Lost! Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell

Lost in the snow!

A young girl leaves school just as a snow storm sets in. Head down under her hood, she trudges across a seemingly endless snowfield, until she meets up with a tiny baby wolf, separated from his mother and pack, his little legs sinking deep into the soft new snow. Despite her own obvious struggle with the drifting snowfall, she picks him up and tucks him under her coat and moves on toward her home. The little wolf lets out a small sound.

Howl! Howl!

Then the girl hears an arresting reply:

HOOOOOOOWWLLL! HOOOOOOWWLLL!

Fearfully she looks about. She sees that wolves are approaching her, led by Mama Wolf.

The girl tenderly puts the little wolf down so that his mother can carry him back to his pack.

Stumbling, the girl goes on, desperately slogging forward, leaning against the wind until she collapses in the snow. Suddenly, she is surrounded by the wolves.

The little wolf comes up to her and licks her hand, and the other wolves sit down and begin to howl together around her. But she is not afraid. The wolves' howls are answered by her own dogs! She's almost home!

BARK! BARK!

And no one is lost in the snow at last, in Matthew Cordell's Caldecott Award book, Wolf in the Snow (Feiwel and Friends, 2017), a beautiful story of one good deed deserving another. Cordell's wispy, scratchy illustrations portray the bleak wintry snowscape with a spare loveliness that both reinforces and ameliorates the bleak setting, symbolically warmed by the child's bright red cloak. "It's an almost wordless tale which speaks volumes about kindness. The girl's story is a hero's journey, and Cordell tells it with skill and heart," says Publishers Weekly, in its starred review.

The Starving Time: The Wolf~Birds by Willow Dawson

DEEP IN THE WILD WINTER WOOD
WHEN THE SNOW FALLS AND
THE ICY WINDS BLOW,

TWO HUNGRY RAVENS HUDDLE
IN WAIT FOR THEIR NEXT MEAL.

It is the time of year some Indians call the Wolf Moon, for the hungry wolves that wail from the wooded hills. Some even call it the Starving Moon.

A pair of ravens huddle together on a bare branch, their heads capped with snow, waiting for the sun to rise and melt the snow just enough to show where the burrows of seed-collecting little animals lie. One raven pokes her head inside, as deep as she dares, hoping for a bite of something hidden there.

And nearby a pack of four wolves has caught the scent of a buffalo. They give chase, but the powerful bison kicks out at the lead wolf at his heels, and the hunter falls, dead.

THREE WOLVES MUST SAY GOODBYE.

The three wolves move on, always looking for food.

THEN THEY HEAR A FAMILIAR SOUND...

KAW  KAW--THE SOUND OF HUNGRY RAVENS.

The ravens have seen something from their tree, a starving deer, limping and alone.

The wolves understand. They follow the ravens' call. The chase is brief.

ONE ANIMAL'S LIFE HELPS MANY OTHERS LIVE.

The wolves fill their empty bellies, and the ravens dart in to take their finder's fee. Then the ravens make their own cache for leftovers under the snow, and the wolves depart, carrying food back to their den where a mother is waiting, curled around her cubs.

THE STARVING WAIT FOR SPRING'S RETURN COMES TO AN END.

"Did you know ravens are also called wolf birds... because of the very special relationship they have shared with wolves," says author Willow Dawson, in her just published The Wolf-Birds (Owlkids Books, 2015). A powerful story of the cycle of life and the cycle of the seasons, this one also describes the cooperative relationship called mutualism between the clever scavenger birds and the predator wolves. Like black-hooded ninjas, the ravens of the far north act as spies for the wolf pack, infiltrating the woods, perching high and soaring over the landscape and leading the wolves to prey that the ravens cannot bring down but surely will share.

Life is hard in the far north, but this exquisitely designed and illustrated picture book's lovely style, limited palette, and fluid line has a stark beauty of its own. Even the visually striking endpapers reinforce the seasonal theme, opening with snow-drifted birch trunks and closing with budding twigs and new leaflets emerging as life goes on.

Dawson adds an explanatory author's note and a bibliography of her sources in creating this story.

