The Slothful Spud: The Couch Potato by Jory John

I AM A POTATO.

NOT A SMALL POTATO LIKE MY BROTHER. NOT A SWEET POTATO LIKE MY MOTHER. NOT A MASHED POTATO LIKE MY UNCLE STU.

I AM A COUCH POTATO.

In other words, he's a Couch Slouch. He's got everything he needs--the remote, his game controller, earphones, snacks, and fuzzy bunny slippers. And a whole wall of diverse screens for all purposes--even hanging with his pal-potatoes on-line. Everything in the cosmos is only a click away! Everything, he believes... What could go wrong?

UNTIL THE OTHER DAY...

C.P. plugs in a new device and FOOP! The power poops out. He's in the dark!

He's forced to open the drapes and sees that fortunately the sun is still on the job. He takes a spud stroll with his dog Tator. The colors outside are even more vivid than those on television. He climbs a hill and sits under a tree and watches the sun slide down the screen, er, sky. Hey, this isn't so bad! He walks back home. He's not even a tired tuber or a pooped potato or French fried. He's ready for action outside in the world.

The slouch is soon off the couch and putting down his roots in the great outdoors with his potato pals, in Jory John's latest spud saga, The Couch Potato (Harper, 2020). A plug to those sluggish couch potatoes to get out and get under the sun is his latest in Jory John's food friends series, joining his best-selling foodstuff fiction, The Bad Seed, The Smart Cookie (Food Group), The Cool Bean, and The Good Egg.

Always ready with a punny joke, Kirkus Reviews quips, "Looking for a spud-tacular read? Starch here."

Rain Day! This Beautiful Day by Richard Jackson

It's a drippy-droppy rainy gray day, with three kids and a dog listlessly hanging around inside.

But a jazzy song comes on the radio, and they all start moving to the beat.

Everyone dances --and spins,

And swings around.

One kid grabs a toy rabbit and gives it a twirl, and they all start stomping their feet. Now the energy is flowing, and it flows...

Out into the rain!

The kids, one with an umbrella, and their dog skip and jump in the puddles. It's not a bad day at all.

As one kid starts to whistle, they notice that the rain is slowing down and the clouds are floating away. Blue skies call for some cartwheeling across the green grass and playing hide-and-seek under a marigold sun.

What a great day!

High-fiving, and, yes, we're a-live-ing!

It's a perfect day, ending with drippy-droppy, slurpy popsicles, in Richard Jackson's This Beautiful Day (Atheneum Books, 2017). Jackson's evocative text captures a memorable moment in childhood, set off beautifully by artist Suzy Lee's delightful line drawings which have a movement of their own, while her gray and black color scheme shifts gently to black and blue and then to blue and white until the sun shows up to bring all the colors out to play along with the children. It's a wonderful day for childsplay. Publishers Weekly calls this one "a high-spirited hymn to childhood, an heir to earlier classics by Margaret Wise Brown and Ruth Krause."

Square Deal! What To Do With A Box by Jane Yolen

A BOX! A BOX
IS A WONDER
INDEED.THE ONLY
SUCH MAGIC
THAT YOU'LL
EVER NEED.

A plain, brown cardboard box is a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which the child's mind can draw anything that can be imagined.

It can be turned upside down to become a tea party table. It can be a reading nook, a private window seat to snuggle with a book. A box can be a library, a door to open with its magic key.

Or that box can take you away, far away from your usual day.

YOU CAN DRIVE IN THAT BOX ALL AROUND A DIRT TRACK.

YOU CAN SAIL IN THAT BOX OFF TO PARIS AND BACK.

Kids can decorate those boxes with crayons or paints, turning them into a a backdrop for a play or an forest exploration adventure. A box can be whatever you see, whatever you make of it.

