The Shape Caper: The Chicken Squad: The First Misadventure by Doreen Cronin

"HELP! HELP!"

"THERE IS SOMETHING BIG AND SCARY IN THE YARD!" GASPED TAIL, THE SQUIRREL.

The Chicken Squad--the chicks Dirt, Poppy, Sweetie, and Sugar--pop out of their green shoe. Dirt sees that there is a mystery afoot, and notebook in hand, she starts to interrogate Tail for more details about the intruder. Master of the thesaurus, Tail can only add that the thing is also enormous and frightening, huge and terrifying!

Dirt goes for clarification.

"WHAT SHAPE IS IT?"

"BIG," SAID TAIL.

"BIG IS NOT A SHAPE!" SNAPS DIRT.

Dutifully, with crayon in hand Sugar takes over basic shape instruction, but when she draws a circle, Tail faints dramatically on the floor of the chicken coop.

But when he recovers, Tail suddenly comes up with details about the scary thing--it is round; it's shiny, possibly hunter green, hissing, and disturbing the atmosphere. To Sugar the identity of the intruder is obvious! It's a UFO, just landed in the backyard to abduct an earthling, maybe even a squirrel. Or maybe even a--

YIKES! Their mom, Moosh, is out in the yard!

The chicken squad mobilizes for undercover action.

"QUICK!" SAID SUGAR. "POPPY, SWEETIE, GO TO THE SUPPLY ROOM AND GET ME GRASS CLIPPINGS, A BAG OF ROCKS, A BALL OF STRING, A TANK OF HELIUM, AND AN ORANGE BALLOON."

"CHICKENS COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE ALL THOSE THINGS!" SAID TAIL.

"THEN YOU DON'T KNOW CHICKENS!" SUGAR REPLIED.

And when J.J. Tully, retired search-and-rescue dog, is awakened from his nap by the sound of rocks pinging off Barbara's brand-new barbeque grill, thrown by four suspicious, skinny-legged clumps of grass, he knows his fuzzy yellow charges are at it again, in the first book of Doreen Cronin's new series, The Chicken Squad: The First Misadventure (Atheneum Books, 2014). Snappy comebacks and hilarious barnyard banter have been long been Cronin's forte' and Kevin Cornell's full-page comic illustrations bring back J.J. Tully and Mama Hen Moosh's chipper chicks in a happy continuation of the earlier series, which began with The Trouble with Chickens: A J.J. Tully Mystery. (J. J. Tully Mysteries).

Authoring truly hilarious beginning chapter books is a rare talent, and savvy readers of Nick Bruel's Bad Kitty series
will appreciate Cronin's ironic ending in which J.J. Tully, Tail, and the chicks share the hot dogs recovered from owner Barbara's formerly shiny new barby:

"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ALIENS?" ASKED TAIL.

"THEY WERE AFTER FOOD. THEIR WHOLE SPACESHIP WAS FULL OF HOT DOGS. THEIR SHIP IS DOWN FOR GOOD." SAID SUGAR.

"AND WE THOUGHT THEY WERE HERE FOR US," POPPY LAUGHED SCORNFULLY.

"LIKE ANYBODY WOULD EAT A CHICKEN!"

Be sure to read this one with its latest sequel handy, By Doreen Cronin The Case of the Weird Blue Chicken: The Next Misadventure (The Chicken Squad) [Hardcover] (Atheneum Books, 2014) for more merry misadventures of the chicken squad.

Holy Unanticipated Occurences! Flora and Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo

Flora Belle Buckman admits that she is a cynic.

She has her reasons.

One of Flora's very favorite bonus comics was entitled TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO YOU! As a cynic, Flora found it wise to be prepared. Who knew what horrible, unpredictable thing would happen next?

