Be Yourself! Dear Boy, by Paris and Jason Rosenthal

DEAR BOY,

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF.

BE KIND.

HONESTY WILL NEVER LEAD YOU DOWN THE WRONG ROAD.

There are many things a parent wants to say to a child, and in this sequel to to Amy Krouse Rosenthal's best-selling advice for girls, Dear Girl, (see review here), the late Amy Krouse's daughter Paris and son Jason Rosenthal have written a companion book for boys, Dear Boy, (Harper, 2019). Parents of boys will find the authors' advice says a lot, including their closing:

KNOW THAT YOU CAN ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS TURN TO ME.

East Is East and West Is West: Gondra's Treasure by Linda Sue Park

My mom's family comes from the West.

Dad's family is from the East. My name is Gondra, and I was born
somewhere in the middle.

Dragons from the West fly with wings and have green scales. They also breathe fire.

Dragons from the East fly by magic and have golden scales. They breathe mist.

When Gondra was born, a teeny flame came from one nostril and a trace of mist came from the other.

"Adorable!" said her mom.

Dad agreed she was perfect.

Gondra can't wait for her tiny wings to grow big enough to fly. So far she sees no sign of magic like Dad's, but she soon spots a few new greenish blue scales on her tail.

Dad is so proud that he mists up the living room and makes it rain.

But sometimes Mom and Dad quibble about their differences. Dad thinks hoarding a treasure trove in a cave can't hold a candle to flying over the earth and magically controlling the weather.

"Where I come from, humans love dragons," says Dad.

Mom said, "In the West, humans haven't always loved dragons. But they do love stories about us!"

East is East and West is West, and Gondra is sure that she is the best of both.

After all, she is her Mom and Dad's treasure in Linda Sue Park's sweet fantasy story of picking the best from the family tree, in Newbery author Linda Sue Park's fanciful family tale, the forthcoming Gondra's Treasure (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2019).  It may be a bit of a fairy-tale family, but Gondra's parents do banter over whose way is best, ("Compared to fire, mist is...um, pretty boring," Mom mutters to herself, ), and Dad rejoices when Gondra sprouts a few blue scales like his. And like all little ones, Gondra blossoms in her parents' pride and love.

Artist Jennifer Black Reinhardt artfully skips the cliches in drawing dragons, giving all three characters their own colorful individual look while keeping to the actual archetypes of both types of dragons with an abundance of imagination and creativity in this definitely different dragon tale. Perfect for building healthy self-concepts and sparking conversations about family history.

Author Park appends an Author's Note, full of both Eastern and Western dragon lore and suggests why peoples of all ages of history have loved dragon stories.

Picky Picky! How To Feed Your Parents! by Ryan Miller

Matilda Macaroni wanted to try quiche. Her parents did NOT. The list of things Mr. and Mrs. Macaroni would eat was very short.

CHICKEN (only in nugget form)

BURGERS (only in a bag with ketchup, fries, and a toy)

PIZZA (only with pepperoni, delivered at the door.)

Their daily diet is dull, drab, humdrum...

BORING!

Even when Grandma brings over goulash and gumbo and jambalaya, Matilda's parents turn up their noses and run for the fridge to rustle up some leftover takeouts.

Matilda tried new foods whenever she could--sushi at a sleepover, paprikash at a playdate....

But her parents remain implacable, preferring bowls of sticky sweet cereal that make the milk purple. Matilda Macaroni realizes that if she is going to get anything approaching varied fare, she is going to have to turn the tables on her picky parents and prepare their meals herself. With Grandma at her side, she takes on cookery, covering all the basics. She peruses recipes. Tasty and nutritious vittles become her specialty.

She perfected paella and conquered croquettes.

At last ready to confront her parents with her gourmet cuisine, Matilda stealthily empties the fridge of every vestige of fast food, and promises there will not be a quiche in sight.

"Just burgers!"