Maybe a box isn't the only incentive to fire up the imagination, but even babies can see the fun involved in crawling inside and playing hide-and-seek long before they ever hear of that game. Noted author of the best-selling The Bear Books, begun with Bear Snores On (The Bear Books), Jane Yolen's newest rhyming book,  What To Do With a Box (Creative Education, 2016), is impelled along by her genial anapestic pentameter verse, and illustrator Chris Sheban provides multiple inventive uses of cardboard media to add to the fun, introducing just a few of the ways a box can be used as an all-purpose toy. In their starred review, Kirkus adds, "Intuitive, inspired executions of art and verse perfectly capture the unending fun of time spent inside a box."

Absolutely pair this one with Antoinette Portis' brilliant Not a Box. (see my review here)

Paper Chase: Float by Daniel Miyares

A cloudy summer afternoon and some scrap paper are the beginning of something big. A boy's dad shows him how to fold the traditional cocked-hat paper boat.

And just in time! It begins to rain lightly, opening up possibilities, and clad in bright yellow slicker and hood, the boy steps out into the gray drizzle, sheltering his boat from the damp. The storm builds into a downpour, hiding the boy in a blur of gray rainfall and blurry yellow raincoat. But then the shower passes, leaving deep puddles just right for splashing and a beguiling rivulet along the curb. The boy launches his boat.

It floats! As the wide porches and peaked roofs of his street are reflected upside down in the flow, the little barque sails along, picking up speed as the flow of water seems to widen and deepen.

Oh! There's a reason for that building water power, as the boy sees his little boat disappear down the gratings of a storm drain. In a dramatic page view, the boat is seen from below the street, in the sudden waterfall, rushing downstream as the boy's reaching hand fails to catch it.

Listening to the water rushing beneath the street, the boy chases after, until he reaches an arched bridge. Looking down, he sees the rainwater torrent rushing out to join a small stream, and, soggy and shapeless, the remains of his boat.

Sadly the boy fishes it out of the tangle of flotsam along the bank and heads home. The rain is gone and so is his boat.

But back home, there are a dry tee and shorts, a blow dry for his drippy hair and a hot drink with Dad, and the two pull out more paper. His father patiently show him how to shape one sheet into another familiar pattern... a paper airplane.

Armed for more adventures, the boy opens the door. Silhouetted against the bright gold of the returned sun, he steps forward and lifts his aircraft high for its first flight.

Daniel Miyares' latest, Float (Simon and Schuster, 2015) is an artistic tour de force which without words expresses the joy of independent childhood imagination and adventure. Miyares' boy, evoking Ezra Jack Keats' iconic Peter in The Snowy Day and Raymond Briggs boy in The Snowman, is the center of a story with the perfect, (and sometimes lost) balance of loving adult guidance and freedom of experience in the out-of-doors. Miyares' illustrations, an essay in grays from varying perspectives, are highlighted only by small squares of color on the recycled paper and by the dramatic bright yellow of the boy's slicker, at the end repeated brilliantly in the golden doorway which opens to beckoning adventures on the final page. Wordlessly but eloquently, Miyares portrays the world outside, the houses and streets as both orderly and intriguing, a place where a child can go to find experience, wonder, and joy. An amazing book, simple yet profound, with much to offer. Publishers Weekly says, "It’s a moment of childhood captured in multiple dimensions." Watch for this one at award time!

And as a special bonus, Miyares' endpapers offer diagrams for making paper boats and airplanes.

Two Hirsute Hombres: Mustache Baby Meets His Match by Bridget Heos

BABY BILLY WAS BORN WITH A MUSTACHE.

USUALLY IT WAS A GOOD-GUY MUSTACHE, BUT OCCASIONALLY IT CURLED UP AT THE ENDS INTO A--WELL, YOU KNOW.

THEN ONE DAY, BABY JAVIER CAME TO TOWN.

Yep. There's a new hairy hombre in town, the Beard Kid, and when he rides up into Billy's corral on his three-wheeled cayuse, Mustache Baby knows that means there's bound to be a facial-haired shootout on Main Street, otherwise known as El Rancho de Billy.