Don't Call It Beantown, or Hotel Valhalla, Where "All the Heroes Are Just Dying to Get In": The Sword of Summer-- Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard by Rick Riordan

"Yo!" I caught the sleeve of Uncle Randolph's coat. "Rewind to the part about a Norse God being my pappy."

We'd stopped at one of the Longfellow Bridge's main towers--a cone of granite rising fifty feet above us. People said the towers looked like giant salt and pepper shakers, but I'd always thought they looked like Daleks from Doctor Who. (So I'm a nerd. Sue me. And, yes, even homeless kids watch TV sometimes--on public library computers, in shelter rec rooms....)

A hundred feet below us, the Charles River glistened steel gray, mottled with snow and ice, like the skin of a massive python.

"Don't you see?" Randolph said. "So many people over the centuries have known. This area wasn't just visited by the Vikings. It was sacred to them. Magnus, the Norse explorers came here searching for the axis of the worlds, the very trunk of the tree Yggdrasil. They found it--"

"We're out of time, Magnus. Extend your hand over the water. The sword is there. Call it. DO IT."

But, of course, it's not as simple as all that. The Summer Sword, sunk in a Viking longboat in the Charles River for a thousand years does rise, barnacled and rusted, but there is the little matter of a fight to the death with the fire demon Surt first, one in which Magnus and the sword take on the demon in a fight to the death. Surt is vanquished, but unfortunately not before he kills Magnus.

Don't you just hate it when the hero dies before you get to page 50?

Fortunately, Magnus and his magic sword are swooped up by a circling valkyrie named Samirah and hauled off to what appears to be the poshest hotel in downtown Boston, the Hotel Valhalla. Inside, the hotel is a whole Norse paradise, where heroes go to live forever. There Magnus is reborn, better than ever, and besides, the food is great, and as he puts it, "the rooms don't suck." Of course, being a hero comes at a price, and Magnus is soon given his own quest--finding the island of Lyngvi, which rises from the sea (somewhere just outside Boston Bay, BTW, in case you were thinking of taking the whale watch cruise) once every thousand years, the island where Fenris Wolf has long been shackled.

Now Fenris is your average ravening wolf, except that he cannot be killed and is currently bound only with Gleipnir, a magical silken rope, maybe just a little century or two past its expiration date. It seems that Magnus and his summer sword named Jack are chosen to subdue and rebind him in the latest enchanted rope, Andskiti, And what happens if Magnus fails to rebind him? Well, just Ragnarok, the final battle between Odin and his heroes and Loki and his giants which will be an apolcalyptic battle, the End of the World. Nobody wants that.

If the plotline of Rick Riordan's new first book in series, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 1: The Sword of Summer (Hyperion Books, 2015), sounds strangely similar to his earlier best-selling Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Heroes of Olympus and The Kane Chronicles, that's because it is, a fact which will not surprise or deter Riordan's followers in the least. And yes, there's also a cameo by Magnus' cousin, Annabeth Chase, frienemy of Riordin's Percy Jackson. Small world, huh?

Like the Riordan's other heroes, Magnus is a demigod, this time the son of the Norse god Frey and a mortal woman, whose unlikely death in the heart of Boston at the fangs of a pack of wolves, results in Magnus' homeless status and his reasonable distrust of everyone. Like the previous series, Magnus is helped throughout his quest by his own band of brothers, Hearthstone the elf, master of rune magic, Blitzen, the high-fashion dwarf, and Samithra, a.k.a. Sam, the defrocked Valkyrie, not to mention several friendly warrior types recruited at the Hotel Valhalla for major battles.

Aso like Riordan's other heroes, Magnus is a dark, courageous, but occasionally snarky teen who gets his value system from his saintly mortal mother and his godly powers from his mythological father. The dialogue is a witty mashup of hip teenspeak and Asgardian lingo, with smartoff chapter headings like "Freya Is Pretty! She Has Cats!" and "Gunilla Gets Blowtorched and It's Not Funny. Okay, It's a Little Bit Funny." And what's not to like about a novel that ends with a Viking funeral for Gunilla and her two slain valkyries that involves swiping a winterized Swan Boat and setting it afire in the Frog Pond in the Boston Public Garden? Well, okay, I do have a bone to pick with Viking mores: how come female Valkyries aren't immortal and the heroes in Asgard get to die every day and return to life in time for the dinner buffet? If that's not gender bias, what is?

