It's A Secret! by John Burningham

Every night Marie-Elaine’s cat, Malcolm, goes out, and every morning he comes back in and sleeps. "Where do cats go at night?" the girl wonders. So when she sees him at his cat door dressed to the nines, she begs to come along. And amazingly, Malcolm agrees — as long as she puts on her fancy clothes, gets small, and keeps it all a secret. With a whimsical story and breathtaking artwork, the acclaimed John Burningham takes us on an exciting night’s journey, braving hoodlum dogs and precarious climbs for a rooftop party that is cause for celebration indeed.

My favorite read-aloud of the week, I read this book to 2nd and 3rd Graders. Wryly worded, positively appealing -- it was a joy to read (over and over) and share.

Fly, Eagle, Fly! retold by Christopher Gregorowski, illustrated by Niki Daly

398.2 GRE

This story is based on an African tale often told by Dr. Aggrey, a West African missionary. A farmer finds an eagle chick and puts it in the coop with his chickens, where it learns to live like a chicken and, as the farmer insists, it even “thinks like a chicken.” A friend tries three times to persuade the young eagle to fly: “You belong not to the earth but to the sky”. But his first two attempts to launch the bird into flight do not succeed. Eventually, he takes the eagle (and the protesting farmer) up a mountain. There, “feeling the updraft of a wind more powerful than any man or bird,” the eagle sweeps up into the sky, “never again to live among the chickens”.


Fly, Eagle, Fly! was widely acclaimed when it was first published in 1982. Financial constraints at that time allowed illustrator Niki Daly to use only two colors, but even so his black-and-yellow ochre pictures were stunning. Republished in 2000, he created new full-color artwork with larger pages, and the result is one of the classics of South African children’s literature. With a powerful message of rising above one’s imposed earthly restrictions, the pictures are equally inspiring with their authentic portrayal of the South African landscape. The characters are richly alive, and colorful printed cloths brighten the village street where chickens scratch in the sun. The muted colors of the mountain are contrasted against the glowing sky at dawn. Fly, Eagle, Fly! was awarded the SACBF Vivian Wilkes Award for 2000 and was nominated as a South African IBBY Honour Book for illustration. The book includes a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Questions, Questions by Marcus Pfister

In an age when infinite answers are available in an instant, maybe the questions we ask are what matter most. "There's so much that I want to know," writes Pfister, and in 13 short couplets he shows readers how questioning is a genuinely creative act—a way of being fully engaged in the world. His verses are by turns fanciful ("Do apple seeds dream happily/ of growing up to be a tree?"), scientifically minded ("What turns the leaves from green to brown/ and sends them floating gently down?"), and even faith-based ("Who teaches butterflies to fly,/ splashing their colors through the sky?"). Pfister has created images as pithy as they are poignant, boldly graphic and dramatically cropped against white backgrounds. A blue-headed songbird is reminiscent of Asian watercolor; a storm cloud looks like it's been fashioned from salt dough; falling leaves seem cut from pieces of thickly tufted carpet. Although each was created using the same painted paper method (explained on the final page), the results are as varied as the questions. Ages 3–up.

The Moon Jumpers by Janice May Udry pictures by Maurice Sendak

E UDR

Four years before Where the Wild Things Are won the Caldecott Medal, Maurice Sendak produced some of his most spectacular artwork for The Moon Jumpers. Printing technology has greatly improved since this enchanting picture book was first released more than fifty years ago, and now, with new color separations, the reproduction of Maurice Sendak's artwork comes closer to his stunning originals than ever before. Sendak's wondrous starry skies and Janice May Udry's evocative text immediately transport us back to cool, moonlit nights and fill us with the universal warmth of childhood. The Moon Jumpers' timeless beauty and inspiration earned it a Caldecott Honor in 1960 and will surely gather a new generation of fans.

Once Upon an Alphabet: Short Stories for All the Letters by Oliver Jeffers

E JEF

If words make up the stories and letters make up the words, then stories are made up of letters. In this menagerie we have stories made of words, made FOR all the letters.

The most inventive and irresistible book of the year spans a mere 26 letters (don't they all!) and 112 pages. From an Astronaut who's afraid of heights, to a Bridge that ends up burned between friends, to a Cup stuck in a cupboard and longing for freedom, Once Upon an Alphabet is a creative tour de force from A through Z. Slyly funny in a way kids can't resist, and gorgeously illustrated in a way readers of all ages will pour over, this series of interconnected stories and characters explores the alphabet in a way that will forever raise the bar.
 
In Once Upon an Alphabet, #1 New York Times bestseller Oliver Jeffers has created a stunning collection of words and artwork that is a story book, alphabet book, and gorgeously designed art book all in one.