The two hairy hombres have a face down, glaring into each other's eyes and taking each other's mettle. Mustache Baby resolves to teach Javier that there's not room for both of them in this town, or at least not in his backyard.

BUT THIS WASN'T JAVIER'S FIRST RODEO.

Hirsute Javier's beard gets spiky as he shows Billy how he can wrestle bears and chop down trees in jig time. Billy's mustache curls aggressively as he undertakes to prove that at best Javier is no better than sidekick material. It all comes down to a showdown in the wrestling ring, Barba Nino (a.k.a. Beard Baby) vs. the local hero, Mustache Baby.

Bridget Heos' second book about her mustachio-ed toddler, Mustache Baby Meets His MatchHoughton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), offers a humorous run-through of all the Old West cliches as the two follicularly precocious tots work out their rivalry to become Wild West pardners. Artist Joy Ang's comic digital illustrations extend the text, providing visual storytelling for kids too young to recognize the old Western movie tropes that will give their parents a chuckle. Youngsters will crave more of these two hairy-faced hombres as Billy the (Mustached) Kid and Barba Nino resolve to ride the range together.

This one begs to be read in tandem with its popular predecessor, Mustache Baby (see my September, 2013 review here).

Snow Magic: Outside by Deirdre Gill

OUTSIDE, THE SNOW FALLS SILENTLY ON THE HOUSE.

INSIDE, A BOY HAS NOTHING TO DO.

His toy dragon mounts an attack on his brother, who sits immobile in front of a screen, oblivious to red plush fantasies.

So the boy suits up in coat, tall boots, and scarf and leaves him behind.

He steps outside... into a different world, and on the bottom step turns around and falls backward...

PLOOF!

HE SINKS INTO THE SOFT SNOW.

Looking up at the sky, with just a few wispy clouds, he sees in them the shape of an angel, and makes his own angel in the snow. He knocks on the window and writes on the frosty glass, "Come outside," but his brother is lost in a game on another screen.

SO THE BOY BEGINS TO ROLL A LITTLE CLUMP OF SNOW.

And when the snowball is taller than he is, he sculpts a snow creature.

The snow creature and the boy regard each other seriously and then they begin to build...

UNTIL,

THE CASTLE IS PERFECT.

A castle calls for a dragon, and waving goodbye to the snow creature on the ground, the boy mounts the dragon's back and soars, over the trees, over his house, and beyond the village, which grows tiny below him as the sun begins to set.

Then it is time to leave his snow dragon and head back inside, except... there is his brother, finally in his parka and boots and ready to go out, and together by starlight the boys

PLAY OUTSIDE.

Not even the most jaded adult commuter can miss the magic of a new-snow morning, all angles softened and all the drab colors of winter vanquished beneath sparkling white. Deirdre Gill's debut book, Outside (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014). forthcoming today, takes the reader outside, outside the house, yes, but also outside the usual world to a place where trees and snowmen become magical beings and even a sunset dragon offers a flight above the everyday world. Gill's narration is simple, set against her illustrations, done in retro style and soft pastels, the grays, blues, and whites of the snow, the soft green of the gingerbread-trimmed farmhouse, and the dragon's-breath red and orange glow of the dragon that evoke everychild's dream of a snowy day. Possibly the best snow book of the year, this one is perfect for reading alone or pairing with the classics, Ezra Jack Keats' The Snowy Day or Raymond Briggs' The Snowman.

Play With Me? One Busy Day by Lola H. Schaefer

MIA WANTED TO DO SOMETHING.

ANYTHING

WITH HER BIG BROTHER, SPENCER.

It's the younger sister's dilemma. Big brother Spencer is so cool! Not only does he have a wild imagination; Spencer is born to move, and little sister Mia longs to get in on the action. Spencer zooms from flying his dragon kite to careening his trike, pretending to be a dragon slayer and a race car driver at almost the same time. Deep in play, he pretty much ignores Mia.

