Zen Socks by Jon J. Muth

Leo and Molly sat on the porch of their new home.

"Look," said Leo, "It's going to happen again!"

"Yep," said Molly. "It's almost time."

"What's his name again?" asked Leo. "Mr. Quietpuddle?"

"Stillwater," said Molly.

Of course, their neighbor is Stillwater, the philosophical giant panda, wearing striped socks instead of the Zen Shorts (Caldecott Honor Book) of an earlier book, this time acting as mentor to the new kids on the block, Molly and Leo.

"Hi, Stillwater. This is our cat, Moss!" says Molly.

Moss hops into the basket of Stillwater's bike and the three head off for a spin, Molly just has to tell Stillwater about her ballet lessons, bubbling on about how she's going to be a top star, featured in glamorous, sparkly posters and adored by the public. Stillwater listens in bemused silence and then launches into the Zen parable of Banzo's Sword, in which the gungho young Jiro wants instant results in his swordsmanship. When Master Banzo tells him it will take thirty years of study, he is not willing to wait.

"I want to master the art now!" Jiro insisted.

"I see," said Banzo, "in that case you will have to work for seventy years!"

"I understand," said Molly. "I am not being patient. I will practice as long as it takes."

A few days later, it's Leo's turn to learn a lesson, as he and Stillwater agree to play with his robots.

"I'll be all the good guys, "said Leo, choosing all the best figures, "and you will be the bad guy," he says, taking charge.

"I love being the bad guy," Stillwater announced."

And to illustrate his role, he grabs the biggest cookies with the biggest chocolate chunks off the snack plate. Leo gets the message.

Then Stillwater and the kids happily head for a walk on the beach, but they are saddened to see the beach littered with starfish, left high and dry in the outgoing tide. They rush down and start tossing the beached starfish back into the water, but the task seems endless.

"There are too many," says Leo. "This won't make any difference."

Molly picked up one starfish and threw it back into the water.

"It will for him!" she said.

Caldecott-winning author-illustrator John J. Muth's Zen Socks (Scholastic Press, 2015) brings back his celebrated character in another story of Zen Panda Stillwater and his new young friends. Gentle wisdom bolstered by standout illustrations make this new one a winner as well for Muth, whose stunning draftsmanship and judicial use of colors give his illustrations impact and balance, just like his themes. For a Halloween-themed Stillwater story, pair this one with Muth's Zen Ghosts, (see review here).

Parting the Waters: Chu's Day at the Beach by Neil Gaiman and Adam Rex

IT WAS A HOT DAY AND CHU AND HIS FAMILY WENT TO THE BEACH.

BUT WHEN CHU SNEEZES... BIG THINGS HAPPEN.

But, hey! No problem at the beach, right? No daisy pollen, no peppery chimichangas, no chalk dust or circus sawdust to give Chu a snoot full and set off the sneezes! Mom stretches out in the sun for a quiet beach read, and Dad wades in the almost waveless shallows. An octopus vendor hands Chu an ice cream cone. What could possibly disturb this idyllic scene?

CHU TOOK OFF HIS SUNGLASSES.

THE DAY WAS SUNNY AND BRIGHT.

CHU'S NOSE TICKLED. THE TICKLE GOT BIGGER AND BIGGER.

Ahh! AHHH! AHHHH! CHOOOOOOOOO!

Chu's sneeze creates a tsunami! The waters flow backward and then move back toward the beach, freezing into a giant wave hovering over the sand. The bedazzled beachcombers are agog. It's like looking through the aquarium glass at Sea World. The amazed fish wave at Chu and he waves back. A merpanda girl gives him a big smile, and a giant whale wails that he's stranded.

"I CAN'T GO HOME!"

The ocean is broken! There's only one thing to do. Chu HAS to sneeze again. Fast!

A seagull plucks a tail feather to tickle his nose.

AH... AHH... AHHH... Nope.

The vendor hands him a fizzy drink to fizzle his nose. Ah... Ahh...Ahhh. No way, Nose-ay.