After all, a terrible thing has already happened to Flora. Her parents have suddenly divorced, her mother is cranky and distant, wanting only for Flora to make herself scarce while she writes her romance novels, and her dad is living in a small apartment too far away for Flora to walk for a visit. Still, Flora hasn't quite lost her belief that amazing things can happen the way they do in her Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto! comics, and Flora is right to believe.

It all begins when her neighbor lady Tootie Tickham receives a truly horrible birthday gift from her husband, the towering Ulysses Super-Suction Multi-Terrain 2000X vacuum cleaner, which on its maiden voyage zooms out her backdoor and sucks up an innocent foraging squirrel, right up to his tail. The heroic Flora switches into superhero mode herself and provides mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the squirrel. The squirrel revives, minus part of his fur, but with some seemingly super-squirrel powers. Flora names him Ulysses, in honor of his change agent.

"I'm going to try and explain what happened to you, okay?"

Ulysses nodded his head very fast.

"What happened is that you got vacuumed. And because you got vacuumed, you might have, um, powers"

Ulysses gave her a questioning look. "Do you know what a superhero is?"

Flora looked down at Ulysses. Considering the human beings she was surrounded by, believing in a squirrel seemed like an increasingly reasonable plan of action.

Ulysses is super strong, he can fly, and he has a fondness for typing original poetry.  But those super powers are not what Flora Belle Buckman thinks she wants, but in his way, Ulysses has just the powers--Holy unanticipated consequences--she needs to get her mother to love her and her father again, restore vision to Tootie's "temporarily blind" nephew William Spiver, also "temporarily" traumatized by his mother, along the way. Although Ulysses' main motivation is to find and eat a giant donut, in terribly funny and truly poignant adventures this super squirrel manages to restore love and understanding  to Flora's family.  Along the way, Flora loses her cynicism and Ulysses achieves all the donuts he desires.

As her father, George Buckman remarks,

"Holy Bagumba!" The universe was expanding.

Multiple Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo (for Because of Winn-Dixie and The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread)) has in her latest, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press, 2013), a sweet, fantasy-tinged comedic novel,  occasionally illustrated in artful cartoon panels, that is further proof that DiCamillo is a master tale-spinner.  Flora is a delightful character whose cynicism and belief that Terrible Things Can Happen is shaken by some truly fantastic unanticipated consequences of a runaway all-terrain vacuum cleaner that change everything.  As Kirkus Reviews writes, " An original, touching and oh-so-funny tale starring an endearingly implausible superhero and a not-so-cynical girl."

Ocean-o-phobia! Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach by Melanie Watt

Scaredy Squirrel never goes to the beach. He'd rather vacation at home alone where it's safe from the wrong crowd.

Everyone's favorite phobic flying squirrel is back, just in time for the first day of summer!

Scaredy, who almost never leaves the security of his nut tree, certainly has no plans to go to the beach, where there are huge hazards--germs, lobsters and crabs, falling coconuts, predatory seagulls and jellyfish, not to mention sea monsters!

Scaredy opts for a safe stay-cation, his own surrogate beach constructed right at the foot of his tree in case of emergency evacuations. Kitty litter subs for sand, a sanitized plastic pool, plastic palm tree, and plastic flamingo add to the ocean ambience, a flashlight stands in for sunshine, and just in case a few rays of sunlight make their way through his fur, there's super-SPF sunscreen. Perfect! He stretches out on his beach towel to enjoy, uh, nature.

It looks like a beach and feels like a beach, but it doesn't SOUND like one!

What he needs, Scaredy decides, is a seashell, a big seashell, one of those that he can put to his ear and hear the roar of the ocean. A shell that has certain qualities: 1) germ-free; 2) shiny; 3) crystal-clear ocean sound. 4) NOT occupied. But that means--he must go venture forth to the real beach!

RED ALERT!

Obsessive as always, Scaredy equips himself for the dangers of the seaside. Haz-mat suit, check! French fry supply to distract scary seagulls, check! Self-addressed, self-sealing box in case Scaredy has to take refuge from attacking pirates and coconuts, check! But his plans fail to include that one unforeseen hazard--little kids equipped with pails and shovels! Scaredy falls back on the last resort of the flying squirrel!