Her parents are put off by the presence of mushrooms and weird green things called arugula inside the bun, but they agree to try a bite.

And they find Matilda's novelle cuisine burger is better than any McBurger in a bag, in Ryan Miller's brand-new How to Feed Your Parents (Sterling Books, 2018). Youngsters who are a bit leery of new foods will laugh at stodgy parents who are the picky eaters. Illustrator Hatem Aly's skillful comic illustrations turn the finicky diner tale upside down as the kid gets to be the expert on nutrition and meal prep, a switcheroo which will tickle funnybones and perhaps tempt stuck-in-a-rut eaters to try new foods, too. All is cool with the culinary arts in the Macaroni's kitchen, and now... if Matilda can only get her mom and dad to tidy up their room....

For another tale of tricking fussy eaters, pair this one with Dan Marvin's But I Don't Eat Ants (POW Books, 2017) (see review here.)

Getting to YES! Hypnosis Harry by Catherine Bailey

HARRY'S PARENTS SAID NO TO EVERYTHING.

"NO toys in the toaster."

"NO robot dragons before 7 a.m."

But an infomercial on television offers Harry an inspiration--a way to procure permanent positive responses from his parents--HYPNOSIS!

Harry digs out his grandpa's old pocket watch and practices a slow steady pendulum swing in front of his cat. But it's a little hard to tell if his technique is working, since the cat sleeps most of the time anyway.

But he hits paydirt with the tot next door.

"Look deep into my eyes....

You... are... tired... of ... your... toys..."

Flushed with power, Harry proceeds to hypnotize his parents. As their eyes glaze over, he whispers...

"From now on, you will always say yes!"

"For dinner, I would like cupcakes. With a side of bacon."

At last Harry is in control. His parents wordlessly order anything he requests--a drum kit, crates of comic books, a trampoline, fireworks, and, not one, but two monkeys! He sacks the babysitter, and bans broccoli from the house.

Harry can do whatever he wants. He can do the forbidden--let his baby sister dig in the garden, enjoy free rein with a glue bottle, and even, horrors, touch the goldfish!

But things begin to go awry. The robot wrecks the rec room. The monkeys run amok. And when Harry invites his classmates to climb the tricerotops skeleton at the museum, they are forbidden to come over to Harry's house any more.

Still, Harry remains the happy hypnotist--until one day at the park, perfecting his ninja leap from the swing, he crashes into a girl on a bike. Her mom rushes to comfort her and point out that riding too close to the swings is a no-no. Harry's foot hurts, but his parents just sit on the grass in a stupor.

Harry looked to his parents for sympathy.

They drooled gently on their shoes.

Harry limps home, his zombie-like parents trailing behind. The monkeys are making even more of a mess of the house, with pizza boxes piled high, and melting ice cream all over the carpet.

At last Harry understands why parents say NO, what all those rules really mean.

Be safe.

Be nice

I love you.

And Harry knows just how to snap his parents out of their trance. He begs them to wake up and even say NO sometimes.

All's well that ends well--with a thorough housecleaning, a bath for Harry, and a review of the rules, in Catherine Bailey's hilarious latest, Hypnosis Harry (Sky Pony Press, 2016), in which our young hero learns that having permissive parents isn't all it's cracked up to be. Bailey's theme goes down easy, with a hug from Harry's parents, in a gentle cautionary tale about the perils of too much freedom, bolstered by artist Sarita Rich's wryly humorous page design which reinforces the premise with illustrations of misbehaviors that spill past the page margins and crafty use of fonts that highlight the highjinks. This story of wish-fulfillment fantasy is as much fun for young readers as a barrel of monkeys.

But is hypnosis on a permanent hiatus in Harry's household? Maybe, maybe not.... The final page shows Baby Sis in possession of the pocket watch, busy mesmorizing the monkeys....

Bailey's earlier book was her 2015 Mind Your Monsters. (see my review here.)

Bringing Up Gosling! Mother Goose Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins

Bruce is a recluse.