Mia has a choice. She could whine and tattle, appealing to Mom.

Or, she can come up with her own fantasy fun.

Mia pretends to be a famous painter. She whirls and twirls like a prima ballerina. Making mud cakes, she imagines herself as a grand chef, surrounded by her fabulous pastries. She constructs a sand mountain with a towering castle on top. She turns her plastic wading pool into an ocean and her floatie toy into a dolphin who carries her bounding over the waves. She throws a blanket over some chairs and crawls inside to explore her deep, dark cave.

As she has hoped, little by little Spencer becomes intrigued with Mia's fanciful adventures, and soon the two are swashbuckling with toy swords, defending their redoubt against fiery dragons, and sailing the seas in tandem imaginings.

MIA AND SPENCER WERE BOTH BUSY. VERY VERY BUSY--TOGETHER.

Author Lola Schaefer revisits the brother and new baby sister characters in her noted first book, One Special Day, a few years later, with the hyperkinetic Spencer still going strong, but with his equally creative sister Mia just old enough to want to get into the act. Schaeffer paces the story well, with Mia's intriguing solo play incrementally catching Spencer's attention, and the illustrations by Jessica Meserve are just as telling and tender in their just published second book, One Busy Day: A Story for Big Brothers and Sisters (Hyperion Books, 2014). Kirkus Reviews gives this sequel a starred review, saying "Hooray for sibling revelry!"

Daring Deeds on Deadline!:Zoe's Jungle by Bethanie Deeney Murguia

ABOVE THE JUNGLE FLOOR THE FEARLESS EXPLORER GLIMPSES A RARE SPOTTED ADDIEBEAST.

SHE SAILS THROUGH THE TREETOPS,

QUICKLY CLOSING IN ON THE ELUSIVE CREATURE.

"ZOE! ONLY FIVE MORE MINUTES!!!"

Zoe and her little sister are with Mom at the park. At least, Mom thinks they are at the park. Zoe and Addie know that they are actually in a tropical rain forest.

Zoe sees herself as the intrepid explorer, with pith helmet and binoculars. Addie is a swift, spotted jungle cat, the elusive Addiebeast, and and Zoe is on her trail through the forest canopy.

Mom thinks it's time to go home. When she warns that playtime is about up, Zoe is on the verge of a wild reaction. She launches a protest, but Mom is adamant about her deadline!

"FOUR MORE MINUTES.....!!!"

Is there no respect for the explorer and her quest? Protest yields no extension, so Zoe throws herself into the chase. Time is short, and the Addiebeast is wily.

Swinging from vines (the monkey bars), crossing a log bridge over an alligator-infested river (the balancing beam), and slithering through the dense growth on the jungle floor (shrubs), Zoe follows brief glimpses of the lithe Addiebeast's tufted tail, and relentlessly closes in on her quarry.

"ONE MINUTE!!!!

...A LIFETIME OF PREPARATION COMES DOWN TO THIS MOMENT, CHASING THE WILD ADDIEBEAST TO ITS TREETOP LAIR.

And by the time Mom calls time and heads for the car, the capture is complete, and Zoe and Addie, their dresses not even mussed, return safe and sound from the jungle, with quite a story to tell, in Bethanie Deeney Murguia's latest Zoe adventure, Zoe's Jungle (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic Press, 2014), an ebullient celebration of the joys of imaginative free play. The sisters appear both in dainty girly frocks when their mother calls to them, and as an eager explorer and an elusive great cat when lost in their fantasy play. Murguia's light ink and watercolor illustrations capture the special time and place that the sisters inhabit during their leafy adventure on the wild side, a special world that children will recognize as their own.

Murguia's previous stories about the winsome and strong-minded Zoe are Zoe Gets Ready and Zoe's Room (No Sisters Allowed) (See my reviews here).