Squirrels 1, Cat 0: Those Darn Squirrels and the Cat Next Door by Adam Rubin

NOW, NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW THIS, BUT SQUIRRELS ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE FOREST.

THEY ARE CRAFTIER THAN BEAVERS, SMARTER, THAN FOXES, AND SWIFTER THAN RABBITS.

THEY ARE ALSO FULL OF MISCHIEF.

Of course, professional neighborhood grump, Old Man Forkwire, "so old that when he sneezed, dust came out," has learned his lesson, having already been forced to make a reluctant peace with Those Darn Squirrels! (Clarion, 2009), but now it looks like those pesky rodentia have met their match.

A new neighbor moves in, Little Old Lady Hu, the town baker, with her preternaturally portly, malevolent-looking cat, Muffins. Mrs. Hu's beloved "Snookums," Muffins is a holy terror of a feline, and he soon establishes his reign over those pesky squirrels with just a few well-placed wet willies, noogies, and wedgies. Then Muffins terrorizes Mr. Forkwire's beloved birds, earning the squirrels a rare bit of sympathy from their frenemy Forkwire.

Mr. Forkwire contacts the Mayor about the menace, but the squirrels go him one better in revenge. They hold another of their famous strategy all-nighters, fueled by cheese puffs, and emerge with a plan involving the one thing cats fear above all others--a good dousing.

A typical squirrel Rube Goldberg device dumps a bucket of freezing water all over Muffins just as he's about to feast on Mr. Forkwire's bird friends. The result is, shall we say, deflating to Muffin's ego and reputation.

"GREAT GOOGLEY-MOOGLEY!" FORKWIRE EXCLAIMED, "THAT PATHETIC WRETCH IS NO BIGGER THAN A SQUIRREL!"

IT WAS TRUE! UNDERNEATH ALL HIS FLUFF AND FUZZ, MUFFINS WAS NOTHING BUT A SKINNYMALINK.

With Muffins now a humiliated house-bound kitty, the birds and squirrels are sitting pretty, and Little Old Lady Hu shares her pastry wares freely with them every Saturday while Old Man Forkwire is free to paint his beloved birds undisturbed, which is, grouchy to the end, the way he likes it.

In their latest collaboration, Those Darn Squirrels and the Cat Next Door (Clarion, forthcoming May 2, 2011) Adam Rubin and Daniel Salmieri have another winner under their creative belts, a clever and jolly blending of text and the illustrator's art that is a sure kid-pleaser. Publishers Weekly has given this one their coveted starred-review thumbs up, adding "Having already proved they are ideally matched in their debut, Those Darn Squirrels!, Rubin and Salmieri go for two--and succeed."

A glorious giggle-getter!

Bogeyman! Big Bad Bubble by Adam Rubin

YOU MAY NOT KNOW THIS, BUT WHEN A BUBBLE POPS, IT DOESN'T JUST DISAPPEAR.

IT RE-APPEARS IN LA LA LAND, WHERE THE MONSTERS LIVE.

You might expect that monsters living in a dank, dark world would be happy to see a cloud of pretty blue bubbles blowing their way! After all, every kid in our world gets a big bottle of bubble stuff as soon as the weather warms and starts happily trying to wand and blow bubbles up over over the treetops. But no.

It seems that La La Land has its own fear-monger, a big yellow guy named Mogo who once had a unfortunate encounter with bubble gum and who has convinced all the other little monsters that bubbles are the the ultimate horror.

BUBBLES ARE SNEAKY. THEY TRAVEL IN PACKS.

SUMMER IS THE WORST TIME. THAT'S WHEN THEY GO INTO A FEEDING FRENZY.

Fed a daily indoctrination of bubblephobia, all the monsters cringe in fear and loathing when the bubbles appear.  Despite the indisputable fact that all the La La inhabitants have all the right stuff--horns, fangs, claws or all three--to take on the invasion, no one is willing to confront a bubble, mano a mano, to find out what it is made of. Yerburt, Froofle, and Wumpus flee, screeching monstrously.

It's time for a little phobia busting in Adam Rubin's latest, Big Bad Bubble (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014), as the author's off-page narrator-slash--therapist talks Wumpus through a little cognitive counseling, and when Wumpus pokes a big bubble with his horn, he finds out it's just ...

A BALL OF AIR!

BUTTERFLIES, ON THE OTHER HAND....

Ever since Charlie Brown and Lucy cringed at the sight of sidewalk fuzz and Max confronted the Wild Things on their own turf, authors have helped kids confront imagined terrors. With a lot of artistic help from his friend and illustrator, Daniel Salmieri, author Rubin takes a poke at those innocuous and irrational fears by proposing the most innocuous threat yet, a soap bubble! Salmieri's bright orange, yellow, green and red characters are visual standouts set against his gloomy black backgrounds, giving this airborne bugaboo a decidedly light touch.

Other best-selling picture book hits by this dynamic duo are Those Darn Squirrels! (and sequels) and Dragons Love Tacos. (Check out my reviews here and here.)

Et 2, Taco? Dragons Love Tacos 2 : The Sequel by Adam Rubin

HEY, KID! WHY ARE YOUR DRAGON FRIENDS CRYING?