But aside from that caveat, this one is a real Rick Riordan romp through up-dated but classical Norse mythology. And for those who, unlike the author, are not highly familiar with the hyper-complex Norse Nine Worlds, there is a glossary of names and terms appended which the reader will refer to endlessly to keep up with the many mythic characters and terms encountered on this quest. Also added are the cited runes, and a description of the Nine Worlds contained within the Tree of Life, Yggdrasil, which are also essential as Magnus and Company hip-hop through the various realms, all located metaphorically, as we now know, in Boston, Massachusetts. which is, of course, why the Puritan founding fathers called their town "the Hub of the Universe."

The second book of the Gods of Asgard series, Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Book 2: The Hammer of Thor is forthcoming in the fall of 2016.

Snow Queen (er, KING): King Alice by Matthew Cordell

GOOD MORNING, SIR DAD!

It's not a sled-and-snowball, snow-for-Christmas snow day. It's an icy, slippy, sloshy, slushy snow day where everyone has to stay inside.

It's a unscheduled official pajama day for everyone in the family--Burpy Baby, Frumpy Bun-on-Top-of-Head Mom, and, of course, Grizzled, Itchy, Yawny Dad, who does not want a sparkly-strawberry cupcake party breakfast with Queen King Alice (because he's been to that party and cleaned up after it). He also passes on another Super-Duper Make Dad Prettyday. (Don't ask.)

Then King Alice has a brainstorm.

"Let's make...a... book! About King Alice the First! A-a-a-n-d the royal brave knights!"

Dad is anointed as Royal Illustrator. But King Alice's inspiration fails after their royal breakfast, a tad messy around the mouth, especially Burpy Baby's, so the King declares...The End.

Dad's off the hook until she re-imagines the knights sipping at a PRINCESS TEA PARTY. All the knights are seated at their Round Table. It's all royal fun, until....

"Okay. I'm bored now."

King Alice decrees Chapter 2 is done with a walk away. Dad exhales, until...

"Chapter 5!" King Alice suddenly announced.

"What happened to chapters 3 and 4?" Dad wondered pointlessly.

After Chapter 5 (Pirate Party), King Alice is too fatigued to be creative and repairs to her television-viewing throne, where her imaginative juices are restored by an episode starring that ever-popular mythical, mystical beast, and the King declares there will be a ...

UNICORN PARTY!

"STAMPEDE!

In the ensuing melee', Dad sustains a unicorn horn wound, and King Alice is banished to the Time-Out Throne, with only the cat as her equerry, until she issues a repentant proclamation.

"I am so, so, so, so, so sorry I bonked you with my unicorn, Daddy. You are funny and nice and you draw good... and will you play with me now, Daddy?"

And after a c-a-a-l-m-down dinner and bath for Burpy Baby and the King, all's well that smell's well, and with yet more snow falling outside the windows, the weary head who wears the crown is almost drowsing off, when an IDEA comes for tomorrow....

SEQUEL!

It's a funny and familiar tale of snowed-in togetherness, in his latest, King Alice (Feiwel and Friends, 2018) with Matthew Cordell's familiar scratchy-styled comic illustrations capturing the mess and moods of family life in a sweet and loving snow day in the life of a young family. Cordell, 2018 Caldecott Medal winner for Wolf in the Snow (see review here), admits to a fondness for stories about family and an affinity for the sketchy illustrative styles of Jules Feiffer, William Steig, and Quentin Blake, and this style is well suited for the untidy saga of King Alice, who inexplicably harps on neatness and definitely dotes on her daddy. Cordell's stories have insight and delightfully detailed illustrations that will give youngsters a lot to seek and discover on each busy page.

Says Publishers Weekly, "Readers will treasure their time with Alice's father, who allows his daughter to be exactly who she is, and King Alice, who leads her family on adventures even when they don't leave the house."