My Map Book by Sara Fanelli

E FAN

In each spread of this bold and humorous picture book, children can examine their place in the world around them through detailed and engaging maps that are drawn from a child's perspective. Twelve beautifully illustrated maps such as Map of My Day and Map of My Family will fascinate children, teaching both about mapping and autobiography. 

Ah-hA to Zig-Zag by Maira Kalman

E KAL

As a lover of imaginative and intelligent alphabet books and of absolutely everything Maira Kalman does, I find the letters of the alphabet and the words they make insufficient to express the boundless wonderfulness of Kalman’s Ah-Ha to Zig-Zag — the children’s-book counterpart of her magnificent My Favorite Things, which began as a companion to an exhibition Kalman curated to celebrate the anticipated reopening of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

In this ABC gem — which doubles as a design-history primer full not of snobbery and self-important art-speak but of a playful celebration of uncertainty and imperfection — Kalman culls thirty-one objects from the museum’s collection and strings them together into a tour of the alphabet, with her characteristic quirk, candor, and exuberant creative curiosity as the loving guide.

Maria Popova/Brain Pickings

Nancy Knows by Cybèle Young

E YOU

Nancy knows she's forgotten something. Something important. When she tries to remember, she thinks of all kinds of other things instead. She remembers things she knows and things she doesn't quite know. She remembers things one way, then another. Sometimes she remembers with her ears or her stomach or even her heart. But Nancy knows she's still forgetting something. It's only when Nancy stops thinking altogether that she finally remembers the very important thing she's forgotten. Nancy Knows is the charming story of an elephant who remember lots of things, except the very thing she is trying to remember. Each spread of this whimsical, arresting picture book features fantastic miniature paper sculptures within expressive outlines of a puzzled pachyderm. It's a book not to be forgotten.

---amazon.com

Turtle's Penguin Day by Valeri Gorbachev

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Turtle is so excited by the book about penguins that his dad reads him at bedtime that he decides he wants to be a penguin. So the next morning, he creates a penguin costume, grabs his book, and heads for the schoolbus. His kindergarten classmates are thrilled. They all want to be penguins too! Turtle shows his book to his teacher, and all day long he and his classmates do as the penguins do—they slide down the slide on their bellies during recess, form a waddling conga line at music time, and snack on goldfish crackers. It's a super-cool penguin day! This delightful picture book from Valeri Gorbachev is a perfect blueprint for teachers (and kids) to plan penguin days of their own.

Daniel Pinkwater

Daniel, Age 7

E PIN
I Was A Second Grade Werewolf

In Daniel Manus Pinkwater's books you'll meet fat men from outer space, music-making lizards, a 200-pound chicken and other wonderfully crazy characters. While Pinkwater's books are outrageously humorous, he also has the uncanny ability to reach young readers by writing about his own childhood experiences. 

FIC PIN

I (Miss Nancy) read this one a few days before Halloween -- I agree with the reviewers quoted below!

"No author has ever captured the great fun of being weird, growing up as a happy mutant, unfettered by convention, as well as Pinkwater has. When I was a kid, Pinkwater novels like Lizard Music...made me intensely proud to be a little off-center and weird — they taught me to woo the muse of the odd and made me the happy adult I am today.  The NYRB edition of Lizard Music is a beautiful... hardcover, a testament to Pinkwater's influence on generations of readers. It's one of those books that, in the right hands at the right time, can change your life for the better and forever."  —Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

“Lizard Music is. . . funny, properly paranoid, shot through with bad puns and sweet absurdities, and all about a baffled kid intent on tracking reality (as slippery as lizards) in a media-spooked milieu.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Wildly imaginative. . . . This is a natural high.” —Booklist (starred review)

Louise's Gift is a story for Everybody!

Louise's Gift by Irene Smalls

Illustrated by Colin Bootman. 32 p., Little, Brown, 1996.
Each child in Louise's family receives a symbolic gift from Nana. For example, one child receives a penny, and Nana tells her she will be rich, both in the sense of having a lot of money and in a spiritual sense. Louise is disappointed in her gift, a blank piece of paper. Nana tells Louise that she can put whatever she wants to on the paper. But Louise feels that the gift means that she isn't special. After solving several problems creatively, she learns that her gift is creativity, and values this in herself. This story shows children that their strengths may not be obvious, but they are still valuable. (Healing Stories by Jacqueline Golding)

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 The beautiful illustrations in Louise's Gift are by Colin Bootman.  Colin Bootman was born in Trinidad where he spent the first seven years of his life. During this time, he was inspired by the island’s rich and diverse culture. Soon after moving to the United States, Mr. Bootman embraced art as a measure of escape from the pressures of adjusting to a new environment at an early age. Mr. Bootman cites finding his first comic book as the life-changing experience that marked the beginning of his career as an artist.  You can see more of Mr. Bootman's beautiful illustrations here.