Potty Lit Time! Super Pooper and the Whizz Kid--Potty Power by Eunice and Sabrina Moyle

There's a time and place for everything, and there comes a time when toddlers may need some toilet training lit.

HI! I'M SUPER POOPER!

AND I'M WHIZZ KID!

AND WE ARE GOING TO SHOW YOU WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU NEED TO GO.

Parents in the throes of toilet training may well be moved to throw in the towel and seek help from superheroes, and in Eunice and Sabrina Moyle's little how-to board book with diecut pages, toddlers get to meet a pair of caped crusaders--Super Pooper and Whizz Kid!

Not only do these masked marvels have capes, but they have all the tips to how to earn that most desired of costume articles--big-kid underwear!

But first would-be super heroes need to learn some handy hints from their new role models! There's a secret sign that tells them just what to do when...

"There's ...

A RUMBLE IN MY BUMBLE...OR A DANCE IN MY PANTS!“

Tots are encouraged to--

"JOIN THE MOVEMENT!"

There are touches of humor for grown ups along the way, and the authors also push reminders to flush, wipe, and wash hands well. Parents will be proud of their brand-new superheroes in the family and proudly complete the rest of the costume--

BIG BOY AND BIG GIRL PANTS!

Eunice and Sabrina Moyle's Super Pooper and Whizz Kid: Potty Power! (A Hello!Lucky Book) (Abrams Appleseed Books, 2018) offer some help with one of parenting's big milestones. It's a hard job but somebody's got to do it, and the authors offer wit and wisdom at just the right time. Kirkus Reviews says, "Jubilation and wonderfully bad bathroom puns ensue," and School Library Journal adds, ".. this hilarious take on an important early childhood collection staple is a must-have."

More Fun With Flaps: Hide and Squeak by Veronique Petit

PUPPY'S TAIL IS WAGGING,
AND HE'S BARKING HAPPILY.
HE WANTS TO PLAY A GAME OF FETCH,
BUT WHERE CAN HIS BALL BE?

Puppy wants his ball, and his friend Furry Kitty needs to find a brush for her fluffy tail.

Bunny's on the search for something to munch for lunch, and Bird needs a partner to tweet a duet.

Where do they look for what they seek?

In Petite Boutique Hide and Squeak (Make Believe Ideas/Thomas Nelson, 2018), illustrated by Veronique Petit, there are lots of cute critters, all searching for something, and what they need is a savvy, sharp-eyed preschooler to find what they are looking for, hidden cleverly under sturdy flaps in the pictures in this new little board book. Lift the flaps and VOILA'! There's a ball for puppy, a brush for Kitty, a carrot for Bunny, and a parrot to join Bird in song!

And that's not all! There's Pony to keep Horse company in the barn, hiding behind the hay bale, and for help in finding the source of that squeak, take a peek in that bucket in the barn! This lift-the flap book is also thumb-tabbed to take little searchers to each double-page spread for repeat sleuthing. This one features soft pastel illustrations and offers ways to build tactile abilities and vocabulary along with the seek-and-find fun.

Shaping UP! Circles and Squares (Baby Einstein) by Scarlett Wing

Cat is blowing bubbles!

All these bubbles are CIRCLES!

But along comes Lily with some blocks! Can Cat finish this SQUARE?

He can!

Cat is kept busy as his friends appear one by one and challenge him to go on to more complex shapes. Zen asks Cat to paint a triangle, and Neptune tempts Cat to dig for treasure, a golden star, while Atlas shows him how to cut out a heart, and Gig teaches him to find a diamond-shaped kite.

It's quite a challenge for those baby geniuses in Scarlett Wing's Baby Einstein: Circles and Squares (Sturdy Lift a Flap Board Book) (Cottage Door Press, 2018), as little fingers are encouraged to find the shapes under the robust flaps in this little shaped board book, which also works in patterns and colors and counting activities along the way. Artist Dan Crisp contributes the colorful cartoon characters which continue as part of the early learning fun. Pair this one with Wing's Baby Einstein: Big and Little (Sturdy Lift a Flap Board Book).

'S No Wonder! Babies in the Snow by Ginger Swift

LET'S MEET BABY ANIMALS IN SNOWY PLACES.

Somebody wants to play with the snow foxes!

Could it be Puff and Pearl, the polar bear twins?

What do they see through that hole in the ice?

Who's that? A whole slew of ... narwhales? WOW! Each is a whale of a whale with a unicorn horn!

But what other whales are swimming in those icy waters?

Baby Beluga and Baby Orca!

And who else is that? Baby Walrus is sunning on the ice with Seal Pup!