A Friend Indeed: Lost and Found by JiWon Beck

An indigenous girl makes her way through the snowscape to her hole in the ice, where she catches three fish, and with them over over her shoulder, confidently heads toward home. But a blinding snowstorm suddenly blows in, and she is lost in the vast expanse of white.

Through the windblown snowflakes she spots a fisherman's igloo, but when she takes shelter inside, she sees a young polar bear has gotten there first.

But the two see themselves in the same situation. The bear is friendly, and sensing that he is hungry, she gives him her fish, and the two share her little blanket through the cold night.

When the storm ceases, she catches more fish for her friend, and as the snow begins again, he escorts her, even giving her a ride on his back until she spies her little house ahead. The two say goodbye with a nose rub and a hug, and seeing that the young bear is reunited with his mama, the girl runs toward her own mother, their front door open wide for her.

In his wordless picture book, JiWon Beck's Lost and Found (Peter Pauper Press, 2019) tells a moving story of kindnesses shared, with strikingly lovely illustrations done in the spare colors of the arctic scene, gray, white, black, and the red of the child's mittens. Telling the same timeless story of kindness between unlikely friends as Aesop's ancient fable of the lion and the mouse, Beck's tale does it without text, but with the language of beautiful artwork that speaks volumes.

Share this one in the snowy season with Matthew Cordell's 2018 Caldecott winner, Wolf in the Snow (read review here).

Arctic Rescue: Pup and Bear by Kate Banks

In a sudden thaw, a lone wolf pup is separated from his pack alone on an ice floe. As the wind blows him further from the land, he jumps into the sea and swims back to the shore. Freezing and exhausted, he falls asleep in the shelter of a snowbank.

HE WOKE TO THE FEEL OF A COLD NOSE.

."YOU ARE A POLAR BEAR."

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER." SAID THE LITTLE WOLF.

"NO," SAID THE BEAR, "BUT I CAN CUDDLE YOU AND KEEP YOU SAFE."

"POLAR BEARS EAT WOLVES," HE SAID FEARFULLY.

>"NOT THIS ONE!" SHE SAID.

So the little wolf climbed up on the polar bear's wide back and slept warmly with her in her snug den. The next morning she takes him across the tundra and down to the sea to teach him to catch fish and show him the seals, lemmings, the geese and puffins, and a walrus. She washes him clean with her rough tongue and teaches him how to play, rolling head over heels down the snowbanks. Slowly the air grew warmer.

"I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER, BUT I KNOW IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO GO."

And with a last nuzzle, the young wolf walks away into the world, where the he finds other wolves and in time becomes the leader of a pack. And then one day, he comes upon a lost little polar bear, shivering and afraid, all alone.

"YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER," SAID THE COWERING CUB.

"I AM NOT...," SAID THE WOLF. "BUT I CAN CUDDLE YOU AND KEEP YOU WARM."

"YOU CAN STAY WITH ME UNTIL YOU ARE BIG ENOUGH TO BE ON YOUR OWN."

One kind deed deserves another, in Kate Banks beautiful story of a kindness that begets yet another, Pup and Bear (Schwartz and Wade). In lovely language, this charming reworking of the famous fable of care for others tells an emotionally moving story, supported by artist Naoko Stoop's beautifully simple illustrations of the snowy northern landscape that plays an important role in this parable of caring. Share this one with Matthew Cordell's 2018 Caldecott Medal winner, Wolf in the Snow. (Read my review here.)

School Library Journal says, "The lyrical writing makes this a wonderful read-aloud. This story of extraordinary kindness may also prompt a discussion of diverse families."

And the Winners Are.... 2018 American Library Association's Youth Media Awards

The American Library Association has announced their prestigious 2018 Youth Media medals, including their most famous awards for youth fiction, nonfiction and picture books at their annual conference in Denver, Colorado. And here are the winners!

Taking the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children's literature was Hello, Universe, by Erin Estrada Kelly, published by Greenwillow Books.

The three Newbery Honor Award Books for 2018 were Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut," by Derrick Barnes, Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds, and Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson.

The Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book went to Wolf in the Snow by author-illustrator Matthew Cordell, published by Feiwel and Friends. Caldecott Honor Awards went to illustrators Elisha Cooper for his Big Cat, Little Cat, to Gordon C. James for Crown, an Ode to the Fresh Cut, to artist Thi Bui for A Different Pond, and to Jason Chin, for his Grand Canyon.

The Coretta Scott King Author Medal went to Renee Watson for Piecing Me Together. King Autor Honor Awards went to authors Derrick Barnes' Long Way Down, by Jason Reynolds, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, earned the King Illustrator Award, and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Medals went to Gordon C. James for Crown: An Ode to a Fresh Cut, and to James E. Ransome for his artwork in Before She Was Harriet: The Story of Harriet Tubman.

The Coretta Scott King/Virginia Hamilton Award for lifetime achievement went to author-illustrator Eloise Greenfield.

The Michael L. Printz Medal for Excellence in Young Adult literature was awarded to Nina LaCour for We Are Okay, published by Dutton Books.

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the the best book for beginning readers was given to author Laurel Snyder and artist Emily Hughes for Charlie & Mouse, and the Young Adult Nonfiction Award was given to Deborah Hiligman for her Vincent and Theo: the Van Gogh Brothers. The Pura Belpre' Award for Latino literature went to La Princessa and the Pea, written by Juana Martinez-Neal.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for continuing contribution to children's literature went to author Jacqueline Woodson, and Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961, written by Larry Dane Brimner, received the Robert Sibert Medal for the most distinguished informational book for children.

Other awards and prizes for contribution to children's literature can be seen here.

Best Pet Bet: Annie and the Wild Animals by Jan Brett

IT HAD BEEN SNOWING FOR DAYS.

WINTER WAS LASTING TOO LONG.

SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH ANNIE'S CAT. TAFFY HAD STOPPED PLAYING.

SHE ATE LESS THAN USUAL.

SHE SLEPT ALL DAY LONG. SHE CURLED UP IN STRANGE PLACES.

Annie is worried about her cat, and when Taffy suddenly fails to come home one morning Annie looks everywhere outside but with no luck.

ANNIE WAS LONELY.

I NEED A NEW FRIEND, SHE THOUGHT.

Annie takes matters into her own hands and sets out to find a new pet. Since she lives in a snow-covered forest, a pet shop is out of the question. Instead, she bakes some fragrant corn cakes and puts one outside at the edge of the woods. The next morning, there IS an animal there, waiting for more. But... it's a ... moose.

HE'S TOO BIG FOR A PET, THOUGHT ANNIE.

Annie keeps trying, putting out a corn cake each evening, but all the applicants for Annie's new pet have their issues. A wildcat is too wild to tame. A brown bear is too grumpy. Annie decides she needs more bait, scattering a whole batch of her popular corn cakes at the edge of the woods, but when a wolf, a giant stag, and a black bear start fighting over the food, Annie despairs of finding a proper pet among these rambunctious applicants.

NOT ONE OF THEM IS SOFT AND FRIENDLY LIKE TAFFY, THOUGHT ANNIE.

This re-issued Yuletide-tinted edition of Jan Brett's Annie and the Wild Animals (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2012, 1985) is a delightful blend of the picturesque and charming Ukrainian setting seen in her classic, The Mitten 20th Anniversary Edition. With its snow-covered cottage and evergreens and the pigtailed Annie's red coveralls, green, handmade sweater, and furry boots, this book is a delight to the eye, with Brett's trademark page frames providing dramatic irony as they foreshadow what comes next, espcially Annie's cat Taffy and her new kittens holed up in the hollow of a forest tree as the robin in the branches and the trilliums among the melting snow foretell Taffy's triumphant return with her three kittens. Classic Brett in a brand-new package!

Put Some Fun into Bedtime with These Books!

If your young reader is one of those wonderful kids with a sense of humor, these books for the preschool and early elementary set are good additions to their bookshelf, and they'll give adults reading them out loud something (besides lights out) to smile about, too):

For the preschool-Kindergarten set:

Mommy? by Maurice Sendak, Al Yorinks, and Matthew Reinhart. Scholastic, 2006.