Bruce is a grouch.

HE DID NOT LIKE SUNNY DAYS.

HE DID NOT LIKE CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS.

BRUCE ONLY LIKED ONE THING--EGGS.

You might say Bruce is a bird watcher. He watches all the birds in the forest, watching for an opportunity to "borrow" their eggs, openly robbing their nests for the delicacies he concocts with his collection of egg recipes borrowed from the internet. One day he comes across an enticing dish, featuring hard-boiled eggs in honey sauce over salmon.

Bruce pulls out his personal shopping cart and sets out to collect the ingredients. He catches some fresh salmon and then relieves the bees of some of their honey.

(HE LIKED TO SUPPORT LOCAL BEES, YOU SEE.)

That only leaves the main attraction--eggs. Luckily, Mrs. Goose has a nice clutch going.

"ARE THESE FREE-RANGE ORGANIC?" HE ASKED.

Back home, Bruce puts the goose eggs in a saucepan to cook, but when he returns with firewood to stoke the stove, he finds four just-hatched goslings standing in a footbath of warm water in the pot.

Now we all know what young birds do when they hatch! Yes! They imprint on the first moving thing they see, and that's ... Mother Goose Bruce!

"MAMA?"

Bruce is nonplussed. He grabs up his gaggle of goslings and heads back to Mrs. Goose's nest to return the defective merchandise. He finds only a sign:

[BE BACK IN APRIL!]

That's not good news. Bruce has got the baby goose blues! They follow him everywhere, despite his stern orders to shoo!

"I'M NOT YOUR MOTHER!"

Perhaps he can induce the geese to migrate. He rigs a slingshot between two saplings to shoot them into a southerly route. No luck. He buys them little single-engine model planes and tries to send them off into the wild blue yonder. They circle back, honking "MAMA!" and wearing warm mufflers and knit caps, all set to winter over with Mother Bruce.

Like it or not, Mother Goose Bruce is stuck raising his little flock. Wearing water wings and swim fins, he dutifully supervises first swimming lessons in their little plastic pool. He books a motel on the beach in Miami, hoping that they'll get the urge to stay south. He suffers through all the usual parental stages:

ANNOYING BABY GEESE.

STUBBORN TEENAGE GEESE.

BORING ADULT GEESE.

It's an unusual blended family, all right, in Ryan T. Higgins hilarious hit, Mother Bruce (Hyperion Books, 2015). Newbie author-illustrator Higgins hits all the marks in this, his first book. His wry and ironic text is pitch perfect in its sly but loving spoof of parenting, and his illustrations are both lovely and comic, opening with a charming woodsy scene reminiscent of Disney's Snow White's forest and beguiling goslings that are kissing-cousin likenesses of Olivier Dunrea's Gossie (Gossie & Friends), and still providing laugh-out loud scenes--game goslings in flight helmets in little open-cockpit airplanes, his "stubborn teenage geese" slouching about with earphones, and Bruce and one grown gosling, stretched out in beach chairs with sunglasses and iced drinks with little umbrellas, while another is followed out of the ocean by a tiny sea turtle, ironically piping "Mama?"

Kids and grownups alike will find a lot to like together in this one, a great family read-aloud. "Visually beautiful, clever, edgy and very funny," says Kirkus' starred review.

Getting An Earful: Listen, Buddy by Helen Lester and Lynn Munsinger

BUDDY HAD BEAUTIFUL BIG EARS.

IT DIDN'T MATTER.

WHEN BUDDY'S PARENTS SENT HIM TO THE VEGETABLE STAND TO GET A BASKET OF SQUASH, HE CAME HOME WITH A BASKET OF WASH.

It's not the hardware; it's the software. His brain doesn't seem to  be processing the transmission from Buddy's big ears. When sent for fifteen tomatoes, he returns with fifty potatoes. His dad gets a hen when he asks for a pen. His mom wants a slice of bread to make breakfast toast. What she gets is a freshly sawed slice of bed. His parents try everything--yelling, whispering, lecturing. But all their messages seem to get scrambled somewhere in their boy's brain.