There's a whole menagerie of Arctic animals to be found if you know where to look--a glossy white ermine and a shaggy musk ox... and even a sleepy little snow owl, in Ginger Swift's little lift-the-flap board book, Babies in the Snow: Lift-a-Flap Board Book (Babies Love) (Cottage Door Press, 2018). Swift's toy-and-movable book introduces animals of the far north for tots to discover. Who's that? Could it be a caribou? Arctic critters are everywhere, even the snow-white Arctic hare, in this little book, illustrated in just-right cool colors so fetchingly by Ariel Silverstein, which is sized for small fingers to explore.

I SPY! My First I-See-You by Eric Carle

I see you in the puppy who plays peek-a-boo!

I see you in glowing silver moon, too!

Toddlers love to be involved in everything around them!

And Eric Carle's newest toy-and-movable board book, My First I See You: A Mirror Book (The World of Eric Carle) (Little Simon, 2018), makes the little "reader" the center of every page---because he actually gets to see himself along with whatever he sees on the page. There are butterflies and lions, clouds and fledgling birds, described in Carle's rhyming couplets, but there are also small, framed mirrors in which the little reader can see himself roaring or purring like a lion or swinging in a tree like a monkey.

Puppies and monkeys and baby birds are fine, but when a tot says "I see ME!" that's fun for everyone.

Getting to the Bottom of It! Peek-A-Flap DIG! by Jay Garrett

AT A CONSTRUCTION SITE, DIFFERENT KINDS OF MACHINES HAVE DIFFERENT JOBS TO DO!

Kids and puppies love to dig, and Jaye Garett's Dig: Peek-a-Flap Board Book will make at least fifty percent of that bunch VERY happy.

This brightly illustrated board book offers a pair of sturdy lift-the-flap opportunities on each page which help the very youngest lovers of big diggers learn the names and jobs of their favorite construction machines.

Accompanied by colorful illustrations by Mattia Cerato, each one is revealed doing what they do best. Featured machines are the crane and wrecking ball, level, asphalt mixer and layer, front loader, excavators and power shovels, all with their own special flap and additional information for the older construction fanciers. Little fingers will love lifting the flaps as young readers learn to identify the machines inside.

A few run-throughs of this book and youngsters will be ready for a rhyming romp through Sherry Duskey Rinker's best-seller, Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site and Rinker's diurnal cycle sequel, Mighty, Mighty Construction Site (see review here).

Keep in Touch! Kittens and Friends (Touch and Feel) by Aimee Chapman, et al

What are kittens?

Bundles of fur...

Like to purr!

Before you get the kitten, get this book. Small kids who aren't used to pets need to learn the gentle touch for baby animals, and this little touch-and-feel board book is a good way to start.

Kitten and Friends Touch and Feel (Baby Touch and Feel) (Priddy Books/St. Martin'sPress, 2017) offers big color photos of real kittens, with a chance to learn a soft stroke with some touchable kitten fur and learn a little about what kittens do--explore--as they chase a rolling ball, pounce on toys, play in a basket, and push a yarn ball around. Not only is the kitty tangibly touchable--so are the rubber ball, the bumpy-woven basket, and the fuzzy ball of yarn--to point out a few of the tactile experiences or the very young. With a snugly kitten curling up on a soft rug, this one is even a fine bedtime book!

Pair this one with Dorling Kindersley's Baby Touch and Feel: Fluffy Animals (Baby Touch & Feel) for a bunch of adorable furry babies.

What's Behind That Door? Haunted House (Funny Faces) by Roger Priddy

DARE YOU COME AND LOOK AROUND

THIS DARK AND SCARY PLACE?

What is behind that orange door guarded by the black cat?

Little fingers will do the walking as very young trick-or-treaters opt to go inside and see for themselves! And there are plenty of jolly Halloween treats inside.

Gwen the spider is spinning a web to fill her rumbly tummbly. D. J. Bones is looking funky, and Headless Harry the Knight seems to have found his helmeted head! Wendy Witch flies through as a Ghost says Booooo!

Roger Priddy's Funny Faces Haunted House (Priddy Books, 2012) has all the usual suspects inside his little shaped board book. Hanging out with the Halloween gang gives little fingers lots to explore--googly eyes persist on every sturdy page along with cut-out shapes and fuzzy creatures to feel. A first book about Halloween from Roger Priddy's Funny Faces series that is a treat for little eyes.

Now Ewe Know: Little Lamb by L. Rigo

Bunnies, ducklings, chicks, and the ever-popular egg get most of the ink, but lambs are traditional symbols of Easter and spring, too, and rams, ewes, and especially lambs get their due in L.Rigo's Little Lamb (Mini Look at Me Books) (Barron's, 2014).