PLAY DEAD!

The anxiously awaited next installment in Melanie Watt's sagas of Scaredy Squirrel is here, just in time for the seaside season. As in the earlier books, in Scaredy Squirrel at the Beach (Kids Can Press, 2012), our orignal nervous-nellie, Scaredy Squirrel, requires a bit of immersion therapy as he finds happiness, companionship, and fear-free fun at the beach at last. Kids who harbor a few reservations about the oceanside can't help but giggle at Scaredy's outsized anxieties and perhaps get a little insight into their own.

Why Do You Love Me? Just Because You're Mine by Sally Lloyd Jones

"DAD!" SHOUTED LITTLE RED SQUIRREL.

"LOOK AT ME!"

Little Red Squirrel and his dad are playing in the woods, and the little one is eager to show off his skills. He runs as fast as the wind. He climbs way up high in the tree. He knows just how to find super-secret berries.

"HAVE I TOLD YOU TODAY HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?" DAD SAYS.

"BECAUSE WHY?"

"DO YOU LOVE ME BECAUSE I'M ABSOLUTELY BRAVE?"

In Sally Lloyd Jones' latest, Just Because You're Mine (Harper, 2011), the answer is predictable: Dad is proud of all his accomplishments, for sure, but they are not the reason he loves Little Red Squirrel. He loves him, not because he is fast and friendly, brave and handsome, although those are all good things. The answer, in the book's title, is the evergreen reason that parents love their little ones, "just because..." you belong to me and I belong to you. Frank Endersley's soft and soothing illustrations fit Jones' straight-forward text, making this one a great book for Fathers' Day or just any day that Daddy reads the story out loud.

Lloyd-Jones' previous books include the best-selling How to Be a Baby . . . by Me, the Big Sister (How To Series), Being a Pig Is Nice: A Child's-Eye View of Manners, Song of the Stars: A Christmas Story, and Time to Say Goodnight.

Playing It Safe: Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt

Scaredy is a neurotically risk-averse squirrel who knows all about the dangers of the "unknown." He knows there are killer bees, and sharks, and germs, and green Martians and all kinds of hazardous stuff just waiting to do him in if he leaves the safety of his tree. To avoid a potentially fatal mistake, he's made one of those pros and cons lists just to make sure he's doing the prudent thing.

ADVANTAGES OF NEVER LEAVING THE NUT TREE:

--GREAT VIEW
--PLENTY OF NUTS
--SAFE PLACE
--NO TARANTULAS, POISON IVY, MARTIANS, ETC.


DISADVANTAGES OF NEVER LEAVING THE NUT TREE:

--SAME OLD VIEW
--SAME OLD NUTS
--SAME OLD PLACE

It's a boring but safe life.... Wake up, eat a nut, look at view, go to sleep (repeat).

Of course, there are unforeseen contingencies in the most carefully planned life, and just in case, Scaredy has planned for those, too. He has a emergency kit, complete with parachute, Band-Aid, hard hat, can of sardines.... [Wait a minute--sardines? Yes, sardines are useful for distracting sharks (see above).]

When an unforeseen bee bumbles by and Scaredy drops his emergency bag, though, he inadvertently falls from the tree and discovers that he has one more contingency quality he hasn't planned for--Scaredy is a flying squirrel! Scaredy enjoys the glide all the way down, but just in case there might be something dangerous around, he pretends to be dead for two hours.

The newly intrepid flying Scaredy Squirrel cautiously adds three items to his daily schedule:

--jump into the unknown
--play dead
--return home

Hey, it's a start!

In addition to this 2007 ALA Notable Book, Scaredy Squirrel, (Kids Can, 2006), Scaredy widens his world in Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend and Scaredy Squirrel At the Beach.