Is the ocean really split forever?

Then a very little snail comes up with a quick idea.

"Sometimes I sneeze when I see the sun."

Chu removes his sunglasses again. Bingo!

"AAAAAH... CHOOOOOOOO!"

The sea flows back together, the sea animals rejoice at their reunion, and although there is some collateral damage to the shore (ice cream cones all around), the waters go back to where they are supposed to be as the little merpanda swims over to Chu to confess that sometimes she sneezes big time, too.

It's just a day at the beach in Neil Gaiman's latest Aw, Chu! fest, Chu's Day at the Beach (Harper-Collins, 2015). Artist Adam Rex adds his usual charmingly detailed illustrations, with a terminally cute Chu in his 1890s swimsuit and giraffe floatie, as totally befuddled as always by his superpower sneezes. Says School Library Journal, "Rex's menagerie of anthropomorphized animals, including merpandas, drawn in hyper-realistic human settings creates a humorous alternate reality that perfectly complements the plot. VERDICT A fun addition to most picture book collections."

A splashy read-aloud for the summer set, especially when paired with Chu's other sneezy-breezy adventures. (see reviews here.)

Say the Magic Word! Please, Mr. Panda! by Steve Anthony

"Would you like a donut?"

A prim Panda seems to be trying to unload his wares, donuts, iced in bright colors. After all, he's wearing a cap that says Donuts.

A perky penguin decides to take advantage of the offer.

"Give me the yellow one!"

"No, you cannot have a donut. I have changed my mind."

The less-than-positive Panda approaches a striped Skunk and repeats his offer. Skunk opts for two, one yellow. one blue.

With a petulant pout, the Panda turns away, proclaiming that he's changed his mind yet again.

Similarly, the persistent Panda gives a sleek Swan the same option, but this supercilious Swan will have none of his garish goodies.

This time the peripatetic Panda heads down to the seaside where a walloping Whale is floating in the waves, so he intones his offer once more in a pontifical voice.

Oh, Boy! Would he? The Whale yells that he wants 'em all, and then some more!

Quite perturbed, the peeved Panda points out that he's changed his plan once more and exits page right, expeditiously.

What's a guy got to do to get a donut around here?

Suddenly a new customer drops in, a long-tailed Lemur, lounging in a tree and hanging by his tail, who obviously knows his Ps and Qs.

"May I have a donut?

PLEASE?"

Apparently, PLEASE is the magic word if you wish to please a persnickety Panda, (off-putting as he may be) in Steve Anthony's pleasing little parable of Panda proprieties, Please, Mr. Panda (Scholastic Press, 2015). Steve Anthony's wry wit lifts this plot out of the realm of an etiquette lesson and makes of it an elegant little character-driven tale. Anthony's black and white characters, meticulously conceived and delivered, parade across the page with a predictable, but ultimately surprising conclusion that pleases both the Panda, who seems to dislike donuts almost as much as bad manners, and the lemur, who seemingly loves the rainbow-glazed pastries. Even the endpapers get into the story, which ends, appropriately enough, with a well-fed and lazy lemur sleeping off his just desserts, with his ring-tail serving as a pantry for the rest of the stacked donuts.

Bound to please preschoolers, primary graders, and panda (and donut) lovers everywhere.

Back to School: Chu's First Day of School by Neil Gaiman

CHU WAS WORRIED.

HE HAD NEVER BEEN TO SCHOOL BEFORE.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

All first-timers are at least a little leery of leaving the home setting and moving into the world of SCHOOL! Chu voices his fears to his parents, who blithely assure him that his teachers and classmates are sure to like him.

But Chu is worried. You see...

THERE IS THIS THING THAT CHU COULD DO.

Youngsters fortunate enough to have read Neil Gaiman's first Chu story will know why Chu is worried. Those who haven't will get a clue from the book's title page and frontispiece. Chu is first shown sitting amid a field of daisies, looking warily across the street at the waiting Big School. A page turn shows the tall grass flattened where he was sitting and bits of daisies and grass floating down through the air as Chu hustles off, page right.