A small (even by board book standards) book, die-cut in the shape of a sweet, sitting lambkin and endowed with undeniable cuteness, this one is tiny enough for very young hands.  Its thick, sturdy pages are easy to turn, offering the youngsters an opportunity to handle a book and learn to turn the pages all by themselves.

The soft watercolor illustrations are of pleasant pastoral scenes, as new mothers lead their lambs out for the first time into the wide world.  There is some information for a read-aloud session with the sheep-family names--ewe, ram, lamb--and a smattering of knowledge--that older sheep eat grass, while little lambs just like mommy's milk--but because of its appealing shape, this toy-and-movable-book format is more "toy" than a "book," with only a few page turns of springtime scenes, a toy book that may even find its way into the crib or toddler bed.

For Easter gifts and baskets for toddlers, this one has a lot of visual and tactile appeal. There are also a whole flock  of literary lamb stories out there, including Laura Numeroff's and Lynn Munsinger's Lots of Lambs (see its review here), Little Lamb: Finger Puppet Book (Finger Puppet Brd Bks), Usborne's finger-feely-friendly That's Not My Lamb... (Usborne Touchy-Feely Books,) or for a nonfiction approach, Judy Dunn's popular The Little Lamb (Pictureback(R)).

Flap! Flap! Flaps! UP! TALL! and HIGH! by Ethan Long

"I AM TALL!"

A clearly self-important green bird proudly boasts about his height until an even taller lavender bird walks on page, towers over him, and tells him so.

But both birds seem to have been topped by a third set of long bird legs. The two birds stare up and up and up, and the page turns to reveal a half-page gatefold revealing the third bird, actually quite squat in stature, standing on a very long pair of stilts. AHA! But before the tall two can protest, the short bird hops down, admits that he's not actually tall, but gets the last word as he spreads his very impressive tail to prove that he's can best them both in the horizontal department:

"I AM NOT SMALL!"

Artist-animator Ethan Long's 2013 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award-winning book, (for beginning reader books) Up, Tall and High (Putnam, 2013) takes on the task of explaining the difference between the related but not synonymous concepts of "up," "high," and "tall." You can be small and high, or tall and up, but not necessarily high (or at least not the highest!) and Long's three short stories, which add up to only 34 words in total, demonstrate these slightly different concepts through the use of opinionated birds and the use of half-page gatefold flaps which demonstrate the concept while provoking some chuckles at these boastful birds who are obviously high on themselves.

Great for toddlers just learning the fine points of language or for older emergent readers who will proudly read this book to themselves, Long's little linguistic lesson offers youngsters the sort of silly slapstick story preschoolers love. Or, as Publishers Weekly puts it ... "borscht-belt clowning by the birds provides plenty of visual humor."

Trucksation! Tons of Trucks by Sue Fliess

TONS OF TRUCKS
BEFORE OUR EYES,
IN EVERY COLOR,SHAPE,
AND SIZE.

STRONG TRUCKS,
BIG TRUCKS,
SCOOP AND DIG TRUCKS!

Millions and billions and trillions of trucks--all are on the move every day, and Sue Fliess' and Betsy Snyder's' forthcoming (July 3) interactive board book, Tons of Trucks, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) gives toddler's digits something to do as these big and little movers scoop and scoot, lift and load, honk and haul. There are fire trucks that squirt, tar trucks that spread, milk trucks that m-o-o-ve, bigfoot mud trucks, and little red lift trucks, with plenty of surprises for little fingers to find.

There is sticky tar from the paving truck, a fork lift that goes up and down, a fire truck that lengthens to show off its long ladder, a power shovel that swings back and forth, a car carrier that folds out to reveal even more capacity, and several whose loading doors open to show off their cargo.

Artist Betsy Snyders opts for the spot art technique as she sets her bright illustrations off against a bright white board background, and there are a variety of movable devices to let youngsters play with these trucks on the page--pull tabs on the army truck which open the sides to show their top secret contents, and a wheel to turn which makes the cement mixer tank turn and the sweeper truck's broom revolve. Numerous flaps open to show off monkeys, mice, and many other critters working and having fun with their vehicles.

And as parents prefer with any book for toddlers, the action slows down for bedtime as s final spread puts these truck friends to bed (hint hint). Snyder switches to a midnight blue background as the trucks park peaceably under a goodnight moon that actually rises, while flaps open to reveal the trucks'passengers readying themselves for snooze time. Ponies snuggle in their trailer, mice brush their teeth and literally hit the hay, while a lion reads a bedtime story to the croc snacking on popcorn in the scraper.

