
and Ruby had radically clashing tastes. The rotund Violet favored the rococo--fussy, flowery, and fancy in clothes and cushy, kitschy, and curvaceous in furnishings. The spare Ruby sought the minimalist in everything, simple, straight-lined, neutral colored, with perhaps a touch of stripes. Even their two cats were different. Soon their spacious home grew crowded and cluttered. The two Mutch sisters had too much of everything.

The day came when Ruby could not even find a spot for her teacup at teatime.

"This house isn't big enough for the both of us. I'm moving out!"

Ruby began removing her half of the collections.

One gargoyle,
One glockenspiel,
One brass spittoon,
One French bassoon.

Leaving Violet alone among her now lonely bibelots and curios. Ruby moved across town into a no-nonsense moderne house where she found just the right place for each of her artfully-arranged objets d'arte.

"I like it!" Ruby said...

But something was missing.

Violet finds something missing, too, and there's only one thing to do, in Carol Brendler's forthcoming The Two Mutch Sisters (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2018), a humorous and doubly punny and homophonically-titled tale of two sisters whose penchant for tchotchkes turns them into hoarders. But as Brendler's perfectly paced narrative points out, there's one thing you can't have too much of, and that's the company of a sympathetic sister. Youngsters will love Violet's plan to bring the two sisters, their cats, and their teacups together again, and artist Lisa Brown's final two-page spread polishes it off with just the right style of gently comic illustrations done up in crayoned blackline and watercolored illustrations, right down to Violet's chest of tools and pack of mules. Vive' la difference!

The Accidental Country Girl: Little Ree by Ree Drummond

Hi, I am Ree.

A long time ago, I used to live in a city

But I don't live there anymore.

Ree Drummond, the country cook known far and wide as "the Pioneer Woman," and also as the author of those popular Charlie the Ranch Dog books, wasn't born and bred a country girl. No sirree! Here's the story:

Today I moved to an old red house on my Grandpa and Grandma's ranch. They needed a little help, and I am just the girl for the job.

Bravely, little Ree says goodbye to all her friends and packs up her roller skates, Teddy bear, and keyboard. But despite her confident air, Ree's first day on the farm is not exactly fantastic. She finds that she's swapped her frilly pink bedroom for something that looks more like a cowpoke bunkhouse. She has a hard time sleeping, what with all the coyotes howling and the crickets chirping outside all night.

The country sure is noisy!

And then she has her first experience in getting up before the sun, and she's still half asleep when she meets her cowhorse, Pepper, who refuses to go where she wants him to go. And when it's time to feed the stock, Ree finds out that hay bales are way on the heavy side!

Maybe I'm not cut out to be a country girl.

But fortified with a hearty country pancake breakfast, Ree tackles lessons in the rest of the chores--tractor-driving, roping and riding the fences, and still more bales of hay to handle. She even has to haul her little brother out of the muddy farm pond. But Ree plugs on bravely, hoping to please Grandpa and not embarrass herself in front of her country cousins, coming for an outdoor barbeque that night.

But as we all know, little Ree makes the transition, with the help of her family. And in Ree Drummond's little memoir of that transition, Little Ree (Harper, 2017), she's clearly on her way to her adult career:

My cousins are the best!

I think the country girl thing just might work out!

Moving is hard for children, and Drummond's story of her own fortuitous move from city to country life is an upbeat story of how it's done, with the equally exuberant illustrations of artist Jacqueline Rogers to highlight the comic aspects of cowgirl training. For more stories of life on the grownup cowgirl's ranch, see Drummond's other picture books, including Charlie Plays Ball (Charlie the Ranch Dog), Charlie and the New Baby (Charlie the Ranch Dog) and Charlie Goes to School (Charlie the Ranch Dog). (see reviews here)

Going and Coming: Bad Bye, Good Bye by Deborah Underwood

BAD TRUCK

BAD GUY

BAD WAVE

BAD BYE

It's a dark day when a boy and his little sister watch their toy box disappear inside the maw of a moving truck. Even the dog is downhearted. The last wave to their next-door neighbors is a sad bye, a bad bye.

In a driving rain they follow the mover's truck away from their pretty white-shuttered house, both children tearful and their parents looking grim, as the hot and heavily loaded car hits the highway.

But the gray, gloomy rain gives way to sunshine as their highway flows through yellow fields, past interesting windmills and water towers. A rest stop gives their dog a chance to meet up with a friendly hound on the dog walk, and a backseat nap cheers the kids up. A nice lady trucker with furry pink dice in her pink cab honks her horn for them, and an overnight motel stop offers a cool dip in the pool.

Back on the road, funny signs (DINAH'S DINA, AntiQues) and car games pass the time until at twilight, they find themselves in their new town, rolling down their new street to their new house, where the tired movers are already rolling down their ramp to unload. A boy with a dog waves from the house next door, and one of the movers tosses a ball from the toy box for the two dogs to chase.

The chase leads the two boys to a tree filled with blinking fireflies and steps nailed up its trunk lead to seats on the branches above. And by the time the beds are unloaded and the moving truck pulls away into the dark, it's time to wave a goodbye that really means "See you tomorrow!" to a new friend.

GOOD SKY

GOOD FRIEND

GOOD BYE

Deborah Underwood's latest, Bad Bye, Good Bye (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) captures the bad times-good times of a cross-country move in her typically evocative spare verse. With only two words per page, she says it all about leaving home and finding a home, with the help of Jonathan Bean's eloquent art. With illustrations that move relentlessly from left to right throughout the journey, Bean only reverses the flow near the ending, with the ball thrown right to left for the dogs, signalling that the move is done. Bean's art is muscular, with strong color and line, and filled with motion, from the dog and boy holding onto his toy box, to the trucks and road signs whizzing by, until it comes to rest with the family, standing and still, framed in their lighted doorway, home at last. A moving story about moving away, moving in, and moving on.

Other notable picture books by the talented Deborah Underwood include The Quiet Book, The Loud Book!, The Christmas Quiet Book, and the recent Here Comes the Easter Cat.