Then they decide to let Buddy go out on his own for a while. They have only one instruction.

"THE PATH TO THE LEFT WILL LEAD YOU AROUND THE POND AND BACK HOME. BUT THE PATH TO THE RIGHT WILL LEAD YOU TO THE CAVE OF THE SCRUFFY VARMINT.

SO BE SURE TO TAKE THE PATH TO THE LEFT."

"RIGHT?" ASKED BUDDY.

"LEFT!" SAID HIS PARENTS.

"RIGHT!" SAID BUDDY.

Of course, everyone knows where this one is going except the befuddled Buddy. Left is right is too much for Buddy's brain to sort out, and he soon finds himself on the path to the dreaded Scruffy Varmint's slatternly cave. He comes upon the Varmint, who is thinking of making a big pot of soup and glad to see a little errand boy appear at his door. He dispatches Buddy to fetch firewood, get five pinches of salt and some flour, the ever popular fifteen tomatoes, and a load of squash, with predictable results from Buddy, But when he orders Buddy to put the soup on the fire and Buddy pours the whole mess, including a load of dirty laundry, on the fire, the Varmint decides to take over the soup-making himself.

"I WILL HAVE SOUP!  BUNNYRABBIT SOUP,  THE BUNNYRABBIT WHO NEVER LISTENS!"

By the creators of such hits as Hooway for Wodney Wat;   Wodney Wat's Wobot, and Tacky the Penguin and its many sequels, Helen Lester's and Lynn Munsinger's cute little cautionary tale, Listen, Buddy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), all dressed up in a new hardback reissue, is a humorous homily on learning to listen for youngsters who tune out their parents' admonitions. Munsinger's illustrations of this little long-eared bunny and his doting but discouraged parents add just the right humor to this jolly little lesson in the Peter Rabbit tradition.

Summer's Lease: Summer Days and Nights by Wong Herbert Yee

What is so rare" as a summer's day?

Here is a summer day (and night) as seen through the senses of a young child, whose bare feet carry her after a butterfly and whose ears lead her to investigate a buzz, whose eyes are surprised and delighted to see a big, fuzzy, yellow and black bumblebee hovering by the pond.

In the halcyon world of Wong Herbert Yee's latest in a youngster's outdoor adventures, Summer Days and Nights (Henry Holt, 2012), a little girl strolls barefoot through a daisy-bedecked meadow, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells of a summer morning. She sits beneath a shady tree to sip her lemonade, and then she's ready for a different experience.

WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO KEEP ME COOL?
KERSPLASH! I JUMP INTO THE POOL!

After a splash in the wading pool, parents beckon the child to another summer delight, a picnic by the playground in the park.

A GOLDEN SUN SINKS IN THE SKY.
ANOTHER SUMMER DAY GONE BY.

But when darkness comes and it's too warm to fall asleep right away, the summer night is still calling her outside. A field mouse rustles below her window, and a hooting barn owl and barrumping bullfrog call her to a concert.

SUMMER NIGHT, MOONLIGHT SKIES,
WINGING, BLINKING FIREFLIES.

And when this happy little girl finally closes her eyes to "dream of summer days and nights," we realize that such a time of childhood is itself a dreamlike experience. Yee's simple rhyming couplets and soft-focus colored pencil illustrations on watercolor papers give this charming little tone poem of a book a dreamlike look and mood of its own, which reminds the adult reader that early childhood, like summer, "hath all to short a date."

"Small in scale but large-hearted in scope. . . Yee uses a free-associative first-person narrative to capture, beautifully, the meandering, quotidian episodes of a child's day outdoors," says The New York Times.

Yee's other books in this seasonal series are Who Likes Rain? and Tracks in the Snow. (read my review here)