TRUCKS PULL IN WITHOUT A BEEP.
DREAMY TRUCKS
DRIFT OFF TO SLEEP.

Color It.... Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger

These are the golden days of the picture book.

Arguably the oldest of human literary forms (remember those cave paintings), the art of creating a seamless merging of thought, word, and image has come to a flowering in book design which almost transcends the ancient format of bound pages. Such a book is Caldecott winner Laura Vaccaro Seeger's Green (Roaring Brook, 2012).

Closed, its cover is an unprepossessing but sturdy green square with three abstact leaf shapes on a darker green background and the title in pale and plain lower-case letters. But under that cover each page explores a facet of the color green with an intriguing die-cut circle which leads the eye into a surprising change of scene on the next page. "Forest green" on the first double-page spread reveals a window of color which fits into its design of a deep forest and yet leads to the next page, "sea green," in which the revealed area appears as the pattern of a sea turtle's shell as he swims in a turquoise sea among darker kelp. That page has an integral opening which leads to "lime green," the pale and subtle green of the cut fruit's flesh, and that page's opening leads to "pea green," a spoonful of peas, each its own shade of green.

Vaccaro continues her exploration of the color, with art and wit. The "slow green" of a caterpillar gives way to the "glow green" of fluorescent fireflies chased by children in a summer's twilight, the red barn beside them giving way to the red of apples in an "apple red" tree. There are surprises, too, with the "wacky green" of the word "zebra" seen through the die-cut opening and disappearing into the design of the following page and the "never green" of a red and white stop sign, and the "no green" of that same barn white with snow. And at last there is a promise--"forever green" as a boy plants a seed by a green cheese moon, which finally opens to a sun lighting a seedling with its own new and hopeful green of spring.

With its inviting page texture and that intriguing circular die cut on each layout, this book is a feast for the senses--begging to be seen, to be touched, and to be voiced.

As in her earlier books, First the Egg (Caldecott Honor Book and Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book (Awards)), The Hidden Alphabet, One Boy, and Dog and Bear (Neal Porter Books) (Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Winner-Best Picture Book) (Awards)), Seeger continues to create books that are benchmarks in the art of the picture book, one with layers of sense and meaning offering much to readers of almost any age.

The New York Times reviewer says that Green is "…one of those deceptively simple picture books that to the casual bookstore browser can seem to be about nothing much at all. But the reader who settles down and slowly pages through its gorgeous acrylic paintings or, better yet, reads it aloud to a young child, will find rich rewards."

Boo! Who's At the Door? by David Mead

RING THE DOORBELL--IF YOU DARE!

Trick-or-treating, that time-honored tradition of English speaking peoples, goes back to ancient times, with its current form rooted in the early Christian church when people celebrating All Saints' Day believed that the shades of their ancestors, good or not-so-good, could be expected to visit.

Trying to protect themselves from those not-so-sweet spirits, folks lit bonfires and dressed in scary garb themselves to frighten the bad ones away. The evening before this holy day, All Hallow's Eve, slowly evolved into Hallowe'en, a night of fun for kids, but retained its tradition of going about in disguise with at least the hint of tricks for stingy, Scroogy neighbors from the visiting "spirits."

All these jolly goings-on are fun for "big" kids, for whom hordes of children in strange dress at the door pose no threat, only possibilities for treats in their own little bags, but for the youngest, it can be an strange and overwhelming experience.

David Mead's and Ron Berry's just published little shaped board book, Who's at the Door? (Picture Books Activity Books E) (SmartKidz Media/Ideals, 2011) offers a bit of conditioning therapy for toddlers to introduce them to the whole Halloween event.

There's a pumpkin-shaped doorbell button to push for every page, which produces a very satisfying ding dong, followed by the voices of merry children chorusing "Trick or Treat!" Each double page spread, showing the interior of a living room, brings a new "door," a flap that can be opened to reveal some conventionally costumed kids on the porch, holding out their little plastic pumpkins.

DING DONG! IT'S A PATCH-EYED PIRATE!
WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?
HEY, WAIT A MINUTE! TONIGHT IS HALLOWEEN!

Clever design and illustrations by Chris Sharp give plenty of visual humor to each page: a variety of spooks pass by outside the window and there's a goldfish in a bowl by the window who reacts, a la the fish inThe Cat in the Hat, to each of these costumed creatures. For kids too young to "get" the whole tradition and too little to venture out on that night, this little board book is a good introduction to this holiday's rich traditions.