This high-tech pop-up book features a typical monster-taming Sendak protagonist, a toddler who wanders into a suitably spooky-looking house calling “Mommy?” and proceeds to de-“bolt” a Frankenstein monster, nip the knickers off Wolf Man, and unwind a mummy’s wrappings, until he finds a suitably maternal monster at last.. A slightly macabre take on Are You My Mother?, this book has some sly fun for the adults who will undoubtedly have to “read it again!”

For the Kindergarten-Grade Two reader:

Cha Cha Chimps by Julie Durango. Illustrated by Eleanor Taylor. Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Ten bed-bound chimps slip out to cha cha the night away at Mambo Jamba’s, where they count down from ten to zero as they hokey-pokey with a hippo, macarena with a meerkat, and belly-dance with a cobra. When a hip Mama Chimp “hustles” them home to jam in their jammies with a sitter, she goes back to boogie the night away. Kids hearing this story will pick up the refrain “Ee-ee-oo-oo-ah-ah-ah, ten little chimps do the cha cha cha” by the second time around.

Bats at the Beach, by Brian Lies. Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

Bats break out the moon-tan lotion and frolic on a moonlit beach, doing all the things kids love doing by day on the sand. Rhymed verse dances through enchantingly dark but luminous night time fun. (See if the kids notice that the author is hanging upside down on the “About the Author” back flap!)

Trosclair and the Alligator by Peter Huggins. Illustrated by Lindsey Gardner. Star Bright Books, 2006.

Despite dire warnings from his Pere, Trosclair and his dog Ollie brave the waters of Bee Island Swamp, inhabited by the world’s biggest alligator. When treed by Gargantua, Trosclair (channeling Brer’ Rabbit), pretends to offer up Ollie instead of the honey-(and bee-)filled beehive. Predictably, Gargantua “bites," Trosclair drops the beehinve into his open mouth, and the Trosclair’s trick and the subsequent bee stings rid the swamp of Gargantua forever.

<The Most Perfect Spot by Diane Goode. HarperCollins, 2006.

When Jack takes Mama, wearing her best pink hat and unknowingly trailed by a stray spotted dog, to “the most perfect spot for a picnic,” each place they choose results in disaster, as they fall into the lake, are pelted by horses kicking up mud, survive a runaway carousel, are surrounded by a pack of yapping dogs, and make a run for home in a downpour. In two-page spreads, the careful reader will see the spotted dog as the author of each adversity. Back home at last, Mama and Jack, followed by the dog dragging the bedraggled pink hat, settle down to a picnic on the floor, with the “dog they named Spot, the most perfect Spot!”

For the sophisticated not-too-old-for-picture-books set (and anybody else who’s still alive):


Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like, Because They’re All About Monsters, and Some of Them Are Also About Food . (You Like Food, Don’t You? Well, All Right Then.,.) by Adam Rex. Harcourt, Inc., 2006.

A real tour-de-force by author-illustrator Adam Rex, with rhyming spoofs of the lifestyles of such monsters as Wolfman (hair clumps in his roommate’s drain), Dracula (spinach in his teeth), Invisible Man (can’t get a decent haircut), Yeti (“Don’t call me BIGFOOT!), and the Phantom of the Opera (has writer’s block because he can’t get “The Girl from Ippanema” and other ditties off his mind). The copyright page even features a snow angel left by The Invisible Man. A book for all ages (even those old enough to KNOW the tune to “Girl from Ipanema”)!

Blame Mother Goose? Once Upon a Slime by Andy Maxwell

Once upon a time, Goldilocks visited her old friends, the Three Bears. Sure, they had gotten off to a rocky start--what with the whole porridge thing. But now everyone was totally over it.

Plus--she thought, "Who could stay mad at the girl with such beautiful golden locks?"

It's time to let bygones be bygones!

So Goldilocks decides to drop in on the Bears, but when she opens the door--

SPLORT!

She's slimed! It's green! It's gross! It's disgusting!

Goldie blames her frenemies, the Bears, for taking revenge for her housebreaking, but when she confronts them, they deny the crime. And while they're arguing against their guilt with Goldie, it's the Three Bears who get the goopy slop dropped on them.

