Carry Meeee! Baby On Board: How Animals Carry Their Young by Marianne Berkes

When you were a baby, someone carried you. Have you ever wondered what animal parents do?

Animals, like people, carry babies in all kinds of ways. In their arms or piggyback are the most popular ways, but a few, like the kangaroo, have a handy built-in expandable pouch for youngsters. Emperor penguins have an egg pouch between the males' feet into which eggs and very young ones fit to keep warm. Some animal parents have even more creative ways to carry the kiddies.

Being marsupials, baby opossums are born very small and most newborns spend a little time in their mother's rudimentary pouches and then switch to piggyback rides, holding on to her shaggy fur for dear life.

This animal hauls her babies from one place to another.The joeys have it easy as they all ride on their mother.

Piggyback works great for shaggy tree sloths, hundreds of baby wolf spiderlings, chimpanzees, anteaters, and even baby loons who can hop on dad's back to get warm. But Mama Otter has a twist on that trick: she floats on her back and carries her little one on her tummy where it's easy to keep her eyes on her baby. And when she needs to dive down deep for dinner, she tethers him to a handy strand of kelp.

This mom is like a living raft as she transports her pup.
She hunts for food for them and will never give up.

Mama Alligator has an even stranger twist to the piggyback concept. If danger is near, she calls her little hatchlings to hop in her mouth to hide. It's the last place any predator wants to be (and if he does, the last place he'll ever see).

When babies call their mothers, there is no time to pause.
She carries them to safety, grasped in her powerful jaws.

And like human babies, little ones like chimps are carried around in the parents' arms, right where they like to be.

Noted children's nature author, Marianne Berkes' Baby on Board: How Animals Carry Their Young (Dawn Publications) offers an engaging nature science book for both primary and middle grade readers. From loon to lion, manatee to chimpanzee, Berke's engaging nonfiction book provides jolly facts in rhyming couplets for the youngest animal lovers, and for older animal fans or researching middle graders there is an accompanying text with addition information on all twelve featured animals, as well as an appendix with a matching quiz, suggested curriculum connections, and a bibliography of books and websites, Illustrated by artist Cathy Morrison with charming artwork of parents and babies done in almost photographic detail, this versatile volume is a real twofer for children from preschool to middle school ages.

Back to School: There's No Place Like School: Classroom Poems selected by Jack Prelutsky

IT'S TODAY?

FRANTIC
PANIC.
SINKING
SORROW.
THE SCIENCE TEST
IS NOT
TOMORROW.

All the highs and lows of life are part of the school experience. Finding out that you thought you had another day to study for a dreaded test is not one of life's best moments, but it's one all but the most nerdy of students has known. But the school day also has its moments of joy:

B-BALL

REBOUND.
SWISH SOUND.
BOUNCE PASS.
BREAK FAST.
THREE IN THE KEY.
OVER TO ME.
HOOK
SHOT.
I'M HOT.
BACK COURT SHOT!
ROUND THE RIM--
ALMOST IN
FREE THROW.
WAY TO GO!

There's No Place Like School: Classroom Poems, (Greenwillow, 2010) selected by best-selling and award-winning children's poet Jack Prelutsky, hits all the highs and lows and the middling in-between moments, like being lost in the limbo of the school bus ride, in this latest edition just in time for back-to-school-days. Selected by Prelutsky from a wide range of children's poets, from Lee Bennett Hopkins ("School Bus"), to Kenn Nesbitt ("The Drinking Fountain") and Kelli Davos ("Countdown to Recess"), this collection also includes a couple of his own poems, "We're Shaking Maracas," a tribute to the glorious sounds of music class, and "Grasshopper Gumbo," a salute to those mystery meat concoctions in the cafeteria. With bright cartoons by Jane Manning, there's a poem there that captures most of the emotions and humor of the school day. A great choice for a young scholar or a teacher preparing for the first day of school.

Get Down! Boogie Knights by Lisa Wheeler

It's midnight
And the moonlight's shining
Down upon the moors.
While the rascals
In the castle
Jangle chains and rattle doors.

Seven sleeping, never seeing.
Creeps are creeping
Down the hall.
Down the staircase,
Making their way
To the Madcap Monster Ball.

Seven armored knights, "upstairs, unawares..." are sleeping through their watch, while below a collection of "werewolves hustling, zombies bustling, from their coffins, crypts, and vaults" join mummies doing the mambo, serpents doing the samba and waltzing wicked witches, all boogieing down in the main hall.

With a banshee as the lead singer, the jam session grows so loud that it awakens the sleeping prince, who, in his cute little striped jammies, with miniature crown askew, stumbles out of his chamber, teddy and candlestick drooping in hand, to see what's going on. As the bogeys shake their booties, even the painting of a deceased princess comes alive to the sound of the intriguing beat, and she floats down to seek a partner at the rockin' rave.

But the ghostly princess is not the only one aroused by the swingin' sounds. Among the castle's snoozing guardians, first Sir Veillance ("he just can't wait/To investigate"), and then "tough" Sir Loin ("his honor is at stake"), "big" Sir Prize, and "wide" Sir Round come downstairs to protect but remain to party. Sir Cumference "circles round" to defend but, hearing the beat, stays to do the twist. Waking to a monster conga line below in the hall, the castle's remaining protectors wake to the irresistible sounds:

Forced, Sir Ender just gives in.
Lone Sir Vivor (that's his twin)
Feels the music in his soul,
Kicks up his heels,
"Let's ROCK AND ROLL!

With all seven of his knightly defenders dancing, the little prince drops his bear and candle, and grabbing the ghost princess by the hand, joins the go-go goblins and jumps into the jiving jamboree to dance until dawn.

At last the weary warriors climb back to their watchtower, and as "seven sleepers close their peepers," the princess returns to her picture frame with a last look at the little prince toddling off to his bed with a smile as she wishes him a fond "NIGHTY KNIGHT."

In their brand-new Boogie Knights (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover)) author Lisa Wheeler (Sailor Moo: Cow at Sea (Golden Kite Honors (Awards)), Seadogs: An Epic Ocean Operetta) and illustrator Mark Siegel have a unique semi-scary story which will work like a charm on a variety of levels of reader/listeners. Wheeler's rhyming plot line and Siegel's humorous drawings, a marriage made in picture-book heaven, will engage the youngest listeners, while the clever puns and double entendres paired with the sophisticated layered humor of the illustrations will charm elementary readers--and even adults, who (one hopes) will be the only ones who fully "get" the title's mischievous reference. It's a happy howliday pun-orama fun-orama which will merit many return engagements at this devilishly delightful discotheque.