NO WONDER THEY'RE UPSET!

Tacos have gone extinct.

Everybody loves tacos, but as we know dragons love tacos more than anyone!

REMEMBER THAT TIME WE HAD AN AWESOME TACO PARTY?

What has gone wrong? It seems that there has been an interruption of the supply chain and over-consumption by consumers, and... now?

THERE ARE NO MORE TACOS. NONE. NADA. NIL.

And as we all know, when dragons aren't happy, nobody's happy!

The Taco Lobby is steamed, and they roll into action in no time flat!

Tortilla puns aside, it comes down to some human kids to fill the void. And they have a plan. They will fire up ye olde time machine and zip back to the time when there was a plentitude of tacos for the planet and bring back a fresh supply. There will again be, to, er, coin a metaphoric phrase, a taco truck on every corner.

What could go wrong?

Well, calibrating the rusty old wayback machine takes some tinkering. Its first voyage finds the mission crew back in the terrible time of the too-fiery-for-dragons'-tummies taco sauce, and a second try is even more alarming, another plane of existence where--horrors!--

TACOS LOVE DRAGONS?

Hey, WAIT! We can't have tacos eating our dragons? A subsequent valiant try takes them into an alternate world where there are dragons, but these dragons are, um, to put it delicately, decidedly different.

DRAGONS LOVE DIAPERS?

Will the intrepid time travelers track down the time of superabundant tacos and restore peace to the planet? There's many a slip between taco and lip, but the fun is in getting there, in Adam Rubin's spicy sequel to his hot-selling Dragons Love Tacos (Read my salsa-splattered review here), the piping hot-off-the-press Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel (Dial Books, 2017). Already a hot seller, Rubin's sequel has his heroic kids teaching dragons how to "cultivate" their favorite foods (Taco trees? Really?) and gives artist Daniel Salmieri an opportunity to let his riotous dragons romp and rumble again in his pencil, gouache, and watercolored illustrations that fill each page with witty details. Separate or together, dragons and tacos are popular fare, and this new one by this dynamic duo is a tasty treat for young readers.

Hold Your Fire! Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

MAYBE IT'S THE SMELL OF THE SIZZLING PAN.

MAYBE IT'S THE CRUNCH OF THE CRISPY TORTILLAS.

MAYBE IT'S A SECRET.

EITHER WAY, IF YOU WANT TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH WITH DRAGONS, TACOS ARE KEY.

And if you are entertaining dragons, you'd better have lots of tacos. Boatloads of tacos. Really.

But there's one thing you must NOT have with the tacos. SPICY salsa. (Not unless you want to throw a party that will make the Olympic cauldron look like a backyard barbecue.)

That means no hot chili peppers in the salsa. NO hot chilis. No jalapenos, no serranos, no anchos, no poblanos. And not even a whiff of Tabasco.

That means MILD SALSA only. What's that at the bottom of that label in really small print?

Totally Mild Salsa. {Now with spicy Jalapeno peppers.]

Jalapenos? Stop the party. Don't let those dragons get to the plates of tacos. Stop that one--the one about to take a bite!

TOO LATE!

KBLOOOOEY! Fiery breath everywhere. The dragon party is a flaming success, if you don't count the burned-down houses.

The dragons are apologetic, and get busy rebuilding the charred houses until the neighborhood is restored.

MAYBE THEY'RE GOOD SAMARITANS.

MAYBE THEY'RE JUST IN IT FOR THE TACO BREAKS.

Together again after their 2008 hit Those Darn Squirrels! (Clarion), this talented pair of jokesters are back again with another hot hit, Dragons Love Tacos (Dial, 2012). Adam Rubin contributes a breezy, off-the-cuff narrative style while Daniel Salmieri's stylized guouache and colored pencil illustrations are an object lesson in visual humor. Publishers Weekly quips that this book gives "a whole new meaning to 'housewarming,'" and says it is "off-kilter fun for those who like their picture books (and salsa) zesty and fresh."

Cyber-Saucy! Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin

[WARNING! THIS BOOK TURNS INTO A ROBOT!]

Naw! That couldn't happen. But if a cool robot costume lets a kid get into the persona of a robot, well, go for it!

Grown-ups have no idea how much fun it can be to play like you are a robot! So how can they even imagine how much fun it would be to BE a robot!

ROBO-POKE! ROBO-GRAB! ROBO-STOMP!

EVERYONE WOULD WANT TO BE A ROBOT!

What if there was robot machine that processed kids into robots? Or even better--

ROBO-SAUCE?

It's no taste treat, but if you pour on just enough, well--ZAP! you will become a GIANT ROBOT!

Now it's time for Rampaging Robots! What if even your parents can become robots? Your dog? Everyone?

The robots take over the story, and then in a gatefold that just keeps on keeping on, the robots take over the book itself, in Adam Rubin's Robo-Sauce (Dial Books, 2015), in which a many-faceted gatefold opens up and can be refolded into a new cover for a book which even can be "read" backwards. And why not? Daniel Palmieri's illustrations are up to the challenge and his (and his readers') imaginations are extended in novel ways to there and back again. "Is there an award for best gatefold ever? Then tell Rubin and Salmieri to get out their tuxes, because this book has the one to beat," says Kirkus Review.