"YAY! A WHODUNNIT!" yells Baby Bear.

Goldie calls in Granny, who loves a mystery, and Goldie, Granny, and the Bears set out to interview the usual suspects in the neighborhood--Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, who have each other for an alibi, Rapunzel, who's not quite above it all--and all get slimed along the way. Could the Three Little Pigs be the perps? They do love muck.... But what about Prince Charming? He's got minions. Do he and Snow White have a couple thing for surprise chartreuse slime parties?

Everybody's gotta get slimed in this fractured fairy tale crime filled with familiar characters, in Andy Maxwell's fractured fairy cum mystery tale, Once Upon a Slime (Little, Brown Books, 2018), loaded with quips, puns, and snappy comebacks and illustrated in inspired cartoon style by artist Samantha Cotterill, who plants clever clues to the real perpetrator along the slime crime trail for sophisticated readers to sleuth out. Perfect for older primary readers who are on top of the trope of the fractured nursery story, this one is funny addition to the re-framed fairy tale genre. In their tongue-in-cheek review, Kirkus Reviews writes, "Cotterill's artwork—ink on watercolor paper with digitally added color—is loose and lively, and re-readers (and savvy-eyed first timers) are given hints to the real slimer."

More than the Moon? I Love You, Little One by Clare Lloyd

HOW MUCH DO YOU LOVE ME?

A little bunny asks the big question, cuddling with a parent under the big full moon.

Is he loved more than the moonglow in the night?

A series of baby animals ask a parent the big question. Is his love for the little one more than Father Wolf's love of running? Is it taller than Papa Monkey's love for tall tree-climbing? Does Mama Penguin love her baby more than the snow?

Is it deeper than the whales' beautiful blue sea? Is it more soft than the owls' fluffy feathers?

And of course the answer is I love you so much, as much as I can love, in Clare Lloyd's I Love You Little One (Dorling Kindersley, 2018). Author Lloyd and artist Claire Petane set each pair on their own two-page spread within their own two-color palette. The monkeys share a green and black landscape, the big and little wolf are shown in a gray-blue and black setting, while big and little elephant are shown against an orange and black world. This is a little book about love that offers its own built-in read-aloud storyteller and lights up the big moon that begins the story. It's a book about love and a toy-and-movable book for Valentine's Day or any day, because love is an everyday thing.

Santa Paws? The Animals' Santa by Jan Brett

IT'S YOUR FIRST CHRISTMAS EVER, LITTLE SNOW."

THE ANIMALS' SANTA COMES TONIGHT," BIG SNOWSHOE TOLD HIS LITTLE BROTHER.

"I THINK YOU ARE FOOLING ME," SAID LITTLE SNOW.

The little snowshoe hare is skeptical. Who could this Santa be? Hasn't anyone ever found his tracks? Somebody must have seen him!

Little Shoe sets out on a fact-finding mission. He interviews Porcupine, Squirrel, Raven, and Arctic Fox, who describe how the gifts just seemed to drop from above for them. They each have their own ideas--from a mouse to a white wolf--but Little Shoe thinks they are all wrong. And he's going to prove it.

Meanwhile Big Snowshoe decides it is time to put up some Christmas decorations, and breaking the ice on the stream, he hangs the frozen shards from the fir branches to make Yuletide wind chimes. It's all quite lovely, but Little Shoe sees no trace of this animals' Santa anywhere.

BUT SUDDENLY A BUNDLE OF FRESH CLOVER FALLS AT HIS FEET!

A year without a new Jan Brett holiday story is like a winter without a snowflake, and this year we're in luck with Brett's latest, The Animals' Santa (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2014).  Filled with her painstakingly detailed draftsmanship  and glorious colors set against the whitest of snowfalls, this latest Brett tale tells the old story of the little doubter who sets out to prove who or what Santa really is. With her trademark foreshadowing borders decorating each delightful page, this is yet another great story to join her many Christmas classics, Home for Christmas, The Wild Christmas Reindeer, Christmas Trolls, The Night Before Christmas, Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve? and The Twelve Days of Christmas, to cite some of Brett's many holiday gifts to children.