At school the teacher and students do seem nice. Teacher kicks the day off with a getting-to-know you exercise in which students are to introduce themselves and tell the others something special they can do.

Jengo the Giraffe says that she likes to get things down from high shelves. Pancho the Capuchin says he likes to climb trees if they aren't too tall, and Robin says she likes to sing.

When it is his turn, Chu takes a pass.

The others all take their turns, happy to tell about the cool things they do, as Teacher chalks their names carefully on the blackboard. At last everyone looks at Chu.

And as the  chalk dust tickles his nose,  they find out the special thing Chu could do:

"AHH... AAAAH... AAAAAH....

"AAAAAAHH-CHOOOOOOOOO!"

Papers fly from Teacher's desk, books fly, too, as bookcases, desks, and stools overturn. Everyone is dazed, surprised, and overwhelmed. Teacher picks herself up, but everyone else lies there, speechless.

"THAT'S WHAT I DO," SAID CHU.

Neil Gaiman's latest Chu story, Chu's First Day of School (HarperCollins, 2014), shows his sneezy protagonist as he blows the first-day blues away. Chu's impromptu ah-choo is certainly an icebreaker for his class, and by the time he gets home, he announces that he's not worried anymore.

Notable artist Adam Rex does the illustrative honors, with the most engaging little panda ever front and center, mixing full-bleed colored pages with bright white backgrounds where his adorable little Chu is highlighted in all his innocent charm. Of all the first-day-of-school stories out there, this one is truly unique.

Newbery author Gaiman's first Chu book is Chu's Day, and you can read my 2013 review here.

Getting to Goodnight! Chengdu Could Not, Would Not, Fall Asleep by Barney Saltzberg

IT WAS LATE AND IT WAS QUIET,

AND IN THE BAMBOO GROVE EVERYONE WAS SLEEPING...

EVERYONE EXCEPT CHENGDU.

Some kids refuse to go to sleep. That's not Chengdu's problem, but his parents aren't appreciative of his bedtime compliance. They might be, IF they were awake, which they're not.

No one in the family is awake except little Chengdu. He wants to go to sleep, but his eyes are wide open.

Perhaps a change in position will help. He tries hanging upside by all fours, like a sloth. It doesn't work. He tries hanging head down like a bat. No luck.

No position seems to work. Finally he climbs up the tree, looking for a more comfortable limb. But when he finds it, someone else has beat him to it--his brother Yuan.

Suddenly Chengdu's eyes want to close. He climbs on top of his brother Yuan... and falls asleep instantly.

But now Yuan is wide awake.

Despite its little insomniac panda, Barry Saltzberg's latest, Chengdu Could Not, Would Not, Fall Asleep (Hyperion Books, 2014) is a fine inducement to drifting off to dreamland for young sleep resisters. The illustrations, done on a textured paper in pencil, watercolor, with digital touches, use just a few colors--white, gray, black, and a soft but pleasing green, giving the dark scene a moonlit glow that is both pleasing and restful to the eye. Salzberg's engaging page design includes narrow pages increasing in size as Chendu ascends the tree and show off the little panda's sleepy time struggles perfectly, with just the touch of sibling humor at the end. For contrast, pair this one with Jonathan Allen's wide-awake little owl who protests I'm Not Sleepy! (See my review here.)

Zoo Do! Xander's Panda Party by Linda Sue Park

XANDER PLANNED A PANDA PARTY. YES, A DANDY WHOOP-DE-DO!
BUT XANDER WAS THE ONLY PANDA. JUST ONE PANDA AT THE ZOO.

XANDER SAT AND CHEWED BAMBOO.
HE CHANGED HIS PLANS AND POINT OF VIEW.

How do you host the perfect party?

Pro party planners advise assembling invitees with something in common for a simpatico guest list.

Well, that's Xander Panda's plan, but there's one big problem.  With zero other pandas in his zoo, Xander broadens his reference group to... bears. There are the usual suspects nearby--Black Bear, Brown Bear, both Polar Bears.... Grizzly, and, well, Koala?

An all bear bash it is, with an omnivore menu of berries, honey, eucalyptus, bamboo, plus fish and grubs. But then Koala brings up the little matter of, er, genus:

"I AM NOT A BEAR, I SWEAR. I AM A MARSUPIAL!
MARSUPIALS ARE RATHER RARE. WILL I NOT BE WELCOME THERE?

Xander gives the matter a lot of bamboo-chewing thought.

Okay. He widens the guest list to everyone with fur, a mammalian celebration! Xander hands out new invites!

But now Rhinoceros has a problem that seems at first absurd.

"I WON'T COME WITHOUT MY BIRD."

Having forgotten about the rhinoceros-bird symbiosis, Xander has to rethink his list. All right, a fur-and-feather fest it is!

But then Crocodile, beguiling smile and all, points out the evolutionary connection of reptiles with birds, and asks for an exception for his kind. It's back to the bamboo patch for more mulling and chewing. Can he eschew reptiles? This party is getting totally out of hand. Too much for one panda to do!

But there's a hostess with the mostest at hand.

"NICE TO MEET YOU, XANDER PANDA.
I'M AMANDA SALAMANDER.

With Amanda handling the details, and her family of amphibians on board, it's Calling All Creatures at the zoo, with people, too, for the perfect panda party, in Newbery-winner Linda Sue Park's new picture book, Xander's Panda Party (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2013). The author of award-winning historical fiction, Park proves herself quite the poet in her latest rhyme-fest. Matt Phelan's illustrations are picture perfect in black line and water-colored artwork that portrays a lion-and-lamb peace truce in which the koala snoozes in a coil of python and Brown Bear and Croc trip the light fantastic, while Xander discovers someone new at the zoo and the pandas are now two! Park's verse flow naturally in a a prose layout, and her story has a lot to say about expanding the circle of friends in a perfect party after all. This is a delightful picture book which, with its naturally charming rhymes, will practically read itself.

Park even appends an author's note that explains how her son's enthusiasm for all things panda inspired the book and adds a simple explanation of symbiotic relationships in in nature and how with DNA testing, pandas have recently switched their taxonomic classification from the raccoon family to the bear family.

Sweet Embraceable You! The Perfect Hug by Joanna Walsh

I HAVE TRIED THEM ALL...

ELASTIC HUGS!
GYMNASTIC HUGS!
ENTHUSIASTIC HUGS!
BUT....

What is the perfect hug? A little panda, geared up in deerstalker cap and magnifying glass a la Sherlock sets out to find the quintessential embrace–with mixed results. It’s hard to get a humongous hug from a creature without arms! (So snails are out!) But then, spiders have a tad too many!

Big hugs from a grizzly? Y-e-e-s, they’re big, all right, but maybe too toothy and terrifying!

Out in Star Wars land, in a Galaxy far away? Um... Lots of space out there to search.

Down deep in the sea? A jellyfish! Nope, too easy to get stung among all those entangling tentacles!

Cow hug? Where do you start? Tiger hug? (See warning for grizzly above.)

What kind of hug is best for a little panda? That’s not a mystery in Joanna Walsh’s companion book to her 2011 hit, The Biggest Kiss (Paula Wiseman Books), titled The Perfect Hug (Paula Wiseman Books, 2012). Little Panda finds that panda hugs match panda hugs in Walsh’s latest sit-and-snuggle story for preschoolers. Despite her young audience, Walsh’s verse is sophisticated, with internal rhymes and surprising juxtapositions and lots of opportunities for vocabulary stretching. Artist Judi Abbott returns to extend the humor with her just-right, rounded and bright pastel illustrations, as warm and inviting as an embrace themselves. Together, these two books make the perfect almost-bedtime read-aloud duo.